The Grip of God

with Pastor Micheal Oxentenko

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Let's pray. Dear Father God, thank you that we have
the scriptures and that it's nothing here is dependent on
how good a speaker I am or not. It's the Bible.
We want to live in an eternal world. Lord. Worliness
is everywhere around us. A lot of the discouragement that

(00:21):
people have in their lives is because of seeping wiliness.
So Father, help us to come to Jesus today to
be found in Christ. No righteousness of her own based
on law, but law abiding and keeping because of the
faith of Jesus. Help us in Jesus' name. Amen, have

(00:43):
you ever had someone let go of you in life
to where your life went down the tubes and it
felt like you couldn't pull yourself up? Anybody like that? Okay?
She had two children, not one, and for her it
was the time to choose. When the tsunami hit the
ground of Holiday Inn in Thailand where she was staying,
Jillian Searle was at the side of the pool with

(01:05):
her two sons. Lacey was five and Blake was two,
and when the surge hit, she did all she could
to hang on to her two boys. She didn't want
to lose either of them, but when it was so bad,
she had to make a choice, which one would live,
which one would die, and so she let the older

(01:25):
son go, hoping someone would help him and she would
hang on to the younger son. When interviewed by Channel
nine on Australian TV, she said she heard the cry
of her older son, who couldn't swim. Don't let me go, Mommy,
don't let me go. She let him go. She could

(01:49):
only save one son, not two, so she let him
go because he was the oldest son. She shared that
it was the hardest thing she had ever done in
her life. It was a choice she never wanted to make.
She was forced to make the choice. As she let
her oldest son go, she screamed, someone take my son,
Save my son somebody. Julian feared the worst and no

(02:11):
one could save her son. But to a miracle she
could not express, someone did save her son. Someone took
her son. But she made the decision that when forever
we define the relationship of those two boys to their mother,
she let one go so that the other could live. Friends.
There are times in life when we feel that God

(02:32):
lets go and that he isn't there to care anymore.
Let's be frank with it. We have those times we
feel it, Where is God? Why isn't He helping me
right now in my challenges? There are times when the
storm is so fierce, the waves are brutal strong. It
feels like God has limited energy, limited concern, and he
doesn't reach out to us when we need him. There
are times when it's easy to believe that God chooses

(02:54):
to save someone else while he neglects us in our
prayer life and our needs for him. In times like these,
it feels like God lets go. His grip is weak,
he doesn't care. In the storm, there is no future, friend,
There's no future, and the waves overtake you if God's
grip is not strong enough to hold you, to carry you,

(03:17):
to lift you up. In the midst of the storm,
Jesus saved Peter from the storm by stretching out his
hand to save Peter. The scripture says that Jesus was
walking on the water and he called out to Peter
to come to him in the storm. Now a storm
is an opportunity in the story to come to Jesus.

(03:38):
He called Peter to come to him in the storm.
Have you been hit with a storm and you feel
like the Lord doesn't want you, friend, the Lord calls
you in the storm to come to him. Peter got
out of the boat. He started walking on the water
towards Jesus. Then he looked down instead of it Jesus.
And when he looked down, he immediately began to sink.
Perfect storm for Peter. Eyes off Jesus coming to Jesus,

(04:02):
eyes off Jesus, going down Matthew fourteen thirty. But when
Peter saw the wind, he was afraid and began to sink.
He cried out, Lord save me. Jesus immediately reached out
his hand and caught him. Now, the keyword in verse
thirty one is the word immediately. He didn't wait five minutes,

(04:22):
ten minutes. As soon as Peter said, what are the
words in his prayer? Are in verse thirty Lord what Lord?
Save me? Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him.
Have you ever prayed that prayer in your life? Lord
save me? Immediately he reaches out his hand to save you.
But he said, oh man of little faith, why did

(04:44):
you doubt? When faith fails and doubt overcomes you in
your life, only the grip of God can save you
in the storm that is stronger than you Deuteronomy thirty three,
twenty seven. The eternal God is your dwelling place, and
underneath are the everlasting arms. We worship a god if
you has big arms, who has hands that reached down

(05:04):
to save us, to carry us so we don't sink
in the middle of the storm. Tewond Samuel twenty two sixteen.
David described the strong grip of God, the grip of
God that was able to hold onto him when he
couldn't hold on to himself verse sixteen. Then the channels
of the sea were seen, the foundations of the world

(05:26):
were laid bare at the rebuke of the Lord, at
the blast of the breath of his nostrils, he reached
from on high. He took me. He drew me out
of many waters. He delivered me from my strong enemy,
from those who hated me, for they were too mighty
for me. Friend, when you can't fight the enemies of
your life, the Lord is there to fight for you.

(05:50):
You be surprised when I preach on a Saturday morning sometimes,
and I'm here to give the word of God to you.
There are times when things happen just before the sermon.
That's meant to rattle me up, so I cannot give
you the word of God. You know that, and it
happened today. Now I'm gonna tell you I have learned

(06:11):
over the years what matters most is just stay in
the course and letting God hold your hand. We're not
made of steel, but our God is made of steel.
When you're sinking into a stormy sea without God in
your life, friend, only the grip of God can save
you for life. Only his hand can pull you out

(06:34):
and give you life when you should die in the storm.
In an issue of the Scientific American Mind, there was
an article dedicated to phantom sensory feeling. The experiment recorded
in the article with something like this. You sit at
a table with your hand on the table. Beside your hand,
you place a flat piece of cardboard, obscuring the view

(06:55):
of your hand from your eye. In full view, beside
the cardboard, you place a cheap rubber hand from a
dollar store. The hand doesn't have to look all that
life like, It just has to basically look like a hand.
On the other side of the table. You ask the
assistant to rub, tap, and stroke the two hands in
perfect synchrony. Takes about twenty or thirty seconds to focus

(07:19):
on the phony hand, and then you will feel like
you're actually being stroked on the fake hand, removed from
your removed from your body. It's phantom feeling. Even though
you're not being stroked, you feel the hand because you
have associated with the phantom hand, and they call that
phantom pain. There are many people who spend their entire

(07:42):
religious life basing their experience with God on a phantom
feeling that they have God in their life when they're
not really feeling the Holy Spirit. The question arises, how
can you really know that God is reaching out to you?
How can you really know that He's touching you in life?
How can when you really know your leed of the
Holy Spirit and not? There are four ways you can

(08:04):
know that God touches you in life. Wagh number one.
Write these down. God reaches out to touch you through
his word. I mean, see, it's one thing to get
up here and said, well, I'm gonna give you a
bunch of advice. I have great life experiences. Let me
tell you a hundred stories and this, or I could
share with you the word of God. But when the

(08:26):
Word of God comes into your life, God touches you
when he wrote the Ten Commandments, he wrote them with
his finger. He touched the tables of the blue sapphire
stone law slab that was taken from his throne. He
touched it to give the word of God. When God
puts his word in you, he touches you with the
word of God. So i'ms. One hundred and seven nineteen

(08:47):
and twenty. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress. Now notice this,
they cried to the Lord in their trouble. That's the storm.
And what does God do? He delivered them from their
trouble their distress. We worship of God who delivers us.
We worship a God who is not satisfied with letting
us be dragged down by our life circumstances. He is

(09:08):
in the saving business for you. If you want to
be touched by God and you don't have time for
God's word, you won't get touched by God. God has
chosen his word the Bible as the means of taking
hold of your life, your heart, your mind to touch
you when you're struggling with sin. The promises of God
are the very things you need in life to overcome.

(09:29):
God has chosen to reach out to you in Jesus,
the Living Word, to touch you through the scriptures. And
when you feel God in your devotional life you read
the spirit of prophecy. It brings you to a knowledge
of the Bible. You are touched by God. Way number two,
God reaches out to touch you through the lives of
other believers. You know, no man is an island to themselves.

(09:52):
We don't live here to where we suddenly are in
control of our lives. We must receive help from others,
and we must give it too in the great plan
of God. So the keyword in this phrase God reaches
out to touch you through the lives of other believers
is the word believers. I mean, there are plenty of
people when to reach out and touch you in life.
There are people who want to affect you, but they

(10:12):
don't necessarily want to help you, and they aren't necessarily
people who can help you. People who are walking with God,
who are servient to God's Word, who have a relationship
with Christ can actually help you in life. Hebrews ten
twenty three. Let us hold fast the confession of our
hope without wavering, For he who promised is faithful verse
twenty four. And let us consider how to stir up

(10:35):
one another the love and good works verse twenty five.
Here's the key phrase, not neglecting to do what Now
I can think of prayer meeting. There I can think
of small groups. Now, everybody can't be at everything. But
when we get an opportunity to get into a prayer
fellowship setting, or we get in an opportunity to fellowship

(10:55):
in service for the Lord, do we avoid Sabba school?
Do we avoid this? You see? Not neglecting to meet together.
We need to stick to other believers who love God
like velcrow, as is the habit of some. See, some
people get into the habit of that, and then it
becomes what they do. All kinds of excuses. Well, I
don't want to get up early, I don't want to

(11:16):
be exposed to the stress of having to study my
sabuscal lesson I really prayer meeting. Well, you know, now
we have it easy here at Reaching Hearts. You can
go online and get into prayer meeting. I was not
feeling good Wednesday, and I went online and I could
I heard Elder Tim Wade give a wonderful presentation on Jesus.
It just strengthened me, and it would strengthen you too.

(11:40):
Have reaching hearts. I don't do all of these. We
allow different people gifted in the church to share Christ
in the middle of the week so we can grow,
but encouraging one another. All the more, as you see
what does the text say? You see the day drawing,
hear the Second Coming of Christ is happening. We are
we observe in the church a slide of worldliness. We

(12:04):
see arrogance, narcissism, We see people focusing on themselves rather
than the needs of others. And what do we need?
All the more as we see the Second Coming of
Christ drawing here, we need to stick together, have unity, obedience, faith,
worship together Hebrews ten twenty five. God has chosen to

(12:26):
touch you through the lives of other Christians who love Him.
If you're too busy for church, prayer, meeding, or small groups,
you're too busy to be touched by God. Way number three.
God reaches out to touch you through the presence of
Jesus Christ that is mediated by the Holy Spirit. Now
why the Holy Spirit here? Way number three is a

(12:48):
little more difficult than ways number one and two. Many
people today are so enamored with the Holy Spirit that
they have forgotten that the Holy Spirit's purpose is to
reveal Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit humbly does not draw
attention to himself in scripture, his role is to personate
the person of Jesus Christ. As we are told in

(13:08):
the Spirit of Prophecy, he is in person to personate
Jesus so that we have Christ with us through the
Holy Spirit, the Hope of glory. Many people today are
so enamored with the Holy Spirit. We live in an
era where we talk about Holy Spirit movements, it's usually
about I, me and mind, not about Christ or the Spirit.
And enamor with these false Holy Spirit movements, they have

(13:29):
forgotten that the Holy Spirit's purpose is to bring Jesus
Christ into our lives. Our core need as sinners is
to have Christ formed in us. The Hope of Glory
is to be clothed with the righteousness of Christ, something
that we of ourselves have no right to. The gift
of God in Jesus. It takes the Holy Spirit to

(13:50):
disconnect us from our crazy way of thinking, from our
selfish patterns, and to put Jesus into our life. We
need the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit never contradicts the
word of God. Isn't that neat When you read your Bible,
you can bank on it. The Holy Spirit is gonna
agree with the Bible. And John sixteen thirteen Jesus says
that the Holy Spirit will lead us into all truth.

(14:13):
And John seventeen seventeen Jesus says the truth is found
in God's word. Thy word is truth. And John fifteen
twenty six Jesus promised that the spirit of truth bears
witness to Jesus Christ himself. He personates, not impersonates. He personates.
He brings the personal presence of Christ to us. And

(14:33):
John sixteen thirteen Jesus said that the spirit never bears
witness of himself or his own authority. Now he's a
person because Jesus calls him himself his and he. Now,
if you divest the Holy Spirit of personality, you divest
yourself of the gift of the Holy Spirit that God
has given you, the third person of the Godhead. The

(14:56):
authority comes through Jesus Christ and his word in the
spirit gift of God. Now, if you don't think you
are a spirit filled believer, actually me back up on that.
If you think you are a spirit filled believer and
the Word of God does not matter in your life
because your feelings are all there. You say, I have
the Spirit, I don't need the Bible and all that.

(15:19):
You are not a Holy Spirit believer. If that's the case,
you're living on a phantom feel in your life. That
is not real. It's not from God. There's no real
touch of God in your life without Jesus and his
Word coming into your life through the power of the
Holy Spirit. Jesus said, the Spirit will not speak about himself.
Spirit filled believers are led by the Holy Spirit to

(15:42):
get their eyes on Jesus. On Jesus with these conditions
met the church. The touch of faith of the Holy
Spirit is not a phantom force in your life. He not.
It is the real thing that points to Jesus Romans
eight fourteen to seventeen. For all who are led by
the Spirit of God or what so, you want to

(16:04):
be led by the spirit, you want to be a
child of God. Raise your hand if you're in that group. Okay,
I mean I raise both hands. Just let the Holy
Spirit lead you. Let the Holy Spirit work in your life.
Don't resist him. Let the Word of God, the Holy
Spirit impress and you lead you. Then let's turn to
Romans eight fifteen. For you did not receive the spirit

(16:27):
of slavery to fall back into fear. But you ever
see the spirit of sonship when we cry Abba Father.
Now that is the exact linguistic center of the Book
of Romans, the phrase Abba Father. The Holy Spirit pointing
to Jesus connects us with God as our father, verse sixteen.

(16:48):
For it is the Spirit himself. Now, how many of
you see the Word himself in your Bible? Can you
raise your hand if you see the Word himself? If
you are a himself? Are you an impersonal force like
George Lucas is the force? Or are you a person?
This is why we have been told clearly in the
spirit of prophecy that there are three persons in the Godhead,

(17:11):
and the third person of the Godhead is the Holy Spirit,
that agrees with scripture, is the Spirit himself, bearing witness
that our spirit, with our spirit, that we are the
children of God. So the Holy Spirit speaks in us.
He helps the community, He takes our groans our Christ,
He makes them effectual as he intercedes with Jesus together

(17:32):
to lift them and elevate them to God for our sake,
not God's sake. Way number four. God touches us through suffering.
How many have you had a hard day this week?
How many you had a hard day last month? How
may you had a hard year? I'm doing that. I
had a hard year. How many have you lost someone

(17:56):
that was precious to you and they died this year? Okay?
How many of you been keep your hands down on
this one? Have you been suffering financially? Keep your hands down?
You know who you are. How many of you feel
like your life's a failure? You know, what you wanted
didn't happen for you the way you wanted it. It

(18:17):
can happen. I felt that way before in my life.
There have been times in my life when I've had
to make decisions that I do would cost me that
if I made the wrong decision, I would be liked,
but it would be the wrong decision and God would
not be with me. I would rather have God with
me and make the right decision and not look blessed

(18:39):
for a long time than to make the wrong decision
and for God to leave me. Is that fair? See?
We have decisions to make like that in life, and
when that happens we enter suffering in our life. Everything
isn't fancy and nice. Sammy Rutherford once gave this admonition
concerning suffering. Let not the Lord's dealings harsh, rough, or unfatherly,

(19:02):
because it is unpleasant when the Lord's blessed will bloweth
across your desires. It is best in humility to strike
sail to him, and to be willing to be led
any way. Our Lord pleaseth he continues. Suffering for Christ
is the very element wherein Christ's love liveth and Exerciseth

(19:25):
itself in casting out flames of fire and sparks of
heat to warm such a frozen heart as I have
now this wise Scot's been figured out correctly. That is
through suffering we come to Christ. That's why Peter, in
the midst of the storm, Jesus said, come to me.
The storm in your life is an opportunity to come

(19:45):
to Jesus in your life. And the Desire of Ages,
my favorite Christian writer framed it beautifully. My father, before
he died, shared this statement with me. It's one of
the prize statements I have in the writings there in
the book The Desire of Ages, of all the gifts
that Heaven can bestow upon men, and that means men
and women. Fellowship with Christ in his sufferings is the

(20:08):
most weighty trust in the highest honor. So when you're
handling your pain levels well, when you're handling stress well
in your life, when suffering for you works in the
right way, God is entrusting you with something because you're
coming close to Jesus. You come to God. You come
to Jesus in the storm through pain. Last week, a

(20:30):
little over a week ago, I conducted Larry Burr's funeral.
How many of you Marrior with Larry Burr's one of
our key deacons here at Reaching Hearts for many years.
What a lovely Christian man. He died at the age
of ninety ninety. A few years back I visited the
hospital to annoy his wife, Pat Burrs. Before she died.

(20:50):
Pat was in the ICU recovering from stomach surgery. She
was a very sick woman. She requested to be anointed,
and so she called out her CD Brooks and me
to her side to anoint her. Before we anointed her,
to ask for God's healing, we bowed our heads and
confessed our sins to God. Why because we're no superstar saints.
We need Jesus like everybody else needs Jesus. And to

(21:13):
see CD Brooks, who's been called the Dean of Abentist preachers,
one of the greatest preachers we've ever had, humbly confessed
his sins to receive the Holy Spirit. I loved this man.
I'm grateful for the friendship God allowed me to have
with him. And before we anointed her, after we confessed
our sins, but just then, before the prayer for healing,

(21:34):
she took the oxygen mask off her face, and she
gave this test on my behalf of the power of
Christ in her life. And I wrote it down. She said,
when I come into this place, when I came into
this place, when I came into this place, the pain
was too hard for me to bear. I had no
one I could turn to but Jesus, she said. I

(21:56):
felt him with me in the emergency room, and when
the pain got so bad I couldn't take it away anymore,
I fell into the arms of Jesus. She said, I'm
not afraid. I'm safe in the arms of Jesus. She
was talking to two preachers here as we were there
to anoint her. She said, I don't have to be
healed right now. As long as I am in his arms,

(22:19):
I'm okay. I will trust him. She had learned that
fellowship with Christ occurs in suffering, and she had put
her faith in Jesus. Sister pat Burrs was saying, I
am safe in the grip of God. That's what she
was saying. Romans eight eighteen. I consider the sufferings of

(22:42):
this present time are not worth comparing with the glory
that is to be revealed to us Verse thirty five.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall
tribulation or distress, or persecution, or famine or nakedness or peril,
or sword or no ira or a failed bank account
or bad hell? For this or that? The questions obvious.

(23:03):
The answer here is given verse thirty six, as it
is written, for thy sake, we are being killed all
day long. We regard as sheep to be slaughtered. Look
when you stand up for Christ and you're doing the
right thing in your life and someone goes after you,
someone tries to take you down, and your commitment to
faithfulness considered it an evidence that God is with you.

(23:24):
Don't allow it to discourage you, allow it to encourage you.
And then he says, I am sure in verse thirty eight,
actually look at verse thirty seven. No, and all these
things we are more than conquers through Him who loved us.
God loves you, God loves me, Christ loves you, Christ

(23:45):
loves me. The Holy Spirit loves you. The Holy Spirit
loves me. He goes on to say, for I am sure,
he said, I'm not waving on this. I am sure
that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, beings present,
or things to come, or powers. You can take all
the hosts of hell, Paul says, and they will not

(24:06):
move me away from the grip of God. Nor height,
nor death, that circumstances, nor anything else in all creation
will be able to separate us from the love of
God in Christ, Jesus, our Lord. I am glued to
a God that loves me. Paul is saying, his grip
is firm on in my life. I have been through so much,

(24:27):
Paul could say, I've been beaten, put to the point
of death. He later be beheaded. It didn't matter because
he was in the grip of God. He lived for
God's presence in his life and God's love. God allows
the storm to come into your life so you can
see and feel and know that you need the grip
of God in your life. So the storm is a

(24:49):
call to come to Jesus. The ultimate sickness that can
be felt in the person's life is the sickness of
a heart that does not have God. That's where the
deepest pain is at. Friend, the grip of God can
hold the hurting heart that needs God. When God touches

(25:10):
you with his hand, he heals you. Jake Copeland was
head of the cardiovascular surgery at the University of Arizona,
a heart center. He was installing the first FDA approved
artificial heart in this country a number of years ago.
The artificial heart serves as a bridge to a full
heart transplant. It keeps a patient alive for a while

(25:31):
so he or she can eventually receive a biological heart
from a donor. When he started, seventy nine percent of
patience who received an artificial heart lived long enough to
get a donor transplant. Only forty six percent live long
enough if they didn't have the artificial heart. So there's
an intrinsic value in him putting that artificial mechanical heart

(25:52):
into that person's chest. Friend, it made a difference to
receive him in a mechanical heart, even though it was mechanical.
Was the hand, the hand of the skilled physician and
the knowledge that put it in there to keep the
person alive until the final cure came along. Doctor Copeland
took his skilled hand removed the bad heart. With the

(26:14):
same hand he put the new heart inside. Now, friend,
God has given us the Holy Spirit as the bridge
to a future that is alive. One day your heart
will be totally right. But in the meantime, the Holy
Spirit is working in your heart and life with the
full acceptance of God. If you have faith in Jesus
so you can overcome, you are not saved because you overcome.

(26:38):
You are saved so you can overcome. Did you catch
the difference. You are not accepted at the end of
life's journey through faith in Christ. You are accepted in
the road as you struggle with faith, as if you
had never sinned. If you honestly are connected to Jesus, Friend,
God has given us the Holy Spirit to be our friend.

(26:59):
God is a firm Holy Spirit hand on your problems.
In the Bible, the hand of God and the finger
of God represent the Holy Spirit of God. They're only Christians.
As they were trying to understand the concept of the
triune Godhead, got that from the Bible that God's hand,
God's finger is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit alone

(27:22):
on the island of Patma, suffering for the testimony of
Jesus Christ, the apostle John heard the voice of the
Holy Spirit speaking for God. Look at Revelation one, verse eight.
I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God,
who is and who was, and who is to come
the Almighty. Now it says, I was in the spirit
of the Lord's day in that same passage, and he

(27:43):
heard the voice of Christ speaking. He heard the voice
of the Father. The Holy Spirit brings the Father and
the Son into our lives. Jesus claimed that in the
Gospel of John. So here he is on that awful island,
a penal colony, and where is God? Now he's an
old man, his ministry has been wrecked. It looks like
he has no fear. Where is God? And God comes
to him through the Holy Spirit. Now, the word all

(28:05):
Mighty in the Greek is the word pantacrator. You want
to practice it with me a little Greek here panta crator.
Now it means literally panta means all, Krator means to
the hold, the one who to hold all things. So
the one who holds everything is the almighty. What makes
God mighty because he can hold you in life. Pat

(28:29):
most comes from a word that means to walk or
to tread. It means trampled. He was in a penal Collie,
and he felt trampled in life. He was run down
in life. John was safe from the trampling of others
because John found himself in the middle of his sufferings
and the grip of God, the pantacrator, the Almighty. John
felt God's hand and it was not a phantom feeling.

(28:51):
He felt the Holy Spirit came to him where he
was at. Before my mother died, I visited her in
a nursing home in Jacksonville, Florida, near my brother Tim's
old house. For most of her life, my mother had
struggled with schizophrenia. I grew up with a mother who
was schizophrenic but who loved me. On that visit, she

(29:13):
was so weak and she could barely get out of bed.
You couldn't. In fact, she was just kind of there
and that's a picture of her. I took the picture beside.
It is the picture of her when she was young.
Inside the face that is struggling to live is that
little girl you see to the right. The future is
alive in Jesus and her old age. Her mental disease

(29:33):
has subsided somewhat, and she was able to communicate a
lot better than she used to. She stopped hallucinating, kind
of like John Nash in the book A Beautiful Mind.
And as I said, at her bedside, I asked her
simple questions. You know, I didn't get theological with my mom,
and never could. I asked her if she loved Jesus.

(29:54):
I smile grew on her warm old face. She said,
oh yes, I love Jesus. I said, mother, have you
accepted Jesus as your savior? She said, oh yes, I
love Jesus. Then I said, Mom, everything is okay. She
smiled the grip of God, my Father, God held my mom.

(30:21):
I can remember my mom and her mental illness, praying
when she was overtaken with fear that you and I
cannot measure because we do not know. It is like
the struggle with schizophrenia. Dear heart, it doesn't matter where
you've come from. It doesn't matter what your biological failings are.
It doesn't matter how much people have trampled you in life.

(30:43):
It doesn't matter how big your struggle is to survive
and to thrive and to feel important. Jesus died for
you to save you from the save you with the
grip of God, the Holy Spirit hand that will not
let His children go. Eternity will be populated by people failed,
people who held on to God because God holds onto

(31:05):
them through the Holy Spirit. I leave with you three
promises to ponder from God's Holy Spirit word that brings
Jesus into your life and the Holy Spirit hand of
God into your life. Write them down Psalms one hundred
and nine, verse thirty one. For he stands at the
right hand of the needy to save him from those
who can dim him to death. We have a saving

(31:26):
God Isaiah fifty nine to one. Behold, the Lord's hand
is not shortened that it cannot save, or is ear
dull than it cannot hear. The Holy Spirit hand of
God reaches down to you to save you. John ten
twenty seven. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them,
and they follow me and I give them eternal life,

(31:47):
and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch
them out of my hand. Christ's hand is the Holy
Spirit hands. My Father, who has given them to me,
is greater than all, and no one was able to
snatch them out of the Father's hand. The Father's hand
is the Holy Spirit hand. I am the Father, a
one one Spirit, one hand, one God, three persons. It

(32:14):
was December twenty sixth, the day after Christmas, and it
was Stephen Bolton's birthday. The Scotsman chose to spend it
with his wife and three children on the island. On
an island the Maldives, they were sunning themselves on a
jetty when the water began to rise. Suddenly they ran
to the hotel fast as they could go. Then the
tide shot out as far as you could see. At first,

(32:37):
Ray was relieved, but something inside him said that it
was all wrong, Something wasn't right about what he was observing.
Not knowing exactly why, he made his family climb a
palm tree that was twenty feet high. Now I've tried
to climb palm trees. I've been in the Marshall Islands
for a year and i have climbed palm trees. I
get dizzy after fifteen feet and exactly why he did it.

(33:01):
He made them climb that palm tree twenty feet high.
He took the beach towels and tied his family to
the tree. Then he saw the second wave coming as
a mountain of water at him and his family. He
saw people dying to the right and left swept away
by the storm. It looked like the whole sea was

(33:21):
coming straight at them. People were swept off the roofs
of nearby houses, crying in the storm, sinking under the water.
Mountains of debris roared by with power. The water rose
almost to the top of the tree. I said, almost
not quite there. Steve and his family are alive today

(33:44):
because they tied themselves to the tree. They tied themself
of the tree. Friend. One day, a storm is coming
on this world. It's the last storm. The Bible says,
the islands will sink, a great earthquake. The powers of
the heavens will be shaken. In Hebrews twelve, the earth
will be shaken. People will be in fear and in relation.

(34:04):
One seven says, behold, He's coming with clouds, and every
eye will see him. Christ is in coming in some
secret rapture. He's coming visibly. It will be the greatest
day in the history of the world since the Cross,
and the last day of the Old Age. And the
world will be in a storm that you cannot extract
yourself from by your own power. And how can a
person survive? Friends, Jesus was hung on the cross of Calvary.

(34:28):
The next lie, Jesus was hung on the cross of Calvary.
He was tied to the cross, nailed there. And friend,
if you tie you and your family to the tree
to the cross, you're going to survive the storm. Because
in the storm at Calvary, Jesus died for your sins.

(34:48):
Jesus suffered your pain. Jesus relived your life. Jesus looked
to the future that was a good future for you,
and Jesus said, it is finished. And he claim the
promises of God for us and for time and eternity.
I am grateful for Jesus. So what is my admonition
to you, Well, it's the spirit's admonition through the Bible.

(35:10):
Come unto Him, all you who are weak and heavy laden,
And Jesus says, I will give you rest. God bless
you in Jesus and with the mighty hand of the
Holy Spirit that will hold you in Jesus. Let's pray
Lord as we bow our heads here today. We need Jesus,
every one of us here. And it could be someone

(35:33):
here needs Jesus for the first time. If that's you,
you raise your hand to Heaven right now as my
eyes are closed. You let God know that. And there
may be some who need Jesus because they've left him,
they become worldly, they have sinned against God and against
the Church. Let them raise their hand with no one

(35:57):
seeing it but you, Father God. And maybe people just
drifted away, their life is in a struggle zone and
they say I need Jesus. Raise your hand now. Father.
Probably all of us are in those three things I've
just said. Forgive us our sins. Thank you that Jesus
is proof you have, and help us to live right.

(36:20):
And Lord, keep evil out of here. May it be
far from reaching hearts international. And Lord, may you be
with us in the peace of God. In Jesus's name. Amen.