{"id":128,"date":"2018-11-06T16:40:38","date_gmt":"2018-11-07T00:40:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/migrate.bettersermons.org\/?p=128"},"modified":"2020-06-01T11:40:53","modified_gmt":"2020-06-01T18:40:53","slug":"never-a-busy-signal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/never-a-busy-signal\/","title":{"rendered":"Never a Busy Signal"},"content":{"rendered":"
Never a Busy Signal<\/span><\/div>\n

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Key Passage<\/strong>:\u00a0Answer me when I call to You, O my righteous God. Give me relief from my distress; be merciful to me and hear my prayer<\/i>.Key Thought<\/strong>: The blessing of prayer is an ever-present reality in our lives. The King of the universe is instantly accessible to the least of His children.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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Photo: Dennis Van Duren<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Cartoon Illustration:<\/b>\u00a0An editorial cartoon in the Akron Beacon-Journal showed a middle-aged man lying prostrate on the floor, choking and gasping for breath. Just two feet away his kid is surfing the Internet\u2014this is before high-speed DSL lines\u2014so the phone line is tied up. He casually shrugs: \u201cCome on, Pop, if I call 911 I\u2019ll lose my America On Line connection.\u201d At the time the strip ran, AOL had been facing gigantic problems, PR-wise, trying to provide enough phone lines to computer users. A busy signal was very common whenever logging on.<\/p>\n

Telephone Tag:<\/b>\u00a0Have you spent whole mornings wearing out both your index finger and your patience levels playing telephone tag with that elusive person who\u2019s simply never in? You miss them by one minute, and it takes forty rounds of back and before you finally hear their voice.<\/p>\n

Good News About Prayer:<\/b>\u00a0With prayer . . .<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0You never get a busy signal
\n2.\u00a0Lines are never tied up
\n3.\u00a0Circuits are never down or out of commission
\n4. You get through on the very first try every time<\/p>\n

Song:<\/b>\u00a0 An old spiritual goes: \u201cJesus on the main line; tell Him what you want. Call Him up and tell Him what you want.\u201d The next verse adds: \u201cHis line is never busy; tell Him what you want.\u201d<\/p>\n

King David:<\/b>\u00a0he knew something about desperation dialing, and praised God for the open lines to the Kingdom. Psalm 139:7, 8:\u00a0\u201cWhere can I go from Your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, You are there; if I make my bed in the depths\u201d<\/i>\u2014in Sheol, says the Hebrew\u2014\u201cYou are there.<\/i>\u201d In the King James: \u201cIf I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

Bad News or Good?<\/b>\u00a0For a person trying to get away from God\u2014like Jonah\u2014that might be disturbing news. But David is rejoicing that God is accessible from any corner of the universe.<\/p>\n

More Musical Testimony:<\/b>\u00a0In the great Christian hymn written by Isaac Watts back in the early 1700s,\u00a0I Sing the Mighty Power of God<\/i>, the last line of verse three reads: \u201cThere\u2019s not a place where we can flee, but God is present there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anywhere Will Do:<\/b>\u00a0your location doesn\u2019t matter. Your sinfulness doesn\u2019t matter. Your past record doesn\u2019t matter. There\u2019s no spot on planet earth where the lines are cut.<\/p>\n

International Long Distance:\u00a0<\/b>Before rates tumbled and people began talking around the globe for free using a Skype Internet connection, it took serious calculation and a large wallet to call home from around the world. A tourist had to fumble with many coins, calculate time zone differences, and then endure the buzz and hums of fragile underwater phone cables gurgling across the entire Atlantic Ocean. But prayer to a distant heavenly kingdom is as close as a bowed head and as clear as the promises of John 3:16.<\/p>\n

Jonah:<\/b>\u00a0this is a deep-sea story of a man who dialed up heaven from the most unlikely of pay phones. This man was literally in the belly of a whale, and he tried to pray from there. That\u2019s one place where you wouldn\u2019t want to get a busy signal or a operator\u2019s demand for more dimes. Jonah himself confesses about the experience:\u00a0\u201cIn my distress I called to the Lord, and He answered me. From the depths of the grave<\/i>\u201d\u2014it might as well have been the grave for him\u2014\u201cI called for help, and You listened to my cry\u201d<\/i>\u00a0(Jonah 2:1).<\/p>\n

\u201cCry\u201d:<\/b>\u00a0A good concordance like the respected\u00a0Strong\u2019s<\/i>\u00a0gives 150 listings for the word \u201ccry.\u201d Over and over, God is saying pretty much the same thing: \u201cI heard their cry.\u201d \u201cMy children cried out and I heard them.\u201d \u201cMy son cried for help, and I responded with great might and power.\u201d We serve a God whose phone lines are never busy and whose quality of digital reception can\u2019t be matched by today\u2019s most aggressive digital, fiber-optic networks.
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\n24-Hour Mercy:<\/b>\u00a0We don\u2019t simply enjoy 24-hour access to heaven through prayer. It\u2019s not just that God is available 24 hours a day; obviously we believe that to be true. But more than that, He has a willing heart, an attitude of welcome, even of waiting on that same 24-hour basis. His attitude toward you is always one of \u201cPlease call. I want you to call.\u201d Before the first ring, He\u2019s already picking up the receiver.<\/p>\n

The Knowledge of the Holy<\/i>, by A. W. Tozer. \u201cIn coming to Him at any time we need not wonder whether we shall find Him in a receptive mood. He is always receptive to misery and need, as well as to love and faith. He does not keep office hours nor set aside periods when He will see no one. Neither does He change His mind about anything. Today, this moment, He feels toward His creatures, toward babies, toward the sick, the fallen, the sinful, exactly as He did when He sent His only-begotten Son into the world to die for mankind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conclusion:\u00a0<\/b>This is no collection of metaphors. We use the telephone as an illustration, but the Bible truth is that God truly is that available to us. He never lets the machine pick up for Him because it\u2019s suppertime or the NBA finals are on or He\u2019s just not in the mood to talk to you.<\/p>\n

Imagine the thrill of a \u201cmiracle\u201d call:<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0A favorite celebrity calls
\n2.\u00a0You\u2019re the 93rd caller and win a million dollars from a radio station
\n3.\u00a0You hear the voice of a loved one after many years of separation<\/p>\n

Every time we get through to the Lord this week, and it\u2019s on the first ring, let\u2019s thank Him for that miracle of an open line.
\n______________________________<\/p>\n

Submitted by David B. Smith. Better Sermons \u00a9 2005-2008. Click here for\u00a0<\/span>usage guidelines<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Never a Busy Signal Key Passage:\u00a0Answer me when I call to You, O my righteous God. Give me relief from my distress; be merciful to me and hear my prayer.Key …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":129,"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions\/129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}