Join Bob George on Classic Christianity Radio as he delves into the profound concept of God’s discipline. With captivating storytelling and biblical insights, Bob shares how understanding God’s Word can help clear the clutter of worldly errors from our minds and fortify us against life’s challenges. Listen in as Bob recounts personal experiences of climbing the corporate ladder only to find spiritual emptiness, leading him to a transformative encounter with Jesus Christ. This episode will inspire you to embrace spiritual maturity and find true fulfillment beyond material success.
Welcome to Classic Christianity Radio with Bob George. Bob’s clear, timeless teachings on the complete forgiveness and unconditional love of Jesus Christ will transform your life as you learn about God’s amazing grace. Let’s join Bob as he teaches us from God’s Word.
SPEAKER 01 :
That’s how he disciplines us. He disciplines us in our minds. And every time I pick up this Bible and read what truth is, it’s pushing out what I’ve learned this week of the error of the world or taken in. Isn’t it amazing how quickly we take in the error of the world? But guys, the more that you understand truth, the harder it is for Satan to get error into your mind. And that’s a process. That’s called maturity. What is maturity? Getting to know the meaning of the word of God to the point that it’s more difficult for Satan to get his air into our heads. So this is a book of discipline. And he said, endure it. Don’t take light of it. When God says something, go do it. And we talked about that in our meeting last week. That we hold on Wednesdays, and I gave an illustration that many of you know, but it’s a true illustration as to how God sometimes works with us in strange and sundry ways. After I became a Christian, and prior to coming to the Lord, I worked in a wholesale firm as sales manager of that wholesale firm. It was a very large wholesale firm there in Los Angeles. And I was in the floor covering part of that. They also distributed appliances. They distributed tires. They distributed a lot of different things in that L.A. basin. But my particular role was in the carpeting and the resilient flooring. While I was there, the owner of that was a gentleman by the name of Bernie Suzanne. He was a Jewish man. And he was very, very difficult to get along with. He was a guy that would walk in just with his head down, never speak to anybody, go back to his office. He had his own problems. And very few people liked him. And I thought he was a real idiot. Until I got my own business, I’ve realized how smart he was because there’s a lot of world of difference in being a sales manager only involved in sales and being an owner involved in like profits. See, salesmen, we don’t think about profits. Who cares about profits? That’s just how you keep your business going. I just want sales. And so I didn’t appreciate the fact that he’d sometime curtail my sales activity. We didn’t get along very well, but he kept me because I made money for him. And I stayed there because he paid me money for doing that. And then I had the opportunity of becoming a part owner in my own wholesale distributorship. And so I was president of my own company. Again, distributing carpet and resilient flooring through the L.A. basin. And shortly after getting my own business is where the Lord tugged on my heart because here I had all this potential of obtaining all the goals, financial goals that I wanted to obtain. It was right on the horizon. I could see all of that very, very easily. When you have a business, a wholesale business in a place like L.A. with a huge population, unless you’re a real idiot, you’re going to succeed. And so I certainly saw the success factor there in my life. And so I was president of my own company now, but I was empty, guys, as a pork barrel. I was totally empty inside because I knew something. I knew how to go out and to make money, but I did not know how to be a decent husband and a decent father. I didn’t know how to say no to my buddies who wanted to go to the bars. And it wasn’t that I lived in bars, but when you went, I was there for the evening. There was no visiting the bars. I was there for the night. And so that was a part of the lifestyle. I didn’t know there was a coffee shop in L.A. until I came to Christ. And so all of that, well, that was disturbing to Amy, but it didn’t bother me. I just figured we just got to live with this because I’m not making a living. I don’t know how we can strew sitting in a bar with buddies and making a living, but I guess you do. And so all of those things, and I used to tell her, honey, I’m doing this for you. You know, and I want this big house. And she’d say, I don’t want this big house. It takes too much to clean it. And I’d think, what a dumb thing to say. You know, who cares how much it takes to clean it? Look at how people are going to look at me and say how successful I am. Because that’s why I was doing that. That’s why I wanted those things. It was just plain ego. Wanting the approval of man. And so that was going on. And we came down to a point, as many of you know, where I finally came to Christ. I came to my senses first. And out in San Bernardino, California in 1969 came to know Christ as my personal Lord and Savior. And Amy at the same time solidified her relationship with Christ. We’ve been growing. I had a Bible and I could not get out of it. From the day that I was saved, I was buried in this Bible. I found truth in this Bible that I had never found out in the world. It was so exciting to me to pick up the Scriptures and to read truth. Now, one of the problems with that is that in about, oh, six months, you think you know it all. I couldn’t understand how these people said they didn’t understand all the Scripture because I understood all of it. And then you also have some real humble attitudes like, You know, Billy Graham, you probably ought to start thinking about retiring because I’m on the scene now. And so you had a few of those real humble kind of things. All of that took place. You’re a very self-sufficient, lost person. And like you say, you become the self-sufficient, saved person. Your ego still is there that God has to do what? Discipline you. Discipline you. Why? Because your ego is there. You’ve got this ego that I can do anything. Well, in the world, sometimes you can. You want to be successful, you work hard enough and stuff. You can be successful. You can drive cars. You can do all kinds of things without Jesus. And so you come to the Lord and that same attitude is there. There again, you still got your eyes on your own self-sufficiency. Well, I came to, I said to the Lord and buried myself in the word of God. Amy thought I had a black leather face for a couple of years because I was constantly in the word of God. Most exciting book in the world. Well, I started saying, and as I was growing in grace and growing in the love of God, I started saying, Lord, what do you want me to do? I’ll do anything that you want me to do. And while I was working for Suzanne, they had a promotion one time in their appliance division where if you bought so many appliances, they gave you this very nice set of pots and pans, Teflon pots and pans. Beautiful set. It was a giveaway item. And one day I was down in the stockroom picking up some samples. And here was this great big old display of all these pots and pans. And I thought to myself, well, these are giveaway items. And I think Bernie would probably like to give them to me. So I took them. I think the word is stole them. Yeah, I think that’s what the word was, stole them. And so I took those pots and pans. well i didn’t think anything of it i mean we took them took it home amy enjoyed them and here i am now i’m a christian and i’m saying to god god what do you want me to do i’ll do anything that you ask me to do and you know what god said go tell bernie about the pots and pans I said, God, is there anything else that you would like for me to do? And I resisted that for six solid months. Now, guys, this was not imagination. This was God hammering me every time I said, Lord, I’ll do anything you want me to do. I’m available to you every single time. Go tell Bernie about the pots and pans. now here was my situation I was now president of my own company having to go back to the president of another company that I used to work for and tell him that I stole pots and pans I would have rather told him I stole a television set or a car or a building then pots and pans And I struggled with that and I struggled with that and I struggled with it. And finally, one day I picked up the telephone and called Bernie and said, Bernie, would you like to go to lunch? He said, yeah, I really would like to. I think basically deep down he liked me and I think basically deep down I liked him too, but we were too egotistical to admit that. But he said, sure, I’ll come over. So he drove over in his big old Cadillac and picked me up at the warehouse and we went out to lunch. And we had probably about a two-hour lunch. And I never realized what a brilliant conversationalist I was because I talked for two solid hours about everything except pots and pans. And all the time I was there with him, it was the same old Lord saying, pots and pans, Bob, pots and pans. And I said, shut up, Lord. And it just got irritating after a while. But it was there. And I’m not kidding you. You know, you can say what you want to. That is just God. He’s saying, I’m going to get you because there’s something I want to teach you. Do you think God was interested in pots and pans? No. What was he interested in? Pride and ego. And I was full of it. So he had a lot of work to do. And so the… So we sat through all through lunch, left, paid the bill, got back in his car, drove me back to my warehouse, sat in the car for a minute talking, opened the door, started to get out, and finally said, I can’t do this. Got back in the car, said, Bernie, I’ll tell you something. I said, since I have left your organization and came over here, I have gotten to know Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior. Your Messiah, Jesus Christ, is my Lord and Savior. And he has absolutely changed my life. And I said, for all of these months, I’ve been asking God to tell me what he wanted me to do. And he kept prodding me to come and tell you that while I was working for you, I stole pots and pans from you. You remember that promotion you had? Yeah, I remember. I said, well, I was down in the stockroom one day and decided those would be nice, and I took them. And I want to pay you for them. And Bernie said, fine. Gave me a price. I wrote down a check. But he said, Bernie, there’s nothing, there’s no way in the world That I would ever have even come close to admitting this. Had it not been for Jesus living in me. And Christ died for my sins. And he took away those sins. And I gave him a gospel presentation. And he thanked me for it. And I went back into my office. And never thought about pots and pans ever again. now as I said what was God doing with me he’s not interested in pots and pans but he said Bob there’s a character in you that I want to get rid of and I want to get rid of that pride I want to get rid of that idea that you’re too big or you’re too successful to admit to somebody that you took pots and pans I want that out of your character And he kept hammering me until I did what he asked me to do. What is that, guys? That’s discipline, isn’t it?
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SPEAKER 01 :
That is God. It did, as it says in verse 11, no discipline seems pleasant at the time. I’ll guarantee you that didn’t seem pleasant at the time. but it seemed painful to me to do but later however it produced a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who’ve been trained by it i obtained in my own heart a piece of god that passes all understanding by getting that off of my conscience and to admitting to somebody that i had done what i did does god do that with all people I don’t know. That’s between you and God. Have you ever taken something from somebody that you should notify them about? I don’t know. That’s between you and God. Maybe so, maybe not. I can’t answer that question. That is totally between you and God. Have you ever offended somebody in talk or deed or whatever it might be that God wants you to pick up the phone or call them back to say, I’m sorry, I acted like a person who didn’t know the Lord? Maybe. I can’t answer that. That’s God’s discipline in perfecting you, not me. So we can’t answer those questions. But the issue is that if there is something and God has been prodding you, listen to his voice. Why? It’s going to bring what he says. It’s going to produce a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who’ve been trained by that discipline. It’s going to bring peace to it. And so therefore, he says, strengthen your feeble arms and your weak knees and make level paths for your feet so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed. It says, make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy, to be set apart, because without holiness, no one will see the Lord. In other words, without your being set apart by God, you’ll never see God. Now, again, to make every effort to live in peace, if you decide to live in peace with somebody, does that mean that they’re going to want to live at peace with you? Did Jesus desire to live at peace with all of us? Yeah. Did all of us desire to live at peace with him? No, they nailed him to a cross. One day yelling Hosanna, Hosanna. Look at the king that comes in the name of the Lord. The next day yelling crucify. And so we have to understand again true that this idea of this preconceived notion that we are the center of the universe means that if I am nice to Richard, he’s going to be automatically nice to me. And that may be true or may not be true. I’m just talking about a human being now. It may not be true. But the issue is, it says for you, go live at peace. Be at peace with all men. Don’t let unresolved conflicts get a hold of you. Why? Because it never lets go of you. Have you ever noticed how when you have an unresolved conflict with somebody, it never lets go of you? It’s there all the time. How many of you have noticed that to be true? It never leaves you. If you’re holding on to bitterness or resentment towards somebody, you are the benefactor of that. It never leaves you. You’re going to be miserable. That person that you’re mad at may not even know you’re mad at them. They’re living fine, but you’re miserable. And so if you have unresolved conflicts with people, it says in the scriptures to straighten that out. Because it’ll bring peace to you. If you don’t, you’re never going to have peace. So sometimes that doesn’t mean people are going to want to, again, have peace with you. There have been times in my life where I’ve called somebody in order to straighten out an unresolved conflict. Didn’t do any good. They didn’t want to straighten it out. What do you do with that? Say, praise God, I did what the Lord told me to do. Now I’m going to shake the dust off my shoes and move on. But I’ve done what God said to do. I tried to make an attempt to resolve this conflict. It didn’t work with them, but it worked with me. And so he’s saying to us to don’t let these kind of things build up. make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be set apart because without being set apart, no one will see the Lord. How are people going to see the Lord unless they see the Lord living in us? And so if God said, I have set you apart to be my instrument here on this earth in whom I can live my life in and through, and we say, fine, Lord, I see that you have set me apart, and so I’m going to be set apart for you to live your life in and through me, then I’m going to have to give up on me trying to live the Christian life, aren’t I? See, guys, think about it for a minute. If I could live the Christian life, in other words, when you say the Christian life, what is the Christian life? It’s a life of love. It’s a life of peace. In other words, the fruit of the Spirit is the life of Jesus. It’s a life of love, a life of joy, a life of peace, a life of patience, a life of kindness. All of those things, there’s no law. If I could produce those things in and of myself, what would I need Jesus for if I could produce them on my own? And if I did think that I was producing them on my own, what kind of a person would I be? Humble or egotistical? Which would it be? And so I have to come to a point of recognizing there is no way on God’s earth that I can produce agape love toward others without There is no way on God’s earth that I can produce the joy of the Lord, because the joy of the Lord is the joy of the Lord. I can produce happiness, but not joy. Happiness is a word that is used, it’s an Anglo-Saxon word that was used, and the word is hap. And it’s based upon happiness is as a result of what’s happening. Good things are happening, therefore I am happy. But if bad things are happening, then I’m unhappy. Well, isn’t it interesting that there is a word unhappy, but there’s no word enjoy. Joy comes from the Lord. Happiness comes from circumstances. Joy comes from the Lord. There is no way for me to produce joy without It comes from the Lord. Patience. There’s no way for me to produce God’s patience. If you see me patient, God is doing that. It isn’t me producing it. I can’t produce it. I don’t want to be patient. I’d rather be impatient. Because when I’m impatient, I can show you that I’m smarter than you are with my impatience. All of these things cannot be produced, guys, by anyone except God himself. And so Jesus gave us this illustration. It’s all a part of this thing of discipline. Discipline says you can’t. This is the way God has disciplined you and me every day of our life. Bob, you can’t. I can. Rod, you can’t, but I can. It’s all the way through. You can’t, but I can. And isn’t that a constant struggle? It’s what was talking about up here earlier when it talks about the fact of this sin that so easily entangles us. What is this sin that so easily entangles us? The sin of self-reliance. In all things, rely upon the Lord, not on your own understanding. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. Acknowledge him in all your ways and he will do what? Direct your paths. And so we have options. We can yield to the flesh and to go out and do it my way. Just do the old Sinatra song. I’ll do it my way. Or we can recognize the futility of that and decide to do it his way. Those are my options. I’m going to do it my way. I’m going to do it his way. If I’m going to do it his way, I need to keep my eyes off myself. If I’m going to do it his way, I’m going to keep my eyes off of me. I’m going to keep my eyes off of the fact woe is me. And I’m so unhappy. Well, that’s because things are not happening the way you want them to happen. What about joy? I know you’re not happy because things aren’t happening the way you want them to happen. So I know that. What about joy? You experiencing any joy? Joy has to come from the Lord. Love has to come from the Lord. Patience has to come from the Lord. Experiencing any of that? No, but I’ll try. No, you know, you never experience it when you try. You’re only going to experience the Lord when you yield. Didn’t it say in the scriptures that we have the privilege of participating in what, guys? The divine nature that what? Lives where? In us. we have the divine nature of god living in us do you believe that i mean these aren’t words guys some people are scared to death of this word holy spirit and you find that in many evangelical circles people that have a good grasp on the word of god but don’t talk too much about the holy spirit sounds too charismatic Well, I don’t care whether it sounds charismatic or not. It’s a reality that Jesus, through his Holy Spirit, lives in you. And that he is your guide. He is your discipler. He’s your teacher. He’s your life. He is your everything. This isn’t just words up there. This is a reality. There are many people who have theological knowledge of something and no experiential knowledge of it at all. Have not a clue experientially of what they say they understand intellectually.
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Until next time, walk in faith, be good to one another, and praise the Lord. Amen.
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Put Jesus first in your life and turn your life around.
