God Can Use Your Bad for Your Good (Episode 104)

This episode zeros in on God’s ability to use the bad times in your life for your good. That’s why you must walk by faith and not by sight. Just because you are going through a tough time does not mean God is not doing something good in your life.
We may be able to clearly see our current circumstances. But until they begin to unfold, we have no idea what God is doing about them. But we trust Him to be faithful, so we walk by faith.
Young Joseph’s experience is a perfect example of God’s ability to use your bad for your good. His being sold by his brothers was a bad experience. Being sold as a slave in Egypt was a bad experience as well. Being lied on by his master’s wife and put in prison was a bad experience. In the natural, nothing suggested that God was doing anything good on Joseph’s behalf.
But the truth is that God was up to something phenomenal in Joseph’s life. He was with Joseph even during those bad times. Ultimately, God exalted him to be the second most powerful man in all of Egypt. Joseph told his brothers 22 years after they sold him, “Do not be grieved or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life” (Genesis 45:5, NASB).
God didn’t create the evil that occurred in Joseph’s life. But He allowed it, and He used it for Joseph’s good. In a similar way, God can use your bad for your good.

God Has the Answer (Episode 32)

We don’t have to have all the answers to life’s challenges. But our faith must be in the one who does, and that is God and His Son Jesus Christ. In this episode, Frank King wants you to know that whatever your problem or challenge is in life, God has the answer.
At times, we may find ourselves lacking what we need in life. But it is amazing what the Lord can do with the little we have when we trust Him with it. For instance, in John’s record of the gospel, he writes about a time when Jesus took a little boy’s food, blessed it, and fed an army of people. The group included almost 5000 men (John 6:10). Everyone ate as much as he wanted, and the leftovers greatly exceeded what Jesus began with.
This miraculous event occurred in the wilderness. Three important points about that. One, they were in the wilderness because the people had followed Jesus from the city. Two, the people were hungry.  Three, because they were in the wilderness, no place existed for buying food even if they had the money.
Initially, Jesus asked Philip what they were going to do to feed the people. “This He was saying to test him, for He himself knew what He was intending to do” (John 6:6, NASB). Similarly, whatever problem you have, the Lord always know what to do about it.
Understand that your faith is no better than the object of your faith. Some people have faith in their money, but money has its limits. Some have faith in themselves or in other people, but people have limits also. That’s why it behooves us to place our faith in God. In Mark 9:23, Jesus says, all things are possible to him who believes.

God’s Way of Doing Things (Episode 28)

To properly relate to God, we must have some understanding of His ways. The more we understand them, the better we can relate to Him. In this episode, Frank King focuses on God’s way of doing things.
Some Christians are naïve in their approach to God because they are ignorant of His ways. The way they think is not compatible with how God operates. But one thing that is clear in the Scriptures is that God does not tailor His ways to accommodate our ignorance or misconceptions.
Are you currently waiting on the Lord to fulfill a promise to you? You pray and look and wait, but you don’t see anything happening. Well, perhaps; just perhaps; God is fulfilling His promise to you. But He is doing it in such a way that you cannot even imagine.
Our ignorance of God’s way of doing things can breed frustration. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts,” He says (Isaiah 55:9, KJV). That’s why He has given us the Bible so we can learn His ways.
Nothing Is Too Hard for God
When the angel appeared to Abraham to announce that God would bless Sarah with a child, Sarah laughed. This was understandable. At this time, she was 89 years old and had been born barren.
The angel heard it when Sarah laughed. He asked Abraham why did Sarah laugh. “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” the angel asked (Genesis 18:14). It was a rhetorical question. Nothing is too hard for the Lord.

How God Speaks to Us (Episode 25)

God primarily speaks to us through His Word. He and His Word are one. That means whatever God says to us through His Word will always agree with what He would say to us if He were to speak to us in an audible voice. Hence, if someone claims to have heard from God but speaks counter to God’s word, he or she has not heard from God.
In this episode, Evangelist Frank King takes the subject of how God speaks to us to another level. He says that if the Word of God is the only way you hear from God, then you are not hearing everything God’s trying to say to you.
A good example of how God speaks to us in ways other than the Bible is recorded in the book of the Acts of the Apostles. During Paul’s third missionary journey, a vision appeared to him at night. In the vision Paul saw a man of Macedonia saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us” (Acts 16:9, NASB). This vision was preceded by the Holy Spirit forbidding Paul and Timothy from going to preach in Asia and Bithynia. Putting these two experiences together, they concluded that God had called them to preach in Macedonia.
We know that Paul wrote most of the NT. And we tend to think that he always heard a crystal-clear voice from God. But it was not always that way. In the case above, Paul and Timothy didn’t hear a voice from heaven. Their direction came from acts of the Holy Spirit and a vision.
God’s word is the pillar of truth. It is the standard by which all conduct and all so-called prophecies are to be evaluated. God never acts counter to His Word. It is the means by which we can know whether or not we are walking in the lanes of truth.
But within those lanes, God can speak to us through the Holy Spirit, through prophecies, through dreams and visions, and through divinely orchestrated events in our life. It’s important that we have ears to hear what He is saying to us through these means.
If we limit how God speaks to us to His Word, we will have to figure out some important things on our own. And we know that’s not a recipe for success.

God’s Love for the Lost (Episode 21)

God’s love for the lost is perfectly summed up in John 3:16: “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Hence, when we say God loves us, it’s not just because He says so in His word. But He demonstrated His love for us by sending His Son to die on the cross for a world of sinners.
Sometimes, though Christians may not actually say it, they convey the message that God loves them, and He is mad with those who have not accepted Christ. The truth is that God’s love for the lost is the same as it is for Christians.
Jonah the prophet experienced this truth after God sent him to preach a message of destruction to the people Nineveh. “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown,” Jonah said (Jonah 3:4, KJV). But after the people repented and turned from their evil, God had compassion on them and spared them (verse 10).
“But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry” (Jonah 4:1). This was not the response Jonah wanted to see.  He wanted God to destroy the people of Nineveh. What kind of preacher was Jonah that we wanted to see people destroyed and not saved?
After we accept Christ as our Savior, our goal should be to become more like God and more like His Son. God so loved the world that He gave His Son. His Son so loved the world that He gave His life. If we are going to be like the Father and the Son, we must reflect God’s love for the lost in our life.
Jonah knew the heart of God. He referred to Him as being “a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness” (verse 2). Accordingly, Jonah should not have been surprised by God’s show of mercy. But Jonah’s problem was that he didn’t embrace the heart of the God He was serving. This is also true about many of God’s people today.

God Knows How to Get Your Attention (Episode 19)

Have you ever sensed God calling you to do something you did not want to do, for whatever reason you had? Jonah the prophet in the Old Testament was such a person. God told him to go east and preach to the people in a place called Nineveh. Not wanting to go, Jonah went west wanting to flee from the presence of the Lord.
Jonah found out that you can’t run from God, you can’t hide from Him, and you can’t ignore Him. He is everywhere at the same time.
The story of Jonah should serve as a reminder that God knows how to get your attention. For Jonah, God sent a killer storm. Then He appointed a big fish to swallow up Jonah. He remained in the belly of that big fish for three days and nights. Afterward, Jonah was more than ready to obey God.
God speaks to us primarily through His Word and through the Holy Spirit. That’s why we must spend time with Him so we can hear His voice. Sometimes when God speaks to us, He demands our attention. If we choose to ignore Him, He knows how to take things to another level to get our attention. Fortunately, those means are not nearly as dramatic as a raging storm or a man-swallowing fish.
For Jonah, it was not a question as to what God wanted Him to do. He clearly told Jonah to go and set his voice against Nineveh. So, Jonah heard what God said, knew what God wanted, and chose to do otherwise. Perhaps that is true about some who will listen to this message. It may be something pertaining to ministry or their personal life.
Just remember that God knows how to get your attention. You can’t run from Him, we can’t hide from Him, and you can’t ignore God.

God Disciplines His Own (Episode 15)

Children need parental discipline but most of them don’t want it. Those of us who are parents know the value of proactive parenting. The same is true about God who is our heavenly Father. He disciplines us because He knows that for us to reach our maximum potential, we must be properly attended to.
No true believer is an exception to the Lord’s disciplinary role. The writer of Hebrews writes, “For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son [or daughter] whom He receives” (Hebrews 12:6, NASB).
Note the word “every” in the verse. It means no exceptions.  The word “scourge” denotes a whip for punishment. Of course, since we are talking about God, this is not a reference to a physical whipping. But sometimes, chastisement without whipping can be more painful than physical whipping.
So, how does the Lord discipline us? He has three primary ways of speaking to us to help us grow spiritually and become more like Him. One is by the Bible. Paul writes that the Word of God is profitable for correction and reproof (2 Timothy 3:16). Another way He challenges our conduct and behavior is through the Holy Spirit. He lives in us to bring about conviction when we are out of line. Thirdly, God speaks to us is through His messengers challenging us through preaching and teaching.
These three ways God speaks to us have one common goal. It is to motivate us and to help us become more like Christ. And when we refuse to or when we are slow to respond to these primary catalysts for disciplining us, God knows how to “speak” to us more loudly to get our attention.
God’s disciplinary acts may not feel good while we are experiencing them, but in the end, they will yield us a more fulfilled Christian life.

God Is Our Deliverer (Episode 7)

All of us will need God to deliver us at one time or another. That’s because He has not made any of us to be self-sufficient in all aspects of our life.
Both Christians and non-Christians can face seemingly hopeless and life-threatening experiences in this life. The difference is that for Christians, God is our deliverer. According to the psalmist, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all” (Psalm 34:19, NASB).
Just because we know certain truths about God does not mean those truths are actively working in our lives. Some believers say they know God is our deliverer, for instance. But in practice they act as if they don’t believe He is. Hence, one purpose of preaching and teaching is simply to stir up truths that we already know.
Since God is greater than any opposition we face, wouldn’t it be great if He sheltered us from everything that is too big for us to handle? But at times He allows us to be tested above what we can bear. When that is the case, it is to the intent that we trust Him to deliver us.
In Paul the apostle’s second letter to the church at Corinth, he wrote these words about God as our deliverer: “Who DELIVERED US from so great a peril of death, and WILL DELIVER US, He on whom we have set our hope. And He will YET DELIVER US” (2 Corinthians 1:10, NASB).