Follow-Through - Path to the Cross

Walk with the King Podcast is celebrating the season of Easter with a special series called Path to the Cross.

Tune in every day leading up to Easter Sunday for hand-picked Easter-themed broadcasts,

including special weekend edition broadcasts on Palm and Easter Sunday.

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All right, thank you very much.

And hello again, dear radio friends. How in the world are you?

Yes, it's your friend, Dr. Cook. I'm glad to be back with you.

I do these broadcasts in the early morning hours, so as to identify with many of you who are just starting the day and like me, you may have a frog in your throat.

But you have to get going. Isn't that an agonizing feeling some days you wake up and you think,

oh, do I have to get up today? The answer is yes, you do.

I have found, beloved, that if you put one foot out of the bed, the other foot will follow it. Try that, will you?

If it's hard to get up, just put one foot out. And out of the floor, the other foot will follow it and you'll be up before you know it.

And then talk to your blessed Lord. The minutes you wake up speak to your blessed Lord.

Don't you think he deserves for you to say good morning to him first of all?

That in all things, Paul says in Colossians one, that in all things he might have the preeminence.

Don't you think that should include your daily schedule? Good idea. Don't you agree?

Put the Lord Jesus first in those early moments of consciousness.

I was talking with my good friend Ben Weiss who is now with the Lord, dear man who was for me a mentor and advisor.

I was talking with him one day just about nothing in particular. And he said, you know, it's an interesting thing.

He said, I found that the beginning moments of the day determined the mood of people.

And of course, all of us have heard the old expression you got up on the wrong side of the bed today. You've heard that, of course.

But he said, I found that the beginning moments of the day determined the mood throughout the rest of the day.

And that's why it's so important to meet with your blessed Lord in those beginning moments of any day so that he can determine your mood, your reaction to circumstances.

The kind of person you really are, he can determine that for the rest of the day. That's what it means to walk with God.

So when you wake up, say good morning to your blessed Lord and spend a few moments letting him put his arms of love around you, letting him speak to you from his word and by his Holy Spirit.

You and I are looking at Mark chapter 11, what's called the triumphal entry. And the last time we got together, we just stopped for a moment to think about the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ knows it all.

He needed not that any should tell him a man for he knew what was in man. He did not commit himself to them for he knew all, as what John said about him.

Peter faced with the probing questions of our Lord in that post-resurrection meeting said, and I think there was a suspicious mist in those fisherman's eyes. He said, Lord, thou knowest all things.

You know how I bragged that I would never fail you. You know what I did in the garden, trying with my awkward sword wielding to protect you, only succeeded in cutting off somebody's ear.

You know how I failed when I denied that I even knew you as I stood there among the soldiers and the other riffreff around the fire in that early morning dawn on the day of your crucifixion. You know how I went out and wept out my heart. You know, you know it all.

Yes, he does. Can you take comfort today, beloved, in realizing that the Lord Jesus knows it all in your case, and that all of your needs and failures and heartaches and hopes and dreams and all the rest, everything can be under the precious blood of Christ and under the mercy of God, and that he can take a share in determining your destiny from here on out. He knows it all.

Don't try to fool him. Don't hold back from him. Don't take refuge in just a little generalized, blessed me kind of a prayer, but tell God the brutal truth about yourself. Tell him all of it.

And he will say, as he said to that fearful lady who had come and touched the hymn of his garment, said she fell down before him and told him all, he said, don't fear. Your faith has saved you. Go your way.

He will touch you as well. If you level with him, level with God, tell him because he knows it already.

Now, he said, you go your way when you get into the village. You'll find a cult tied where a never man sat, Lucy, bring him.

Anybody says, what are you doing? You say the Lord has need of him. They went their way, found the cult, and they untied him, tied by the door.

Strange to take an unbroken cult and tie him up by a doorway, but that's where he was. And they were losing him, and then bystander says, what do you guys doing?

What do you loose in the cult? What are you guys doing? And they said, just what Jesus commanded them. The Lord has need of him, and they'll let them go. They brought him to Jesus.

You can depend upon the specific commands of God.

Where the Bible is clearly speaking to matters of attitude or conduct, and you decide to obey, follow me closely on this, because it can become an axiom in your own life setup.

Where the Bible speaks clearly to your own attitude or conduct or both, and you decide to obey, you can depend upon God to see you through.

That is a profound truth that will revolutionize your life. To say, if I obey God, he'll see me through.

See the great lie of Satan is God really won't give you the best. He told that lie in the garden of Eden, and he's been telling it ever since.

God does know that in the day you eat thereof, that is if you disobey him, you will improve your condition.

You'll be as God's knowing good and evil.

Satan has been telling that lie ever since the garden of Eden, that you can better yourself by going around the will of God, and you'll find that opportunity to do that is presented every day.

In our culture and in every culture, there is opportunity to go around or to disobey the will of God.

In the vain idea, the vain hope of bettering yourself in some way, I will tell a lie so as to keep from being embarrassed.

You know, we've had some of that hitting us constantly just in recent weeks and months. I will tell a lie so as to keep from being embarrassed.

This is Satan's ploy. You understand? I will, well, I don't have to give you an illustration. You know where you live, and you know what comes to your mind as I give you this general truth.

Hey, don't believe Satan's lie. It never pays to disobey God, and it always pays to obey.

Trust in obey for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus, said the songwriter, but to trust in obey.

Why call you me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say are Savior-complained?

So there's where it's at. You can depend upon God's command. If you decide to obey it, you can depend upon Him to work it out.

Even as the Lord said, they told them, they said unto them, even as Jesus had commanded and they let them go.

You obey God in something and He will see you through. Now some of your are just consumed with doubts, and you say, well, is it real?

Am I really forgiven? Am I really right with God and so on?

Beloved, all I can tell you is, those doubts are kind of an insult to your Heavenly Father because His Word is there.

He said, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

And if you have turned yourself over to God by faith, and if you have said that you wanted the Lord Jesus to be your Lord,

or if you have had straight away from God, you wanted to get back into fellowship with your Lord, as the case may be,

and you have on the basis of God's Word come to Him in faith, then regardless of how you feel, you can trust His Word.

Your feelings vary anyway, don't they? Yes, they do. They vary with the weather. When the barometer is falling, you don't feel near as enthusiastic or self-assured as you do normally when the barometer is rising.

That's just the way your body is built. Your feelings vary with the weather. Don't trust your feelings.

The Bible says, we walk by faith, not by sight. It's not what you see nor what you feel. It's what God says that counts.

Jesus said it, they obeyed, and it happened, it says, even as He said.

Stop to think just for a moment of the miracle factor here, not only the idea that the Lord Jesus had four knowledge of what would happen, which He did and does.

But this was an unbroken animal. Nobody had ever sat on Him, it says. Jesus knew that too.

You shall find a cult tied whereon never man sat. He was an unbroken cult.

Now some of you, some of you have been brought up on the farmer out in the west on a wrench.

Can you imagine going out into the corral and finding a young stallion that has never been broken

and just swinging up on his back and trying to ride him? Can you imagine that?

You know what would happen, don't you? In less time than it takes me to tell it, you would be on the ground.

How do you break a horse? Well, first you teach him to put up with the halter, then with the bit and bridle, and then with a saddle, and then you get him willing to stand still, preferably in a stall where he's tightly confined.

Well, somebody is sitting on him, and finally he is taught to behave himself when you ride him. That's what they tell me anyway.

I never did that. Only thing I ever rode was a motorcycle and I like that. But that's what they tell me. It's a very gradual process, in other words.

Our Lord Jesus, the Creator, was in charge. Hallelujah. All of which reminds me, if he could control an animal like that that had never been broken, had never been ridden, don't you think he can control your life today if you let him?

Turn your heart and life over to the Lord Jesus, in renewed consecration and say, just as I am, O Lamb of God.

Dear Father, today help us depend upon the rightness of thy commands and thy faithfulness in seeing us through. In Jesus' name I pray this, amen, till I meet you once again by way of radio. Walk with the King today and be a blessing.