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Transcript 419A
Is it Displeasing to God to Hold a Rosary?
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: For a long period of time I carried a rosary with me, during a long, long illness. And I lost it at one point. And I came to the conclusion, perhaps that was a graven image. And I come to a point in my life where I strongly desire to hold this rosary. And the whole question is brought up again. Would this be displeasing to God? I guess that's what I'm asking.
HC: The question is raised: Is it displeasing to God to hold a rosary, or hold any other artifact in our hands, or to look upon it, in connection with religious worship?
Actually, the Bible teaches that God is Spirit. We worship Him in spirit and truth. We do not look at objects as being sacred or as being holy or as being helpful in our worship. We are to put our mind's eye on God, who is a Spirit. This is what faith is all about. We read about God in the Bible. We can't draw a mental image of God, because the Bible doesn't give us that kind of information. But in our mind's eye, nevertheless, we worship Him as God, the Great One who is unknown in form or substance. All we know is that He is God.
We see the evidence that He is God in the creation around us. We read about Him in the Bible that God has given us. And on the basis of this we worship Him as God. We are not to look at anything else.
There are two areas where God has specifically directed our attention, and only two areas. One is baptism in water. God has asked us to be baptized in water as an official outward evidence of the fact that we have become born again. Secondly, God says that occasionally we should partake of the Communion table – the bread and the wine or the bread and the grape juice – and in so doing remember that Christ's body was broken for our sins, and His blood was shed for our sins. This is the only outward kind of an artifact, or whatever, that God calls our attention to. Anything else would be superstitious. It would be in the area of something that would begin to go contrary to the Word of God.
CALLER: Yes, I looked upon this as some magical power. But it gave me great comfort, which I so desire right now. My question is if comfort is pleasing to God.
HC: The question is, is comfort pleasing to God? Of course comfort is pleasing to God. But when we seek our comfort from something else than God, if we think we're getting to God through something else, then we are displeasing to God. Jesus says, "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." The Bible says, "Don't be anxious about anything. But in everything with prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. And the peace of God that passeth understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus."
God declares in Psalm 23, "The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want. We go to Him, you see. We don't go to something that we think has some magical power. There are people in the secular world who carry a rabbit's foot, or a gold coin, or some other trinket, and they really superstitiously believe that that gives them good luck, or strength, or whatever. They have placed their confidence in this trinket.
Now we can do the same thing if we're not careful. That is a denial of God. God is the one from whom we derive our strength and our comfort and our security. We go to Him and only to Him for our strength.
I hope this will help you. And really put your mind's eye back on the Lord Jesus Christ. Read Psalm 23 very carefully.
CALLER: I've read it so many times.
HC: All right. Then read some of the other psalms again, "The Lord is my strength and my rock." Go through the psalms verse by verse. Now you may be sick of reading it because you may not like what you see there. When the Bible says, "The Lord is my Shepherd," and you can't see the Lord, you can't take hold of Him. The secular man can take hold of a rabbit's foot. He can see it. He can feel it in his pocket, and that gives him comfort. We all want to walk by sight. The Bible says that we do not walk by sight. We walk by faith. We are cautioned by the Bible to keep our eye on God, whom we cannot see with our eye.
We can keep our eye on Him by patiently reading the Bible. That is God's voice speaking to us. What you should do as you read the Bible is put yourself in this frame of mind. I'm going to open this Bible, and this is like I am sitting in the presence of Eternal God. And He has a message for me. He is going to speak directly to my heart. Every word that I read in the Bible is from the mouth of God, and it is for me.
Now because He is Infinite God, there's a lot in the Bible I won't understand. But I do know that it is still the voice of God. And what a joy, what a glorious privilege this is.
CALLER: I have read my Bible from cover to cover. I have read the New Testament at least 100 times, in its entirety. I read it constantly. I am cut off from the world because I'm a shut-in, and . . .
HC: All right. Now the question is, as you read it, are you abandoning yourself to it? As you read it, are you praying, "Oh God, oh Father, I want this Word to be part of me. I want to live according to this Word"?
CALLER: I read it with the attitude and with the constant prayer, "Show me what You would have to say to me."
HC: Now as you examine your will, as you look at yourself honestly, can you really say that your will is altogether surrendered to God, so that you want to do what God wants you to do?
CALLER: There are times when my nature does not want to, but the desire of my heart is always to do what He would wish me to do. My prayer is to know His will for my every thought, feeling, action and being.
HC: All right. Then when you get these desires, when you begin to think about some object that you would like to hold in your hand . . .
CALLER: Something for comfort.
HC: But God is your comfort. You see, when you say your will has been surrendered to Christ and that you want to be obedient to Him, and God says, "Come to Me. I am the one who will comfort you. I am the one who will give you strength", and yet you say, "No, no, I want something to hold in my hand," then you'll have to ask yourself the fair question, "Is my trust really in God? Do I really understand what it means to be abandoned to Him? Or is my trust really some other place?"
And that's a good question to ask. Just look at yourself very honestly. Can I really say, when I look at myself honestly, that I trust God all the way? When He says to me, "The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want," do I really understand that the Lord is my Shepherd, my Shepherd? He will care for me. "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil." That's God speaking to me. I'm the little lost lamb that He came to seek and to save. I'm His sheep now, and He is my Shepherd. And I know, because God is on the throne, because He upholds this world by His power, because He has given this revelation of Himself in the Word of God, I know that God is real. I know that even though I can't see Him, He's here with me. He promises me He will never leave me nor forsake me. Therefore I know He is with me. The Bible says that my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Therefore I know that He is with me. The Bible says that He gives His angels charge over me, to care for me. Therefore I know that He has surrounded me with His angels, to strengthen me and watch over me.
He has promised me that nothing, that all things work out together for good for those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose, and I'm one who loves Him, who is called according to His purpose. Therefore I know that everything that happens in my life is going to be the very best for me because God has so declared it.
This is what faith is, you see. This is what faith is, when we abandon ourself to Christ, when we hang out whole life on Him without being able to take hold of Him with a physical hand.
CALLER: I certainly trust God for my salvation and for my life after my death. But in the meantime, no, there is no trust that God will sustain or carry through. And I guess that's why I take a rosary.
HC: All right. Now you've come to the big question. What does it mean to believe that Jesus saves me if Jesus is not Lord of my life? You see, a lot of people have the idea, "I really believe that Jesus is my Savior, but I'm not sure that He is Lord of my life." Now that means that that person is not saved as yet.
If we are truly born again, then Jesus has become Lord of our life. Then it means that we do trust Him, moment by moment, day by day, for being the one to give us security and support, and supply us with every need, and so on. If we find that we cannot trust Him day by day for everything that is necessary, then the likelihood is that we don't quite understand what salvation is as yet.
Salvation is not coming to an intellectual agreement with God, where we read the fact that I'm a sinner, I'm under the wrath of God, Christ is the one who paid for the sins of sinners, and I accept all that. Therefore I am saved. That is not salvation.
CALLER: Then what is it?
HC: That would have to be called an intellectual kind of a faith, or an emotional faith. But salvation has to do with having to abandoning myself to Christ, where I have surrendered my whole personality, my whole being, to Him, where I have cast myself on Him altogether, so that my whole life depends upon Him.
CALLER: My every breath depends upon Him. But the tribulation and the affliction and the pain and the sorrow, I can in no way think that God gives that to me.
HC: The Bible says that He does. Isn't God who created you able to take all of this away from you in a moment of time? Of course He is. But if you are His child, if He has saved you, you are a son of God now. You are of royal blood. You are a co-heir with Christ. And if God leaves you with your pain and your crippled condition, whatever it may be, it means that this is God's wonderful will for your life. He wants you to be the living epistle of the grace of God in this kind of a situation. Someone else will be the living epistle of the grace of God in a jail, someone else in a hospital, someone else in a concentration camp, someone else in a palace, someone else as a wife, someone else as a husband, someone else as a businessman, someone else dying of some dread disease, whatever. God places each one of us in this world to be the evidence, to be a living epistle of the grace of God in whatever condition God has placed us.
And this is where God has placed you. And now you can glorify God in your affliction. God's grace is sufficient for you as you continue in your affliction. God will sustain you. God will keep you. When the day comes when your work as an ambassador is done, God will take you home. It may come sooner, or it may come later.
But in the meanwhile, in your affliction and through your affliction you continue as the living epistle of the evidence of the grace of God. This is where you are to serve as an ambassador of God. Each one of us has a different set of circumstances through which we're going to be the evidence of the grace of God.
And we're on display. The Bible teaches that principalities and powers witness of the grace of God in our lives, in whatever lot we may be. Now Job is an outstanding example of this. Job was the evidence of the grace of God when all was well with him. But he was also the evidence of the grace of God when everything had been taken from him. God permitted Satan to take everything from him. Well, God ultimately was responsible, because God gave Satan permission to take all of this away from him, all of his children, all of his possessions, his health, so that he was in bitter, bitter, bitter pain and misery. And yet through it all the grace of God did shine. Job, in the midst of his heaviest suffering, could say, "I know that my Redeemer liveth."
Ultimately Job's blessings returned, full force. And ultimately yours will, and mine will, and for all of this this will occur. After our time of suffering through tribulation in this world—and the Bible says, "In the world you will have tribulation," that's normative for the believer—after we have suffered a little while, then we're going to spend an eternity in heavenly bliss, without any suffering or sorrow. That is still coming. The best by all odds is still in front of us.
CALLER: As I said to you earlier, salvation for eternity and for eternal bliss is there, but how does one cope with what seems to be insurmountable in the present time?
HC: You cope with it by keeping your eye on Christ. One of our problems is this: we worry. We see the difficulty that is at present. We begin to think, "I have an incurable disease. I have a problem that I just don't know how I'm going to get around." And then we begin to worry, "It's going to be here next week, and next month. This problem is going to stay with me. How can I bear it?" And so we begin to get weighed down today with the worry of next week, of next month, of next year, until finally we're just burdened down to the ground. We're ground in the dust with this great big load of worry.
Now the Bible warns against this. The Bible says, "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." In other words, if there's going to be something that's going to trouble us tomorrow, tomorrow is time enough to worry about it. Don't start worrying today. If there's going to be something next month that's going to trouble us, don't worry about it today. Next month is time enough to begin to worry about it. That's a fundamental rule that God gives us.
Secondly, God says, "Don't be anxious about anything. But in everything, with prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to the Lord." Now He doesn't say He's going to take your problem away. But He does say that He will give you the peace to endure that problem. He will give you the peace that passes understanding and keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
Now let's be very specific. Here is a person who is suffering an illness, let's say. And there's pain that goes with it, or a crippled condition. She can look back on the last twenty minutes and see that God has cared for her during the last twenty minutes, so that she's been able to endure this pain or this affliction. "Praise God. Praise God. I've been able to endure it. Now oh, Lord, will You strengthen me for the next twenty minutes, so that I can endure it for the next twenty minutes." And so twenty minutes later you look back and say, "Praise God. I've been able to endure it.
CALLER: I'll live with this for the rest of my life.
HC: All right. Now that's your problem. You said, "for the rest of my life." But you're not to think about the rest of your life. First of all, you don't know how long the rest of your life is. The rest of your life might be twenty-four hours.
CALLER: If God would take me, that would be merciful. But no, I have to go on living.
HC: Well, I know. But you see, if you begin to think about the rest of your life, and in your mind's eye you think about five years or ten years or twenty years, or whatever, and carry that weight of worry today, it's going to grind you down into the dust.
But if on the other hand you say, "I have this affliction that God has placed on me. And today I have to live with it, and God will strengthen me. I don't know about tomorrow. I don't know what God is going to do tomorrow. I have no idea whether I'll even be here tomorrow. God doesn't tell me anything about that."
CALLER: That would be great.
HC: But that's exactly the way we have to live. We live from moment to moment. We don't live thinking about tomorrow. We live for the moment. And so you have an affliction. The doctor tells you it's for the rest of your life. Okay. He's told you it's for the rest of your life. But he has no idea how long the rest of your life is. He has no idea whether God might make some changes in your life, because doctors don't know everything. All you know is that the doctor has told you that you have a particular illness that is today. Now tomorrow morning, you wake up and you find you still have the same illness, and now you pray God for strength for today, to endure this affliction today.
And at the end of the day you thank God that He has cared for you, that you have been able to endure it today. Now the next morning you wake up, and you start all over again. It's a brand new ball game every single morning. His mercies are renewed every morning.
The moment that you begin to think, "Oh my, I have this affliction today, and tomorrow I've got to suffer again," at that point you cry out, "Oh God, have mercy on me. I'm sinning. I'm beginning to worry about tomorrow. And You've told me that sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. I must not worry about tomorrow. Your grace will be sufficient tomorrow. I know that. And so I'm not going to think about tomorrow. I'm just going to think about today, that Thou art caring for me today. And I praise You for this today."
CALLER: What I can't understand is, I'm very angry with God that I must live, when so many times I was at death's door. And why I had to keep on living is just beyond my comprehension.
HC: Let me make a suggestion to you. Suppose that you're not ready to die as you think you might be. Suppose God knows something about you that you don't know as yet. And God, in His mercy, is keeping you alive until you come to the point where you know that you have fully surrendered to Him. Wouldn't it be tragic, wouldn't it be tragic if you thought you were saved, and God took you out, and you were not saved, so that the next thing you knew you would be facing the judgment throne. Wouldn't that be awful?
But suppose that God, in His great mercy, continues to sustain you, so that through this you are coming face to face, more and more realistically, with the fact that "my life has not been surrendered to God the way it ought to be. How can I be angry with God? That's not faith. That is wanting to do my will. And if my will is paramount, I'm not ready to die. If my will has to be worked out, I'm not ready to die. I'm only ready to die when my will has been completely subordinated and submerged in God's will, so that I am ready to accept, without any question, His decision as to whether I'm to live or die, whether I'm to live with pain or live free from pain." When you come to that point, then you're ready to die.
But at that point you are also ready to live, because you have completely surrendered your life to Christ, and whatever happens is the very best then.
CALLER: You frighten me.
HC: Well, maybe I do. I would rather frighten you while you're alive than try to frighten you when you're dead. You see, a lot of people write me and they say, "Oh my, the way you talk sometimes. You frighten me. Why didn't you leave me alone?" And I answer in my mind, or if I'm able to write, and I frequently don't answer letters the way I should because I am very busy, but at least I think, "Isn't it far better to be frightened while I'm still alive, and I can look at myself honestly, than to take chances on dying unsaved and end up in hell? What a terrible thing that would be."
Now the evidence of being saved, let me repeat it again, the evidence of being saved is to have become completely abandoned to God, realizing that I am altogether in His hand. He can do with me whatever He wants to do. He can bring pain into my life, He can take all my worldly possessions away. He can send persecution against me. He can do anything He wants to me, because I belong to Him, and He is my God, and He does everything perfectly. I have my own ideas about what I think would be good for me, but my ideas are tainted by my own sins. I don't trust my ideas. But I do trust in God. And if it's His good pleasure to take my health away, praise the Lord. If it's His good pleasure to take my family away, praise God. If it's His good pleasure to take all my possessions away, praise God.
All I know is that He is my Lord and Savior. He paid for my sins. He has given me eternal life. I can just rest in Him, regardless of what is to come. And I know, because He is the infinite God who has created the universe and who upholds it by His power, He knows everything about me; there's nothing that escapes His attention. And therefore, I'm in tremendously fine hands.