All Things

Carter Conlon, from the historic Times Square Church in New York City. God, all things do work together for good to those who love you and are called according to your purpose. Not my idea of what God's purpose is, but what God's purpose for my life actually is.

Welcome to A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon. We spend our days as believers trying to get out of things. God, help me to get out of this and I'll show you how much I love you. God, deliver me from this and see how much I will serve you. Well friend, sadly our focus is about getting out of the very things that God is allowing to form His character and His purposes in our lives.

So instead of praying, God get me out, we should pray, Lord, what are you teaching me? Here's Carter with today's message titled All Things. Romans chapter 8 and verse 28. I'm just simply going to call it all things. And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. Now that means all things. Everything that God allows into your life and into my life has a purpose, a divine purpose.

God puts it there for a reason because He's conforming us to the image of His Son and He's leading us on a pathway that will bring His name to glory through the purpose that He wants to accomplish through your life and through my life. Now quite often we are reluctant to hear the truth of God's word without the all things that God brings into our life. Now keep in mind the Apostle Paul wrote these words as a man who had been shipwrecked, stoned, betrayed. He'd been a day and night in the deep. He had been in perils among brethren, in perils among false brethren, in perils among those who hated Him, His enemies, and beaten with rods, imprisoned.

When you look at the life of the Apostle Paul, it's very hard for anybody alive today to say, well, my life has had a more difficult trajectory than his. And yet he was able to write after all the things that he had suffered that all things work together for good. In other words, everything that God allowed into my life had a divine purpose, whether I understood it or whether I didn't. He was doing something in me.

He was bringing me to a specific place. He was teaching me specific truths that I might not be willing to learn without the all things coming into my life. I remember being in the Middle East, I spoke at a pastors conference in Jordan one time and the room was filled with pastors who suffer for the cause of Jesus Christ. Some of them were so down, they couldn't lift their heads during the worship time. I spoke a message along these lines and I said, if God is all powerful and if God could put an end to all suffering, then why doesn't He put an end to our suffering? And if He allows suffering into our lives, is there a possibility that there is a divine purpose to it? I want to tell you, by the time we got to the end of the sessions in Jordan, these same pastors whose heads had been down were dancing in the aisles.

They were arm in arm and they were shouting, they were rejoicing because they suddenly understood that there is a divine purpose to all the things that God allows into our lives. Here's some prayer requests that have come in from around the world. California, I'm a member of the church since I was a boy. I currently live in Southern California. Please pray I need shelter for my wife and my two year old son. Staten Island, pray for my living situation. I have nowhere to go in New York and I'm in the midst of heart failure as well. Pray for healing and a place to live. From New York again, pray for my emotional life. It's a mess and I don't even feel like living. Again, I need a breakthrough in my mind. I suffer from the fear of people, especially those who are above me, bosses or otherwise.

I've been that way for years. The US, pray for me at my job. I'm hated and treated badly.

I need this job. I'm praying that I do an excellent job and God helps me to show His love to the people who are being mean to me. From Maryland, my parents who at one time were committed to doing the will of God now have COVID-19. Pray for them. I ask for prayer that God may heal them and have mercy on them. California, I need a breakthrough from fears. I have had abuse and betrayal in my life.

It's so hard to trust God and not let the past get in the way. From Taiwan, pray that the strongholds of unworthiness, living in shame and poverty are broken. Pray for escape and restoration. From Kentucky, my husband and I pastor a church and we're under heavy spiritual attack. We need wisdom, grace, humility and direction.

From North Carolina, I was laid off due to COVID-19. Please pray that God will open the door for me to supply for my family. And lastly, from Malaysia, my son Julian has stopped believing in God. He was a prayer warrior at one point. My other son married a Muslim.

Please pray that these prodigals will come home. And the list just goes on and on and on and on. And you and I have to make a choice now, especially those that are texting or writing in and you're a believer in Christ. We either have to believe that all things are working together for God's good purpose in our lives or they're not.

We can't have it both ways. It can't be just some things. It has to be all things. The things that we like and the things we don't, the things we understand and the things we don't understand, the things that are sweet and the things that are sour, the things that we would love to come our way and the things that we would wish would be gone. All of these things are working together, a divine purpose that God has ordained for each one of our lives.

And I want to tell you something. This is the particular verse of scripture. I know there's a verse that answers every question and it's at the very foundation of the Christian life. I immediately shouted out Romans 8.28 because it's been the verse that has kept me all the years of my Christian life through flood, through fire, through trial, through difficulty, through hardship, through blessing.

All of the things that God has allowed have been for divine reasons. Sometimes I understand them and sometimes I don't until the worst of it is even over in my life. I remember years ago, I came to New York in 1994. We moved into a house in New Jersey. We had no idea that the house that we moved into was infested with toxic mold. I mean toxic mold to the point when it was discovered in the year 2001, the mold was so thick that those who inspected the house condemned it on the spot and they quarantined it.

Nobody was allowed. You had to wear a hazmat suit to go into the house that I used to live in. They said when they discovered it, the whole attic was so filled with black toxic mold that there was no visible wood left in the attic. It was all black from end to end in the house. It was a construction defect in the house that allowed moisture to build in the attic. The toxic mold got so thick in the house that it was actually growing behind pictures on the wall when it was finally fully discovered. It scarred my bronchial tubes.

That's why I cough a lot still even today and for a season I could hardly breathe. We were fighting against a terrible onslaught in New York City. I stood with Pastor David Wilkerson. I gave my all. I gave my best. I gave my strength. We're fighting to have the church go forward.

This testimony that was in its infancy in New York City and had to really fight through the floods of hell to survive. We were fighting and as I was fighting alongside Pastor David, I kept getting sicker and sicker and sicker by the day to the point where I could hardly breathe. The headaches were so bad and my energy level was almost at zero. I could sleep for eight hours, get up in the morning and feel like I had not slept at all. I could barely stay awake and I could hardly breathe. I remember when just before it was discovered, the sweat was coming down my face in between services in New York City and Pastor David Wilkerson said to me, what's wrong with you, Carter?

I said, I don't know. I just can't breathe. I can't breathe.

I can't seem to get a breath no matter how hard I try. And we went away that summer and that's when inspectors were sent into our house and discovered the toxic mold so thick that they told me it was the worst case of toxic mold that they had ever seen in any particular house that they'd ever examined. And Dr. Joanning in Albany, who was the foremost expert on toxic mold poisoning in Albany at the time told me, he said, you were just weeks away from death had this not been discovered.

One day I was walking down the street in New York City on Eighth Avenue and I was to the point where I could just see these black flecks coming in front of my eyes because I was always on the verge of passing out. And suddenly in frustration, I just said out loud on the street, I said, oh God, is this really necessary in my life? And I really meant it.

Is this really necessary? As if the battle wasn't hard enough as it was. And I was walking a righteous walk and I was fighting a righteous fight and I was standing for truth and standing with the man of God that the Lord had sent me to help. And as I was standing, I could start, I was getting sicker by the day and by the week.

And so I just finally at exasperation, I said, is this really necessary? I was so surprised to hear the voice of God when he said to me, it is Carter, it is very necessary in your life. And suddenly out of nowhere, these verses from Psalm 119 came into my mind. Let me read them to you.

I'd never ever considered them before. In verse 67, the Psalmist says, before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I have kept your word. Verse 71, he said, it is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I may learn your statutes. In other words, this affliction in my life is going to take me deeper into a place of trusting you because I have no choice.

I have to learn to trust you. And verse 75 says, I know Lord that your judgments are right. And in faithfulness you have afflicted me. Now who preaches that today?

Where have you ever heard that? That the faithfulness of God can actually allow an affliction into your life. That's in my Bible. Psalm 119 verse 75.

Read it for yourself. For a divine purpose that we may not fully understand, God said, in my faithfulness, I have allowed this to come into your life. He could have kept us from moving into that house.

He could have moved us out five years earlier. But here's what he said to me on eighth avenue that night. He said, Carter, you have a very strong will, which is true. I am strong willed. And he said, one day you're going to need to learn to lean on me because if you lead Times Square Church by your own ingenuity, you will bring it to a place of weakness.

I'm going to teach you how to be dependent on me. You see, folks, I needed Christ every moment of every hour of every day because my own strength was gone. And he began to teach me how to hear his voice. I couldn't accept any invitation to go anywhere and speak that I wanted to because if I walked out and I went and preached somewhere and it wasn't the Holy Spirit leading me, when I would come back, it could take me a week or two to even recover physically.

But when the Spirit was leading me, when I would come back, I would come back stronger than when I went out. You see, in this affliction that God allowed into my life, he taught me how to hear his voice. And he taught me that if he's not leading, I ought not to follow.

I ought not to be governed by good ideas. I was learning to be governed by the voice of God. And at this time, I had no idea that I would be the next senior pastor of Times Square Church for that season that God allowed in my life.

I didn't know. It wasn't even in my thinking. In my thinking, I was only there to help this man of God for as long as he needed me. I didn't know that God had another plan.

And I didn't know that in faithfulness, he had afflicted me to be able to work that plan out in my life. You see, now when you and I get to this understanding, it brings our theology to a whole new place. It brings our understanding of God to a whole new place. It brings us to a place of saying, God, all things do work together for good to those who love you and are the called according to your purpose.

Not my idea of what God's purpose is, but what God's purpose for my life actually is. And quite often, we are so stubborn that he can't teach us, but through affliction. He has to bring something into our lives so that we might, before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I have learned your statutes. How could Paul the apostle write the words, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. How could he write these words if he'd not been brought to a place through his own suffering of understanding that only Christ can keep me in certain places. You remember in one of the scriptures, he said, I don't want you to be ignorant, brethren, of the trouble that came to us in Asia, that we were pressed beyond measure in to the point where we despaired of even living. He says, I don't want you to be ignorant of the trouble that came our way, but God helped us. And Paul goes on and says, God has helped us. God does help us and Christ Jesus will help us in the future. He wouldn't have that revelation in his life had he not been given of God this incredible grace of needing incredible grace to go forward another day.

I remember, now we're back to the verse, all things work together for good, all things. I remember the day when I had to go into my apartment, I lived on 51st for a season in New York City. At part of the worst of this affliction, I had an oxygen tank on wheels that I had to pull around the apartment with me with a long tube that came from it and a mask that I had to put over my face. So I had a mask long before COVID-19 came around. And in the morning, I had to wear this mask and breathe for 15 minutes.

I remember the instructions, pure oxygen for 15 minutes to clear out the phlegm that was in my chest and to get rid of the massive headaches that I would wake up with every morning. I had to do this before I could even read my Bible. And I would be a liar if I stood here and told you that there was no despair that came into my life. I want to tell you there were mornings that the despair just wanted to eat at my heart. The wondering, oh God, are you ever going to heal my life?

And could any good ever come from this? And some mornings I was so down, I would take my pen and I just started writing poems, what I thought were poems. And I would hear in the distant a little tune, sometimes it came with some of these poems that I was writing. And these were just things from my heart. I made a choice to declare God to be faithful in the midst of my affliction. And I started writing down these little poems that eventually became songs. And David Wilkerson insisted they'd be put on a CD and even hired an orchestra and brought an orchestra into studio to do the background music for a CD that was called Quiet Times. Most of the songs on this CD were written in this time of affliction. This particular CD that I wrote as poems in the worst of the headaches and the breathing situation and the affliction and the trial, sold over 40,000 copies in its first run and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for missions all around the world. All things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose.

They work together when we choose to believe that God has allowed them for a divine reason. And we choose to declare him to be faithful no matter what our circumstance is or how difficult it has become. One particular morning, I sat down and I wrote a song, a poem actually, and it became a song and it was called If You've Lost Your Heaven Song. And here's the first verse in the chorus. If you've lost your heaven song, it's so hard to carry on when tomorrow looks as sad as yesterday. Just remember Jesus came and he keeps singing just the same if you will listen when you go to him and pray.

And here's the chorus. When Jesus came to live in you, he carried heaven's sweetest tune with words I love you and forever I will stay. When days are cold and darkness strong, things might seem lost but not for long, his song within you cannot ever pass away. His song within you cannot ever pass away.

I got the most beautiful letter a couple of years later after the CD was initially produced. This lady who was a pastor's wife, one day her husband came home and he said to his wife, honey, he says, our marriage is not working. I want out of this marriage, I want to live a new life.

I want to go off and do my own thing. And as far as I'm concerned, our marriage is over. It's finished.

It's done. She was so devastated. It's so hit her out of left field that she decided to commit suicide. She rented a hotel room not too far away from their house and she went to the pharmacy. She got the prescription pills she needed to commit suicide.

She got in the car intending to drive there and to take her life. On the way there, her husband had gotten a copy of this CD, Quiet Times, and it was in the CD player. And the song I talked to you about, if you've lost your heaven song, was playing when she turned the car on and she started listening to this song. And she wrote to me and she said, for three days, for three days I drove, all I did every day, and she'd stay in the hotel, I'm assuming at night, but in the daytime she would just drive around and she said, I put your CD on repeat and I listened to this same song over and over and over and over again. And she said, it brought me back to the faith of my childhood when I first received Christ in those early years when I walked with God and how faithful God has been to me and how God won't forsake me and my affliction. And she said, after three days of driving around, knowing that my marriage was finished, I just decided to go home and not take my life. She said, I drove back home, got in the driveway, get out of the car, came in the house, and there's my husband, sick in heart, sick in his spirit. And he said to her, oh, honey, he said, I'm so sorry. I don't know what came over me.

I don't know what I was thinking. I made such a mistake and I've been such a fool and I love you. And I believe that God is going to work out our marriage. You see, to keep a woman from committing suicide, a pastor's wife, God had to allow affliction in another man's life in a city far, far away and sit him in his office with an oxygen mask on his face and put a pen in his hand and let him write the words to a song and gave him the tune to a song that would save a lady from committing suicide and restore a marriage of a couple in ministry that the devil was going to try to destroy. You try to tell me that all things don't work together for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose. I know they do.

I know they do. And I can't tell you over the years the countless letters I've gotten from people who are shut in or sick or lonely or depressed who put this on and it has given them comfort. It brought my father to Christ. When he got cancer, he would sit in the basement. I only found out after he died. My mom said, your dad would, even though he was mocking me for a season for my faith in Christ, she said he would sit downstairs all night because the pain was so deep and he would listen to your CD all night.

Night after night after night after night after night, he would just listen to the words of these songs. And then one day I went for a visit and was able to lead him to Christ. All things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose. And so I know I'm speaking to people who are suffering tonight. I know I'm speaking to people who've got sickness in your life.

You've got depression in your mind. You've got difficult situations. You don't know how you're gonna feed your kids.

You don't know how you're gonna pay your rent. You don't know how you're ever gonna be sane again. I wanna tell you, God will be faithful to you because all things work together for good if you love God and are called according to his purpose. If you choose to declare him faithful, you will come out the other side of this valley.

This valley of the shadow of death will only last for a season. You will come out the other side and you will be able to say, as I can say tonight, surely goodness and mercy have followed me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Praise be to God. Praise be to God. No matter what's in your life, God will use it for good. And part of the victory is finally coming to the realization, Lord, you put me on this job for a reason. You put me in this marriage for a reason. You gave me these children for a reason. I live in this apartment for a reason. And if I have an affliction in my physical body, God, there has to be a reason for it that maybe I don't yet fully understand.

How else would that orderly, that intern, that nurse, that doctor, that medical person, maybe somebody else is waiting outside the doctor's room in the hallway with you. How else would they ever know of a savior that died for them if I wasn't there to tell them. Oh yes, there is a purpose and Paul learned to believe this. As a matter of fact, he got to the point where he was able to write in his epistles, when I am weak, then I am strong. He was able to believe that even though he was confined to a jail cell at the end of his life with soldiers guarding him on every side, then all he had in his hand was a quill and some parchment. He was able to believe that all things work together for good, even if all I can do is write some letters to some of my friends.

Somehow, somehow, God is working out something bigger than I can understand through my life. He didn't know he was writing to hundreds of millions of people over thousands of years. He didn't know that his letters to his friends were going to be the doctrinal basis for much of our practice of faith in Christ.

He had no idea what he was writing and God never showed it to him. All he knew was that all things work together for good to those who love God and are the called according to his purpose. So my friend, don't just pray to get out of where you are right now. Pray to learn the lesson that needs to be learned where you are. Pray that when you do come out the other side of the valley of the shadow of death, you will be able to say, I've learned, I've learned in whatever state I am there with to be content. I've learned that I can do all things to Christ who strengthens me. I've learned that nothing can separate me from the love of God, which is mine in Christ Jesus. I've learned, I've learned that God has a purpose beyond my understanding. God can do things that are so much bigger than what I can if I will just let him be God in me and through me.

I've learned, oh yes, I've learned. So take, you know, just as the kids often tell us, if life hands you a lemon, squeeze it and open a lemonade stand, just do something with what God's given you and trust him that somehow some good is going to come out of it. I think of all the people that were given a meal. I think of all the drug addicts that were given an opportunity to be set free. I think of all the missionaries that were helped. This really raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for missions. And it was all raised through the pen of a man who was so sick that he had to breathe in an oxygen tank every morning before he could read his Bible. And you and I would look and say, well, what good could come from this?

Oh, so much more than we can ever think or we can ever imagine. So, Father, people saw you on the cross, Lord Jesus, and there had to be many who said, oh, what good could come from this? It's all over. What we thought was going to bring us victory is now ending in defeat. But yet what looked to be defeat was the greatest victory in the history of this world. Lord, thank you, God, for people out there who might think they're in defeat, but they're not.

Your hand is on them for great good. And I thank you for it, Lord, with all of my heart in Jesus' name. The message today has been brought to you by Carter Conlon from Times Square Church. For more information, log on to tsc.nyc. That's tsc.nyc. Plan to be with us next week for A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon.