Praise the Lord and thank you for joining us for the God of Wonders radio program. Today’s message is Call upon the Lord and in Part 1 by Kiruba Stephen, we’ll learn what our Heavenly Father will do in return when we seek Him with all our heart, diligently. Let’s listen.
You know how God is; if you ask Him for one pen, He will give you the best golden pen. He always gives you the best. He always gives you more than you can ask or imagine. That’s who God is. If we can know the character and the faithfulness of God; then you will be ever grateful to Him. No matter what you go through, you will never let go of Him because you know who He is. Only when we have some doubts about God, if we don’t know who God is, then we can be sitting and asking, “Lord, do you have eyes? Do you have ears? Lord, do you see what I am going through? I am the only one who is going through. Lord, and I am crying over here and You are up there somewhere.” Those are all thoughts of people who don’t know God.
Now, when we know God, that is, when we read His Word; that’s how we get to know His love, His compassion, and how true He is. Then you know in the Bible God says, His eyes are open and His ears are attentive to our cry.(Psalm 34:15) It means God is listening to every single prayer that you pray, it never just goes somewhere else in the air. It goes straight to Abba Father. If we can believe internet, if we can believe your telephone, you should be able to believe God. It’s much more faster, it’s much more quicker and much more powerful; that is the power of prayer.
One thing that Satan will be very very afraid of is prayer. He will do everything he can to stop us from prayer, to make us feel tired, make us feel lazy and say, “Ok, I will pray little later. Oh God understands, I will say a quick one minute prayer or even ten seconds, “God I am so tired, I love you Jesus. Good night.” Who is the loser, God or us? God will be sad. But you know what? We lose; we lose to receive it from God, from expressing our love and gratitude to the Lord. And God watches.
You know that, those ten lepers who came to Jesus for healing; Jesus was so good, so gracious. He healed them. And what happened to them? They all went their way. Only one came back to give Him thanks. That shows a grateful heart. We have to say always, I tell the Lord always, “Lord, help me ever, ever, ever be grateful to You.” Never, not even a second should we say, “I am too tired to give God thanks.” If He can do so much more and all we can only say is, thank you; we cannot give anything in return. Don’t you think we should do that? Definitely, we should do that. Not only in the midst of trouble, but when we are happy, when we are full; we should learn to give thanks. And that will come only when we cultivate that habit. It’s never going to come spontaneously. It’s like learning a language. We will never speak fluently; a baby is never going to speak fluently unless you really encourage the child, speak to the child, train that child, teach that child good words, nice words and show the child. The same way, we have to practice speaking to the Lord, learning the language of the Lord from His Word.
The more we talk to the Lord the more He talks to us. God is so real. I don’t know how many, some of you might have experienced that, but God is so real. I would say if somebody comes and says, “We found a proof, scientific proof that there is no God. And come and tell me all the things of this world; I can tell you one thing. You can never, never, never convince me of that because He talks to me. He talks to me every single day. God talks to me every single day. So what can you do to somebody like that? You cannot convince. No amount of scientific proof is going to convince. So, is there any point in us even looking into any scientific research to believe God? No. If we know who our God is, we don’t need really to go into any debates of whether God exists. Did Jesus really come? Somebody can say, “Oh there was no Caiaphas. Oh, Jesus never died. Doesn’t matter. To us, we know He is alive. Because He died, He forgave us. Because He rose again, He talks to us. So, without that, there is no point. So, we need to really know that for a fact that Jesus talks to me.
So, get to know Jesus. Really get to know the Lord. He is not like a silent person. We say, “Lord, help me.” And then you feel a quiet ghost picking you up from somewhere and say throw you over somewhere else. No! God comforts us like a mother will comfort the child. God comforts us and God also talks about some of the mothers who don’t comfort their children. That’s why He says, even if a mother forgets a child, God says He will always be with us and remember us. So we should have that resolved in us, Who God is. God is not somebody, a distant man. God is not somebody who is some very old fashioned person who is far way, who cannot understand our situation, who cannot understand what we are going through, “Lord, I am living in this modern century. You don’t know what I am going through.” Bible says He is the same unchanging Jesus. He is the God of all times, all seasons, all culture, everything. Everything you can imagine; even the culture that is going to be 20 years from now, 100 years from now. He is the same. He will never change. He knows, He is the all-knowing God. That means we will all be gone but God will already know what’s going to happen 10,000 years from now, 50 years from now, tomorrow. He holds everything in the palm of His hands. So we serve such a powerful God.
The reason why I am describing you about Who God is, because we need to know a proper picture of who He is. If we know Who He is, if we know how powerful He is; then when we go to Him, we would never think, “Is He going to do? Is God going to do?” Lot of us have plan B's. How many of you had plan Bs many time? Ask the Lord for something and in the back of your mind, “If this doesn’t happen, then I am going to do that.” You know what God will do lot of times, almost all the time; He will just stay back. You have plan B; go ahead with your plan B. When that plan B fails you want to try C; try C too. I will wait. Then D, E and F fails. We say, “Lord I failed.” Then God picks us up. Do you know what? We don’t have to go through that.
First time when we go to the Lord, the Bible says, He who comes to God must believe that He is. (Heb 11:6a) That means He is the Almighty God. He is the All knowing God. He is the All sufficient God. That means He has a big storehouse that has no end. So do you need clothes for tomorrow? He has that. You need food for day after tomorrow? He has that. Do you need money for your college? He has that. You need money for marriage? He has that. Or do you need a husband? He has that in His storehouse too. He has everything you need in His storehouse. So what a privilege do we have! Not even our parents can give it. Not even the president has something like that. God has much more in his storehouse.
So all we need to do is like a little child go to the Father. Go to Daddy, and you know what, He is the best daddy. You cannot compare that Daddy to any daddy in this world. You cannot. Even to the best daddy in the world, you cannot, that cannot even be a shadow of the Almighty God. Because He is the best and we have Him as our daddy. He is our Daddy and you go to Him and you ask Him, “Daddy, I want this.” You know what He will say, “My daughter, is it good for you?” That’s the first question. “Is this the right time? Are you ready for this?” Because I love my son to death, but if he comes and asks me, “Mommy I love you so much. I am only 12 years old. Please give me your car keys. I want to drive?” What do you think I am going to say, “Oh my son, I love you, take the car keys.” No! Never! Because I love him so much, I will say, “Darling, wait till you are 18.” Right! And even at 18, I really want to know if he drives properly, right? And we need to have that assurance that he will come back alive and safe with no broken bones.
So God is much more caring than that. So, if there is any delay that we think for our prayers, He knows, “My daughter, little longer. You need to grow up a little more, little longer.” Sometimes we can come, like my daughter last night, we were getting something ready for our function that we are going to have Saturday and I was cutting, and it’s a sharp long scissors, “I want that scissors. I know how to cut. I want that scissors now,” crying. You think I will give it to her? No! I know what it is. I said, “No scissors, go and sit down. No scissors for you.” She said, “No mommy, I know how to use the scissors.” It is so long and so sharp but she says, “No, I want it.” I said, “You are not going to have it otherwise it’s going to cut your hand.” Sometimes they won’t understand. All you can say is, “You want to sit and watch what mommy is going to do or help me with something else or go to sleep. That’s it.” Now she does not want to go to sleep. So she will settle for, “Ok mommy, I will do something else. But I will never give her the scissors. You have to take a stand. God is just like that. Sometimes we may ask for something that we may think we can handle, like my daughter did.
And God knows we are like babies before God, you know that, even if you get eighty years old. We go to a rehab center on Saturdays; we see 103-year old people there, 90 something year old folks too. And I tell them, you know what, you are Jesus’ babies. You can be 103, but whose babies are we? Jesus’ babies. We are His babies, no matter how old we get. No matter how old I get I am going to be my mother’s baby. Right! Now, no matter how old we get, we are babies to our Abba Father. So He takes such good care of us. There is no one in this world who can take such good care of us like our Heavenly Father. We need to get that concept. Never compare Heavenly Father with your earthly father; that will be huge mistake. Never compare our Heavenly Father with your earthly mother; that would be a huge mistake. Like I said, even the best parents can never compare even to the shadow of our Heavenly Father.
God is very unique. He is all kind. He is all loving. He is so gentle. He is very affectionate. He is very tender. He is very just. He is very righteous and He can do everything. He will move mountains for you, do you know that? God if He wants to move a mountain for you, He will do it. If He knows that you need to perform His will that you need to go from point A to point B, there is a mountain in the way; He can and He will. God is such a powerful God. So may we have that in front of our eyes. When we go the Lord in prayer we have to believe God
1) For Who He is. He is - Almighty, All sufficient, All knowing, Ever present, Omnipresent so this is Who we go to. We must know who He is.
2) He is a Rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. (Hebrews 11:6b). That means no matter what we go through, we have to hold onto the Lord and we have to say, “Lord I am not going to let You go. I am not going to let You go. That’s what diligently seeking Him is. Diligently seeking Him is not like "Ok Lord, hey God I have my test tomorrow. Help me to pass. Amen.” Is that what diligently seeking him? No.
Diligently seeking Him is really really holding onto Him like Jacob said, “Lord unless you bless me I am not going to let you go.” That is a prayer that will bring results because now the Lord knows you really mean business with God and you are really depending on God for His grace. Not like, “Lord I know what I am going to do. Just give me some help.” Then God won’t do that. So he who comes to God must believe that He is and then He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. That means we should know, when I diligently seek Him, what will he do? He will definitely, definitely, definitely reward that means He will answer. He knows the best and He will give us the best. And that is for a fact that my Jesus will do.
Amen! And what a wonderful truth that God says even if mothers forget their nursing children, He will never forget His children. And we can call upon Him as long as we live and know that the Lord will be faithful to perform great wonders for those who love Him. If you would like to get in touch with us please contact us. The email address is contact @ elbim.org , that is, contact @ elbim.org . You can visit us on the web www.elbethelinternationalministries.org
Until next time for part 2 of Call upon the Lord, may the Lord richly bless you!
