Their Talk Outpaces Their Walk

19 August 2012

Dear Phyllis,

This morning I was in for a great surprise. I was sitting in church enjoying what I thought was an unusually good song service. When that time was over, the song leader announced, “Now we will have Ajon (teacher) Bill come and bring us the message.” I said, “Who?” I turned and looked at Pastor Kichikun, and he motioned for me to go forward to speak. That was news to me. Kichikun's wife, Ying, came up to interpret and I said, “Up to 20 seconds ago I had no idea I was scheduled to speak today.”

This was the 4^th time that I had faced that crowd. The church was unusually full this morning. Since Destiny Rescue have joined in with us, our numbers have more than doubled. Destiny Rescue provides the unique opportunity to speak to a majority of girls who are unsaved. My previous three messages have been largely directed at them to make a strong appeal to them for salvation. The first message had been highly successful where five out of twenty girls responded for salvation.

The next time, I preached on the text“No hope” from Eph. 2:12. I painted the plight of those without hope as dark as I could, and spoke at length about the terror of hell. I was deeply disappointed when no one responded to God's grace. I thought, “That is just because Bill Cook had good success with his first message, he thought that a really powerful word would certainly bring in the rest of the house”. The Holy Spirit goes out of His way to avoid blessing that kind of an attitude.

The third time the Lord clearly laid on my heart a message on the Prodigal Son. That was easily the most emotional time I have ever had speaking on that subject. I broke down twice, where – for a moment – I couldn't speak. When it was over, I was so dissolved I didn't wait for the benediction, but quietly got up and went home. I was so burdened for the salvation of those lost girls, that I lay on my bed face down weeping for half an hour. I thought that surly there would be several who would open their hearts to Jesus after a moving message like that. But I was shattered when I spoke with Kichikun later that week asking how he made out with the invitation. “No one”.

After preaching my heart out three times, and be denied the last two, I thought, “What is the use?” Before I was introduced to speak this morning I thought, “The next time I stand before these people I will simply say I have nothing to say to you.” Fifteen minutes I was stunned to find myself on my feet facing them, and said just what I thought – “I have nothing to say to you.” Ying was startled and thought I was going to sit down.

But then I explained the reason for my discouragement. In Ezekiel we read that the worshipers are instructed to leave differently than the way they came in. (“He shall not return by the way of the gate whereby he came in.” Ez. 46:9) I said, “This is the way it is supposed to be in coming to church. If we leave the same way that we came in, then all that preaching is a waste of time.” Ying was still standing there wondering what was going to happen. To relieve her, I said, “Don't worry; I will talk for 45 minutes, but I doubt that it will do any good.” I explained my dilemma to the crowd and told them after preaching my heart out three times, if that didn't move them towards the Lord, I had nothing that would.

I hadn't the faintest idea what to use for a text for a message. My mind was a total blank. But I spoke about my early experience as a Christian, what a surprise it was for me to discover than a person could know God today, and that God actually speaks to us. Then I challenged the believers, “Does God speak to you? When is the last time God spoke to you? What did He say? What have you done about it?” I told them two times in one chapter in Hebrews the Lord says “If  TODAY you will hear His Voice– harden not your hearts” (Heb. 3:7.8,15). Obviously it is possible to hear His Voice. The Bible would not speak to us this way unless it was possible to hear His Voice. But if we don 't hear His Voice; what is the cause? – hardness of heart. We hear with our hearts – not our ears. And whether we can hear His Voice or not is largely determined by the condition of our hearts.

I had been speaking for about ten minutes and was still searching my mind for a text to speak from. I had no idea what – if anything – the Lord wanted to say to us. But as I was talking about hearing His Voice, the Lord reminded of the text in James 1:19-21 about the five condition of the heart necessary to hear His Voice. At least that gave me an outline to speak from.

The 1^st chapter of James is basically speaking about hearing and doing the Word. Verse 22 emphasizes that we are to be doers of the Word, not hearers only. It is terrible condemnation of thousands of Christian that they are full of the word of God but very poor doers of that Word. For many Christians their head knowledge is much further than their feet. Their talk out-paces their walk.

But that being what it may, it is still imperative that we hear His Word. And to do that there are five conditions of the heart that must be met. Verse 19 says, “Be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath. Here we have the first three.

The first one should be self-explanatory – swift to hear. What does that mean? We must have an attentive spirit. It is not likely that we will hear much if we don't have an attentive spirit. There are several illustrations of this. We can be in a crowded room with many people talking. You are talking to someone when you hear someone three meters away from you mention your name. Immediately your interest goes over to that conversation. You are all ears. A spy certainly is someone who is swift to hear. He has his ear to the ground listening for anything might might be of interest for the case he is working on. In my younger years in Pennsylvania I used to like to still-hunt in the fall. I would walk out in the woods and find a comfortable place to sit down. Then I would be perfectly still. It is amazing what happens when you do that. Gradually the woods become alive with all kinds of animals you never dreamed were there. Then you hear a rustling in the leaves. What is it? Is it a squirrel? A fox? A deer? You listen with intense interest. That is being swift to hear. We should have that attitude every morning when we come to meet with the Lord. “Lord, do You have any thing to say to me today? I'm listening.”

The second point is the reverse of the first – slow to speak. On the birds I used to fly in the Air Force there was only one antenna. It was used for both transmission and reception. But it couldn't do both at the same time. For voice transmission, the microphone is, of course, in the oxygen mask. There was a button on the control stick so that when you wanted to make a transmission you simply pressed that button and everyone for 200km could hear you on that channel. But occasionally the mike button would get stuck. Before every flight the first thing you did was to call the tower to confirm that your radio was working properly. Sometimes we would hear someone call the tower and the tower answer them. But the pilot would keep calling,”Tower, do you read me?” Yes, the tower could hear him, but he couldn't hear the tower because his mike button was stuck. There are some people with stuck mike buttons. They are very anxious to tell you everything on their mind, but it is impossible to say anything to them because they are stuck in a transmission mode. Along with being swift to hear must must also be slow to speak.

The third point is to be slow to wrath. It doesn't say that you can't get mad, but it is important that we aren't too sensitive. Every Christian on this planet is dependent on other Christians to help him in areas he can't see. But there are some Christians that are so sensitive that it is impossible to say anything with out getting a hostile response. One time Ron Blough made a study of ten believers in his church to pick out one thing in each life; that, if they would correct something, they would be a better Christian: chew with their mouth closed, change deodorant, comb their hair, etc. He would tactfully speak to them one at a time, suggesting something that needed correction. He said, without exception, the response in every case was a defensive reaction. People might say things to us that hurts, but it is to our advantage if we can avoid having too short a fuse. We need to be slow to wrath.

Verse 21 admonishes us to “lay aside all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness”. That shouldn't require too much exposition. If we are serious about having a close walk with the Lord, in fellowship with Jesus, daily hearing His Voice; it is imperative that we keep a clean house. We can't keep filthy things in our hearts and expect to get very far with the Lord. Malcolm Cronk was the Pastor of Wheaton Bible Church. He told about one man he had in his church who had been an earnest Christian, but he was concerned as the brother started to cool off. In the Lord's mercy, one day the man had an accident at work that put him in the hospital for two weeks. When Pastor Cronk went to the hospital to visit the man, he was surprise to see a stack of dirty girlie magazines on the stand beside his bed. He asked the man what he was doing with those magazines. The man answered, “Of course I don't look at those pictures of the girls, but there are some interesting articles in there.” Malcolm said, “This is serious. I am putting you on a diet of Bible only until you get cleansed up. I will visit you every day.” The man nearly went crazy. No magazines, no TV, no novels. Nothing but the Bible. For three days he begged Pastor Cronk to let him look at something else beside the dead Bible. But when Malcolm went to see him the fourth day he was greeted by a totally different man. He told how that day had started out like the previous three going nuts staring at the ceiling and leafing through a dry Bible. But then he said, “Suddenly, God spoke to me”; and he burst into tears. He was free.

The fifth point is to “receive with meekness the en grafted Word which is able to save our souls”. I didn't have much time left this morning to develop that point other than to say – holding up my Bible – “This Book is a treasure beyond our wildest estimations. It is greatly to our advantage if we hid this Word deep in our hearts and with meekness take in everything it has to say to us.”

By that time it was 12:00 o'clock. I had been on my feet talking for at least an hour. I don't know if anyone got anything out of what the Lord had to say to us this morning. I can honestly say that, if they did, it is exclusively due to the Holy Spirit using a totally empty vessel. I had absolutely nothing to say when I stood up. In all probability this word will fade in the dust bin like 98% of Sunday morning preaching. But it certainly was a sharp reminder that I need to give more earnest heed to these biblical truths. After teaching others I will be in serious trouble in heaven if I am not a doer of the Word that I shared.

I am sorry that I am late with this letter but I had written a lengthy letter on a different subject, then this afternoon, the Lord suggested that perhaps this message would be more in order. Tonikaku (anyway) that is what happened today.

Have a good week with Jesus,

bill