Two Hymns of Inspiration

0:00Welcome to Life Point with your host, Pastor Tom Dordey. Welcome to Life Point. I'm your host, Tom Dordey, and I'm glad that you have tuned in today. I want to share with you a couple of hymns today and the meaning of some of those hymns and maybe some background of them. I did this several years ago and I've got a couple other, they're different hymns that I shared before with different writers and such, but I really enjoy the old hymns of the church. It's just maybe it's because I'm 71 years old, I don't know, and I was raised that way, but I still enjoy hearing a hymn or two. In our church, we do sing a hymn or two now and again, and I know a lot of churches do not anymore, but I love the meanings and I love the backgrounds of the things that have happened, so I want to share them with you today. Our Heavenly Father, thank you. Thank you for being with us. Thank you for walking with us. Thank you for being our God and Lord may we call upon your name every day.

1:02All day. Good and bad may we call upon you. Just like David did in the Psalms, Lord, he called upon you, he called on you in distress, but he called on you in praise. Lord, we praise your holy name, and I pray you, this blessed time with my friends in the radio, Lord, this blessed each one of them, open their minds and their heart to truth, may your truth set them free. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen. Well, I want to start with a song. I think many churches have as a song, and it's written back in 1855 by a man named Joseph Skrivon, and the song is called What a Friend we have in Jesus. He was a bishop of Calcutta. And he cared for people, and he really had some struggles because the day before his wedding, his fiancee drowned accidentally.

2:04And so he was plagued by disappointment and hurt because the love of his life had passed. And then he dealt with some other things later on in life, but then he wrote some hymns. And you know what? Sometimes when things don't go your way, you realize, you know, we always have a friend in Jesus, and he created that song, and it goes something like this. What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear. What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer. Oh, what peace we often forfeit. Oh, what needless pain we bear. All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer. Have we twiles and temptations?

3:04Is there trouble anywhere? We should never be discouraged. Take it to the Lord in prayer. Can we find a friend so faithful? Who will all our sorrow share? Jesus knows our every weakness. Take it to the Lord in prayer. Do you think he understood about having a friend in Jesus? I think he did. You know, and so just going over these four small verses for a few moments this morning, he says, what a friend we have in Jesus. All our sins and griefs to bear. He takes all our sins, all our grief. And remember, he had the grief of losing his 24 years old or 25 years old, and he lost his fiance the night before the wedding. The night before an accidental drowning. What a heartbreak.

4:05What an incredible loss. But then he says this, he says, you know, I give you my griefs. I give you my issues. I need you. And I remember that when I lost my wife and I lost our son, is we had to give that to God because we are so overwhelmed with grief. And thank the Lord that I could call upon him and lean on him because it was a difficult time. And he goes on to say in the same verse, what a privilege to carry. Everything to God in prayer. What a privilege to take everything to God. Every issue we deal with, we can take to the Lord. And folks, right now, I'm sure there's some of you that are dealing with issues in your life. And of course, not knowing you, not knowing all our listeners, all I know is that in this world, we're going to have trouble. But God is there. And whatever your trouble is today, whatever you're dealing with, there is a lot of

5:07it's a job, whether it's a family, whether it's a habit, what it might be that you need to give to God, give it to him. To God, take it to the Lord in prayer. And then he says in the second verse, oh, what peace we often forfeit. We give up our peace because of all the things that are going on, all the tragedies in the world, all the situational things that you have to do is watch news for half a minute and you get discouraged. Or even when you're gone, you turn on, you realize somebody was killed in a motorcycle accident or something in a car accident or somebody suddenly died of cancer, whatever it might be. And you know, there's a lot of peace that we forfeit, but he said, oh, what needless pain we bear, we're bearing it does needless because we are bearing it without God. When we have God, he will take care of us. He said, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer. If we would carry it to the Lord, if we give it to him, he will help us through it. I did say it'd be easy. I'm telling you what, grief is not easy.

6:08Bad things happen to good people is not easy. But when you give it to God and allow him to take care of it, it gets better. I'm telling you, it gets better. That's why you got to take it to the Lord in prayer. In fact, I want to pray right now for some of you that this is hitting home with. You're really going through something. I don't know who you are, but you're going through it. We're going to pray right now. Our Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus Christ. The Son of the Living God, you know the people that are listening today, that are being touched by something. Lord, there's something going on in their lives, something that hasn't been good, something they've been struggling with in the name of Jesus, free them. Free them. May this be a new day, a new start. Give them hope for tomorrow and encourage them. I pray in Jesus' name, amen. Then in the third stanza, he says, it's a question. He has two questions. Have we trials and temptations? Have we trials and temptation?

7:09We have all sorts of trials and temptations. We live in a world that's a temptation. The enemy would love to tempt us. I listen to Charlie Kirk the other day in a message. He was talking about how Satan is always on the loose. We need to recognize that he is trying to tempt us. He is trying to get us to think things that aren't good and get us to fall victim of sin. That's what his job is. We call upon Almighty God, who is all power. Almighty God to give us strength to handle anything that comes our way dealing with temptation. We're going to face him on a daily basis. We're going to face him. But we stay in the Word of God, stay in touch with God, stay close to God. He's going to see you through him. I promise you, he will see you through them. Then the second question in this stands is, is there trouble anywhere? Yes, there's trouble anywhere.

8:10There's kind of trouble everywhere. As you well know, we got trouble abound. We got trouble in the nation. We got trouble in the world. We even got trouble in our state sometimes. We have trouble in our households. We have trouble or work. I'd like that old spiritual. Sooner will be done with the trouble of the world. I'm going to be with God. You know what? Soon we will be done with the troubles of the world. We're going to be with God. We're going to be with him for eternity. What a day. That's going to be, oh, what a joyous day that's going to be when we spend eternity with our Lord. He said, we should never be discouraged. Take it to the Lord in prayer. When you're discouraged, when you're happy, when you're sad, take it to the Lord in prayer. I think of yesterday maybe is that in our lives, you know, David, he had, he praised God. Thank God. And then he took his request to God too. He was struggling.

9:10He called upon God. But you know, that's we, we can't forget to praise him along with call upon him for our needs because he's there to hear every need. He wants, he wants to have an intimate relationship with you. He wants you to call upon him, talk to him, think about him. You know, pray without ceasing the word of God. Says in other words, have him on your heart and your mind. And so when things come to heart, you can remind you, you can pray for him. When you see situational things, you can pray for them. God is there. He hears you. He's anxious to respond to you. And then the fourth stands, and the last stands, it says, can we find a friend so faithful? Who will all our sorrows share? Jesus knows our every weakness. Take it to the Lord in prayer. Can we find a friend so faithful? We can't find a friend more faithful than Jesus. He's there for us. He loved us so much that he went to the cross and died a cruel, cruel death because he loved

10:19us so much and wanted all our sins to be washed away by his blood. No longer let the Old Testament, did you need animal sacrifices to go into the temple? And pray for forgiveness of your sins. Jesus paid it all, and it's all to him we owe. And that's what we have to never forget. He says this too. He says, Jesus knows our every weakness. Yes, he knows your every weakness. He knows my weaknesses and believe me, I got plenty. He knows them all. And he says, what does he say? The last line in this song, take it to the Lord in prayer. Take it to the Lord in prayer people. We've got to be praying people. It's time to get busy praying. It's time for us to pray for our family, our friends, our neighbors, our churches. Pray that the Spirit of God to be there in a powerful mighty way. Pray that revival would take over. God loved to see revival, take over the treasure valley, that God's people would all respond

11:23together. They'd get over their big issues with denominational crisis and just love God and serve God and bind together. That's why I always say, get involved in good, Bible-believing church. We've got a lot of good churches that live the word of God and preach the word of God. And we need to bind together churches. No church is better than another church. You know, people get all caught up in all our church as this, our church as that. If your church isn't worshipping and praising God and calling upon Him, then that's where the issue is. Together we'll call upon God and He will bring revival and He will bring a great Spirit into your life and we will start seeing things happen. Let's bind together. Bind together in the love of God. Have a great day. Life point is a ministry of the Cloverdale Church of God. If you would like a copy of today's broadcast or would like more information about the church, please call us at 208-362-1700 or write to Cloverdale Church of God 37-55 South Cloverdale

12:31Road, Boise, Idaho 837-09. You may also visit us at our website www.cloverdalechurch.org. Thank you for listening and have a blessed day.