God's Care and Protection

Recording:

Abstract:## The Importance of God's Care in Times of Disaster

Recently, disasters have struck one after another, truly misfortunes never come singly. In Kunming, over a hundred people were hacked to death or injured, and they are still in the hospital. Furthermore, an airliner crashed in Vietnamese waters, with over two hundred people missing. Seeing those waiting for their family members at the airport, their心情 (xīnqíng - mood, feelings) must be incredibly heavy! How much better it would be if, by some twist of fate, they had not boarded that plane! But we do not know what will happen in the future. If at that time, there is God's protection, God's revelation, that specifically causes me to miss this disaster, would that not be grace? Brothers and sisters, new friends, do we know that what we need most is not useless wealth, but God's care? With God's care, with God's protection, how wonderful that would be! Today, if you ask me, what do you least want? I would say, what I least want is to go back to those bitter days without God's care!

1 Review of Last Sunday's Topic: Living Out Abundance and Honour
Let us review last Sunday's topic: Living Out Abundance and Honour.

The Secret to Living Out Abundance and Honour

I think if we were to conduct a survey, no one would say they don't want to live out abundance and honour. Who doesn't want to have some dignity? Who doesn't want to live in abundance? But for the sake of abundance and honour, different people have taken different paths. I encourage everyone to learn to observe. Observe those who believe in the Lord Jesus according to the Bible, those who are willing to pay the price in their faith, and not one of them is not abundant, not one of them is not honourable. Those who come among us, if you cannot see that our brothers and sisters are all living more abundantly and honourably than they did before, then you have come among us in vain. How is it possible not to see? In almost every small group Bible study, someone shares their testimony, how they experienced God! This is not something I arranged. I don't have the ability to make people say things according to my intentions. For example, a sister whom we met online only a few weeks ago sent me her testimony. It was truly a transformation of life! Originally without honour, but now honour can be seen! Many people will challenge what I say. Why? Because there are many records of suffering in the Bible, and many records of tribulation. This is true. But those are also abundance and honour! For example, Joseph, although he was sold into slavery, God was with him, and he prospered in everything. Although he was imprisoned, God was with him, and he prospered in everything. God's purpose is not for us to suffer, not for us to experience tribulation, but to let us manifest God's abundance and glory! Therefore, brothers and sisters, when we read the Bible, we must learn to look at the entire Bible. God's intention is for us to be blessed, for us to live out the abundance and honour of life. I am speaking the words of the Bible. Do not reverse the key things. If God's purpose is for us to live out tribulation, to live a life worse than death, to get sick, to suffer, God would not have needed to let the Lord Jesus die on the cross, bearing our sorrows and carrying our pains! The fact is that God wants us to be blessed. Indeed, we will encounter difficulties, we will encounter battles, we will encounter the attacks of the devil, we will experience some tribulations, but those are courses to train us, ultimately to bless us! In fact, God is not a malicious God, God is not a heartless God, God is a God full of compassion, full of grace, full of love! This is a great comfort to me. Even when I encounter great difficulties, this is my faith, and this is my comfort. I have never complained about God, because I believe that God's thoughts toward me are good thoughts, God's plans for me are good plans, and the result of coming through difficulties is seeing abundance and honour. Because of faith, I experience His grace greatly in the world! I often say, Lord, I thank you, may all your promises be fulfilled in my life! That is such a wonderful thing. Lord, may I glorify your name!

The Lord Jesus once said, I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly. This is what the Lord Jesus said. Some people want to argue with me, insisting that our gospel is a gospel of tribulation. Go argue with the Lord Jesus. In any case, I still want to have abundant life. And I believe that God's will is originally so. That is such a comfort.

God's Care and the Crown of Glory

The reason why I am not too willing to preach on the topic of suffering and tribulation in my Sunday sermons is because that is not the purpose, that is God's training course for us. Since it is God who is training us, then what is there to fear! It is like when we attend university, a series of subjects are arranged. There is nothing to fear. It is all within the plan. It is not the devil who is in control, it is God who is in control of my life. It is God who wants me to live out abundance and honour, to live out the glory of the Eternal God, that He prepares some courses to train me. Training is a bit hard, but weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning! Amen! The order cannot be messed up. If the order of tribulation and abundance and honour is reversed, the gospel is no longer the gospel. Therefore, the Psalmist said, What am I, and what is my people, that you should set your eyes on us! You bestow honour and glory as a crown on us! How good it is to believe in the Lord, it is truly good!

Why can believing in the Lord enable us to live out abundance and honour? Because our Lord is the true and living God! If God is not living, and what we believe in is just a spiritual sustenance, then there will be no miracles, no transformations, and we will still have to carry our burdens ourselves. Then believing in the Lord is meaningless. But the fact is that our God is the true and living God! Those who come to believe in the Lord receive abundance and honour! They can personally experience God's grace. I urge those who do not know that Jesus Christ is the true God, the God who gives us abundance and honour, the God who cares for us, those people really need to come and investigate! After hearing the testimonies, after hearing what we have experienced, do not immediately conclude that it is not true. We have experienced it, and then tell you, and you say it is not true, isn't that strange! If it were not true, if it were not living, how could so many brothers and sisters experience His grace! How could there be so many testimonies! I don't have that much ability, to exert any effort. Relying on my small body, even if I died from exhaustion, I could not perform these miracles. Those are all done by God! Thank the Lord, He works with me, He hears my prayers. He takes care of all our needs!

Today, let us share - The God Who Cares for Me!

2 Today's topic: The God Who Cares for People!
Thank the Lord, after I finished preaching last Sunday, my wife told me, You did a good job preaching this Sunday. This sentence is very important to me. I like to hear these words. Not because of anything else, but because every time I hear these words, I give glory to my God. I think, what am I, what are my brothers and sisters, what are our offerings, God, that you would care for me! I marvel at our God, I marvel at His love, I marvel at His greatness, I marvel that He would care for me! Brothers and sisters, our days are like a shadow, passing quickly. We are so small and insignificant on earth, but the God who created the universe actually cares for me! What great grace this is! He not only cares for me, but He also bestows honour and glory as my crown!

Recently, disasters have struck one after another, truly misfortunes never come singly. In Kunming, over a hundred people were hacked to death or injured, and they are still in the hospital. Furthermore, an airliner crashed in Vietnamese waters, with over two hundred people missing. Seeing those waiting for their family members at the airport, their心情 (xīnqíng - mood, feelings) must be incredibly heavy! How much better it would be if, by some twist of fate, they had not boarded that plane! But we do not know what will happen in the future. If at that time, there is God's protection, God's revelation, that specifically causes me to miss this disaster, would that not be grace? Brothers and sisters, new friends, do we know that what we need most is not useless wealth, but God's care? With God's care, with God's protection, how wonderful that would be! Today, if you ask me, what do you least want? I would say, what I least want is to go back to those bitter days without God's care! Those days without God's care were so terrible, so hard, it's frightening to think about! When I was evangelizing to my closest relatives, I encountered so many cold shoulders and so much ridicule, but I didn't care. I just walked away, stomped my feet, and said, You fool, you don't want such a great blessing, I want it! There are many people who are paralyzed themselves, we pray, and they get up and walk. But later, they still rely on useless wealth. They encounter evil things, we pray, and they escape a disaster. The knife was even placed on their neck, but they were able to escape because of our prayers. Isn't this a living experience? How can they forget it in an instant and still rely on useless wealth? I am speaking the truth, but I will not tell the details of these stories today. What I mean is that God's care is truly what people in this generation need most! There are too many problems that wealth cannot solve. Even if you took a suitcase full of banknotes on the crashed flight, could that money save you? No, it cannot. Therefore, I urge everyone to open your eyes and see the truth of the matter clearly. Believe it or not! I urge you to come and believe in the Lord with me, and don't say such foolish things: That won't work, I don't have time, I have to make money. With God's care, making money is not a problem either!

If we divide the people in the world into two types, those who have God's care and those who do not have God's care. Looking back on the past 22 years of believing in the Lord, how much grace, how much care, how much mercy, how much love has my God bestowed! How much sorrow has my Lord taken on for me, how much pain has He borne for me, I cannot count! If not for the sake of believing in the Lord, I don't know how many disasters I would have encountered! Walking safely through 22 years is all grace! Every step is affirming that God is the God who cares for me! Not only living out abundance and honour, but God also cares for me and protects me from all disasters! Amen.
Let us read the scriptures.

3 Today's scripture: Deuteronomy 11:11-15
Deu 11:11 But the land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven. Deu 11:12 It is a land the LORD your God cares for; the eyes of the LORD your God are continually on it from the beginning of the year to its end. Deu 11:13 So if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today—to love the LORD your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul— Deu 11:14 then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine and olive oil. Deu 11:15 I will provide grass in the fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied.

4 Prayer - A Prayer to My God!
…..(Impromptu prayer)…
In the name of the Lord Jesus, Amen!

5 In this generation of rampant disaster, how much we need God's care!

Relying on God's Refuge and Protection

If I ask you, in this age of rampant disasters, what do you use to resist disasters? You may think that the question I am asking is very strange. You may say, isn't this how people live? No one knows what they will encounter. When soldiers come, we will block them, when water comes, we will dam it. Whatever comes, comes. When terrorists come with knives, I will use my flesh to block them. But how can you block that? The dead are dead, and the injured are injured. When the plane falls, I will use my physical body to block it, but I cannot block it! When cancer comes, what do I use to block it? Use medicine to block it? Cannot block it. Of course, that is what people without God say. People without God are very strange. They think that everyone is the same as them. That everyone in the whole world, when they encounter the things that he encounters, use the same methods to deal with them. The answer is also the same. Actually, it is not.

If you ask me in return, what about you? I won't answer like that. I will say: (Psalm 91) Psm 91:2 I will say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.” Psm 91:3 Surely he will save you from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence. Psm 91:4 He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart. Psm 91:5 You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, Psm 91:6 nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday. Psm 91:7 A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you. Psm 91:8 You will only observe with your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked. Psm 91:9 If you say, “The LORD is my refuge,” and you make the Most High your dwelling, Psm 91:10 no harm will overtake you, no disaster will come near your tent. Psm 91:11 For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; Psm 91:12 they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone. Psm 91:13 You will tread on the lion and the cobra; you will trample the great lion and the serpent. Psm 91:14 “Because he loves me,” says the LORD, “I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name. Psm 91:15 He will call on me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him. Psm 91:16 With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation.”

The Benefits of Believing in the Lord and God's Provision

Brothers and sisters, we all live in this era rife with disasters. No one knows what will happen tomorrow. If you have a good way, then live according to your way! If you feel you don't have a good way, then listen to the way I speak of, which is the way of believing in the Lord. Can those who believe in the Lord escape these disasters? From my own experience, I can testify that they can. Later, I discovered that the Bible records an entire theoretical system, systematically discussing the source of disasters, the essence of disasters, and ways to escape disasters. It also systematically discusses the relationship between the world we live in and the spiritual world. Grasping the operational laws of the spiritual realm, understanding the operational principles of the spiritual realm, and obtaining the authority in the spiritual realm given by the Lord Jesus, that is the fundamental solution to the problems! Some people, I find it very interesting, have personally seen how I cast out demons, but deliberately forget that our world is a spiritual world. They spend a lot of time forwarding those boring things online, but are unwilling to spend time understanding the Bible and the operational principles of the spiritual realm. I truly, like Paul, pray in Eph 1:17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. Eph 1:18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, Eph 1:19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength Eph 1:20 he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, Eph 1:21 far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.

Many people, including some who consider themselves believers, say what? I have to live! I don't have time! I'll believe in the Lord after I retire! So many excuses. Actually, these are several issues I want to explain.
First, my God is a God who satisfies my life's needs.
Second, my God is a God who saves me from disasters.

One of our sisters brought her mother to believe in the Lord, and her mother said a very practical thing: Believing in the Lord is all good, so why not believe!
In fact, it is indeed all good. But there is also one not-so-good thing, which is Deuteronomy 11:13: If you carefully heed my commandments which I command you today, to love the Lord your God and serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul, then these benefits can be obtained. This is why I would rather risk people putting labels on me; I still want to ask brothers and sisters to be professional Christians. In fact, whatever you do, you must do it professionally. Being an amateur Christian gains nothing. It's meaningless. What attitude should we use to believe in the Lord? Use the attitude of treating the Lord Jesus as the most important treasure in our lives, as if we have obtained a treasure! Many people say that we believe in the Lord too fanatically. But this way of believing is a way of believing that obtains grace!

6 God Satisfies My Life's Needs
The passage of Scripture we read today says this: Deu 11:11 But the land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven. Deu 11:12 It is a land the Lord your God cares for; the eyes of the Lord your God are continually on it from the beginning of the year to its end. Deu 11:13 So if you carefully obey my commands I am giving you today, to love the Lord your God and to serve him with all your heart and all your soul, Deu 11:14 then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine and olive oil. Deu 11:15 I will provide grass in the fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied.

God's Provision and Protection

The God we believe in is very real. He cares for our most basic life needs. Our God is the God of the living, the God who cares for our life's needs. He never said, Live your life, and in the next life, I will give you a better fate. If you hear such words from the god you worship, it probably indicates one thing: your pain seems to have nothing to do with the god you worship. But the God I believe in is a God who cares for our needs.

When I encounter those who have no job, I know that my God will surely grant them a good job, because that is what they need. I know that my God will also surely care for their needs. Not only that, but our God will also bless the work they do, and constantly care for that land. From the beginning of the year to its end, my God constantly cares for the land where we live! God does not care for us because of that land, but because of us, He cares for the place where I live.

Brothers and sisters, because our earliest ancestors Adam and Eve sinned, sin entered the world, so the land where we live is cursed. People must work hard to live. But our God gave us the Lord Jesus Christ, broke the curse on us, and released us from the curse of hard labor and heavy burdens, adding a sign of blessing to everything our hands do.

The Psalmist says this: Psm 33:18 But the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his unfailing love, Psm 33:19 to deliver them from death and keep them alive in famine. Psm 33:20 We wait in hope for the Lord; he is our help and our shield. Psm 33:21 In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name. Psm 33:22 May your unfailing love rest upon us, Lord, even as we put our hope in you.
Say to the person next to you: May God's eyes always care for the land where you live!

7 God Saves Me from Disasters
(Psalm 91) Psm 91:2 I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.” Psm 91:3 Surely he will save you from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence. Psm 91:4 He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart. Psm 91:5 You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, Psm 91:6 nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday. Psm 91:7 A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you. Psm 91:8 You will only observe with your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked. Psm 91:9 If you say, “The Lord is my refuge,” and you make the Most High your dwelling, Psm 91:10 no harm will overtake you, no disaster will come near your tent. Psm 91:11 For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; Psm 91:12 they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone. Psm 91:13 You will tread on the lion and the cobra; you will trample the great lion and the serpent. Psm 91:14 “Because he loves me,” says the Lord, “I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name. Psm 91:15 He will call on me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him. Psm 91:16 With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation.”

1Ch 4:10 Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, “Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.” And God granted his request.

God's Object of Care and Conditions

Psm 34:6 This poor man called, and the Lord heard him; he saved him out of all his troubles. Psm 34:7 The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them. Psm 34:8 Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him. Psm 34:9 Fear the Lord, you his holy people, for those who fear him lack nothing. Psm 34:10 The lions may grow weak and hungry, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.
Psm 8:1 (To the choirmaster: according to The Gittith. A Psalm of David.) Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. Psm 8:2 Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger. Psm 8:3 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, Psm 8:4 what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? Psm 8:5 You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. Psm 8:6 You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet: Psm 8:7 all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, Psm 8:8 the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.

8 Conclusion: What kind of people does God care for?
Mat 23:36 Truly I tell you, all this will come on this generation. Mat 23:37 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. Mat 23:38 Look, your house is left to you desolate. Mat 23:39 For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

1Pe 3:12 For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.

Isa 66:1 This is what the Lord says: “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me? Where will my resting place be? Isa 66:2 Has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being?” declares the Lord. “These are the ones I look on with favor: those who are humble and contrite in spirit, and who tremble at my word.