Home Topics Index Download
Transcript 414B
Being Comforted + H.C.'s Personal Testimony
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Yes. Could you give a testimony as to how you found the Lord? And also, as your sister in Christ, would you comfort me? And I'll take your answer over the air.
HC: All right. Fine. Thank you. Good night.
The way we can comfort one another is by the Word of God. Now words of comfort can have a very hollow ring if it were not for the Bible; if it were not for the fact that God is real, that the Lord Jesus Christ is our Savior.
A lot of times, you know, we go through life, and we become concerned about our problems. We begin to sense a futility in our life. We look at our friends, and they seem to be doing a lot better than we are. We look at our neighbors, and they don't have nearly the troubles that we have. We have desire that certain advances be made in our condition, either financially or whatever it may be, and these things are not happening. And life begins to get very empty. It begins to get very futile. We begin to wonder, what is the meaning of it all?
Now I find in my life that the best antidote to futility and to fear, to uneasiness, is to focus anew on the Lord Jesus Christ, to remember again that the Lord Jesus Christ is my Savior. He is my Lord. He is Eternal God. He is King of kings and Lord of lords. I know that I am born again, and therefore I know that I am His child. The Bible tells me so. The Bible tells me that I am an heir of all the promises that God has given me. The Bible tells me that in this life I will have affliction, in this life there will be those who will harass me, in this life there will be those who are going to trouble. There will be setbacks, there will be things that do not look well. In this life there is sorrow, in this life there's a sense of incompleteness, and all of these things.
But this is just a passing moment in the eternity of my lifespan. This is just incidental insofar as the total picture is concerned. If I can only keep my eye on Christ, if I can only remember I'm a child of God, I'm a citizen of His eternal Kingdom, I am of royal blood, I already have eternal life, no matter what happens, I have the faithful promise of God that He will never leave me nor forsake me. I have the promise that all things work together for good for those who are called of Him. I have that marvelous thrill, that marvelous joy of knowing that my sins have been forgiven, and I'm never going to have to answer to God for any of my sins in my life. They have all been covered by the precious blood of Christ. And I have the joy of knowing that when my lifetime has ended, whenever that may be, whether it's tonight or tomorrow night or next month or next year, or fifteen or twenty or twenty-five years down the way, it's really immaterial. I know that at that point I'm going to be eternally in the glorious presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. I'll never, never, never be away from His glorious presence again, and I'm going to spend eternity in the New Heaven and the New Earth.
Whatever has happened in the past has happened. God has cared for me step by step, and He's cared for each one of us moment by moment, through the vicissitudes of life, through the difficulties, through the trials that have passed. And each time He has cared for us, hasn't He? Each morning has been a new morning when God's blessings have been renewed.
But each day that passes is bringing me one great day closer to the Lord Jesus Christ's personal presence, when I go to be with Him. Each day I can mark it off on the calendar, and I'm one great step closer to being eternally with Him.
Now the more I read the Bible, the more I search the scriptures, the more my eye will be on the Lord Jesus Christ. The more I pray, the more I talk with my Father in Heaven, I'm going to be focusing on Him and the glorious relationship that I might have through the Lord Jesus Christ with God.
But on the other hand, the more I look at my troubles, like Peter of old as he walked on the water and he saw the waves all around him, the more I look at the waves of the difficulties of life, the more I fuss in my mind and worry and am anxious about this and that and the other thing, the more depressed I'm going to be, and the more it's going to seem like I can't go on another day, even another hour.
The antidote is to get back our eyes on the Lord Jesus Christ. And then the things of this earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace.
Now I've been asked for a personal testimony, and I don't hesitate to give this at all, although I don't really like to talk about me. This is not a real joy to me, to talk about me. I like to talk about the Lord Jesus Christ. I like to talk about the Bible.
I happen to be a person who was reared in a home where my mother was saved, and my father was not saved until after I became an adult. But he was legally related to the church. He was concerned that we did go to church. And so I was reared as a Christian. It happens in my case that I never have known a day when I was not saved. Even as a youngster I can recall that I had a love for the Lord Jesus Christ. I wanted to live for Him.
Actually, I never really faced the question seriously and objectively until I was about eleven or twelve years old. I've given this testimony before, but let me just repeat it very quickly. It happened in the Depression. I was selling popcorn in Glendale, California. My father was trying to make a living through the Depression, with five sons. He put a basket over each of our arms, and we went around peddling popcorn and candy through the summer months. And in this way he made a living through these months.
And I remember walking into a paint store. The proprietor bought a bag of peanuts, or popcorn, or something, from me. And then he said, "Sonny, are you saved? Is Jesus Christ your Savior?" I had never been asked that question quite as pointedly as that ever before. And so I still remember very vividly that I kind of stuttered and said, ''Yes, yes, I know that Jesus is my Savior." And his reply was, "Well, make sure that He is, because this is what's really important in life."
Well, I do remember that through the next week I really faced that question: "Am I a child of God?" And a little youngster of eleven or twelve can readily think this matter through. "Am I really a child of God? Is Jesus my Savior?" And at the conclusion of a week of real soul-searching, I came to an unequivocal conclusion in my heart: Yes, Jesus is my Savior; I am saved; I know that I am a child of God; I know that my sins are forgiven.
And never again, from that point on, would I ever hesitate if anyone asked me, "Are you saved?" I had thought it through very carefully, I had prayed about it, and I knew I was saved.
Now that was not the time of my conversion. I am certain of this. I believe that the Lord saved me when I was just a very young child. But there it is. Now that doesn't mean I've always lived a God-glorifying life. When I look back on my life and see the sins in my life, then I can only praise God that His blood covers all of our sins. I praise God that I can know that because I am a child of God, and anyone that is a child of God, we can know that we'll never have to give an account, because God has paid for all of our sins.