“Enquire of the Lord” By Brother Kennth Ray June 27th,
2010 Ecclesiastes 5:2 …God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few. I just read that the other day, and I got all excited, because that’s where Phillips, Craig and Dean got the idea for that song from. I went and told my wife, and she said, “That’s nice.” It didn’t mean nearly as much to her. Still, it’s good to know that God is in Heaven, and that I can utter things to Him. It’s good to be nice to people that don’t want to be nice to you, and heap coals of fire on their heads. Somebody said, “What they say about me does not define me.” It’s what you do in your relationship with God that defines you. We
sing that
song, “Have a little talk with Jesus.”
In
the Old Testament, they had an interesting word: enquire. In Genesis, there were two
babies tussling in
one mother’s belly, and she enquired
of God, and was told that there were two nations inside her. Jehoshaphat once asked,
“Is there not here a prophet of the LORD besides, that we might enquire
of
him?” Judges
20:27 …the
Children of 2
Samuel 2:1 …David
enquired of the
Lord… 1 Chronicles 14:14 David enquired again of the Lord… I wanted to show that it’s okay to ask God more than once. You should be honest with God. You should be brutally honest with God. If you read Psalms, David was brutally honest with God. There were times that he asked God to destroy his enemies, and their houses, and their land, and also to kill their dog. But then he would say, but if I’m wrong about this, then show me. When you pray to God, you should be specific. Relationships are a good thing to pray to God about. When I prayed that God would allow me to have a wife, I told God that I wanted a wife that would love Him more than she loves me; that would obey Him better than she obeyed me. He told me to be careful what I wished for, but that’s what I got. If you pray for a job, be specific. Talk to God about how much money you need to make, not about how much money you want to make. Talk to him about how far you are willing to travel to get to your job. I’m about to go to school for the Air Force Reserve. I’m going to be gone five months; that means that I’m going to have to pack for both summer and winter. Can I tell you something? I hate packing. It’s something that we all have to do; sometimes we do it spiritually. We have to pack to be prepared for things to come. Sometimes we have to pack for seven years of feast and seven years of famine. If you have an opportunity to encourage, or to be encouraged, it is not okay to pass that up. Let me ask you this, “Who’s doing your packing?”
You
should be excited about living for God.
You shouldn’t go through life drabbing.
You shouldn’t do things because God’s going to be
mad at you if you don’t;
you should do things for God because they excite you.
I’ll be honest with you; I don’t get excited
about running a mile and a half every day.
I get excited about eating.
When
I eat, though, I put on pounds. My
mom
says I look good. I
don’t like the way I
look when I do that, though, that’s why I run.
Some of you are letting the wrong people tell you
that you look good. Luke 22:42 …nevertheless not my will, but Thine, be done…
Jesus’
dedication is not in question. We
should
have that same dedication. Let
me show
you something else. Luke
22:11
…Where
is the guestchamber, where I shall eat the Passover with my disciples? Luke
22:14
…he sat down, and the
twelve apostles with him. Something happened here. In verse eleven, who were the disciples? The people that followed Jesus. In verse fourteen, these were the same people, but now they are the Apostles; they are the leaders of the church. Sometimes you have to do like they say in that commercial, “Just do it.” In every big production, there are lots of little things. At the end of a movie, there is a long list of credits. Some of the things that they list don’t seem important to us, but if those things didn’t get done, we would definitely notice. There are things that God would have you to do that may not seem important, but it will make a big difference if you just let them slide. Did you ever leave a church, and then have somebody call and ask why you haven’t been attending? Maybe you’re the reason I haven’t been coming. Maybe the problem is that the church has gotten too churchy, and I just want to worship. Do you understand the difference? Sermon notes by Pete Shepherd |
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