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A wise counselor will send you to Jesus.

A wise counselor will send you to Jesus.

DECEMBER 23, 2020

/ Programs / Key Life / A wise counselor will send you to Jesus.

Steve Brown:
A wise counselor will send you to Jesus. Let’s talk about it on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
This Key Life here to let Christians know that God isn’t mad at them. Keep listening and you’ll hear that because of what Jesus has done, you’re welcomed home into the family of God because of his radical grace free from the penalties of sin and never alone in your suffering.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. If you were listening yesterday, we’re looking at Isaiah 9, where the four predicted names of the coming Messiah are given, and it’s a magnificent passage, but in that passage, He will be called or first Wonderful Counselor, second Mighty God, thirdly Everlasting Father,and finally the Prince of Peace. And we were talking about Wonderful Counselor yesterday and I was confessing, some of the sins of my early ministry. No, not that, your mind went the wrong place. I thought that I was God’s gift to the world. I had gotten a contract on a book and how many of my friends had gotten that? I thought if I use some common sense and the amazing training that I’d received in graduate school, there was hardly a problem that I couldn’t fix. Then I learned the truth, that I couldn’t fix the problems and only Jesus could, period. I have a fairly extensive prayer list and I may have told you this, but sometimes when I have some extra time, you know what I do? I picture myself, and you’re going to send me a letter saying I’m into the new age and should repent. No, I’m not. It’s a good way to pray for people. I picture myself in a cathedral and there’s not an alter, instead of an alter, Jesus is standing up front, where the altar is, and instead of telling Jesus the problems of all the friends, I pray for. They’re sitting in the congregation and I picture myself going out into the congregation, taking them by the hand up to Jesus, giving their hand to his hand and then getting out of the way. You say, you’re crazy. No, I’m not. You’d be surprised when I do that, the number of people that say, Hey, Brown, are you still bring for me? And I’ll say, yeah, I am. And they’ll say, well, keep it up, it’s working. What they are referring to is Jesus, who is the Wonderful Counselor. So many times I felt so helpless. Things were so bad. I didn’t know what to say. I simply wasn’t wise and I knew it. And I said, before we go any further, let’s stop and take this to Jesus. Steve, are you saying nobody should ever go to a psychological counselor or a psychologist or a psychiatrist? Of course not. They can be helpful sometimes, but if you’re a Christian, don’t forget that the Wonderful Counselor is Jesus himself. And, we saw that that passage in Isaiah could be translated as this supreme and supernatural fount of all wisdom. Guys, I’ve been doing this a long time and Christmas is a good time to remember the names of the coming Messiah. And in particular, what we’re talking about now, the Wonderful Counselor, who is Jesus. When he came, he didn’t just come to say nice things or to be a loving person, although he was and did. He didn’t come just to teach, though He did, but everything he taught can be found in the Older Testament, he came to die. And in his death and resurrection, he came to live and to be our friend. And so when Mary and Joseph, before they got instructions on exactly what they were to name Jesus, I’ll bet they thought, given what they had gone through of Isaiah 9. And Joseph said to Mary. Mary, you know, what would be a great name for our new baby? And she would say, what? And he would say, let’s call him Wonderful Counselor. And she would say, where did you get that? And he would say, God gave it to us in the scroll of Isaiah. As I said, I’ve been doing this for a long time, and sometimes I don’t know where to go, sometimes I don’t know what to say, sometimes it’s so bad I can’t fix it. As I record this, just last weekend, I was with some of the most beloved friends that I’ve ever had. The son of my friend took his own life and it was awful. He was gay. He struggled with a lot of issues, some bipolar issues it was hard. And there were about 25 of us there at a private service out in the woods, in the mountains of North Carolina. And I told God that morning, what in the world am I going to say? What’s. what can you do in a situation like that? This is so bad and nobody has the right answers for all of this. And then I remember Jesus and I talked about him and his redemption and his love and his death and his resurrection, and the fact that he said a part of the Wonderful Counselor, because I live, you will live also. In my Father’s Charles or many mansions, if it weren’t so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. I will come again and receive you under myself. It’s Christmas week, rejoice in the baby, but don’t forget, that He’s a Wonderful Counselor. You think about that. Amen. Well, it’s Wednesday and sometimes and certainly this week, I have a little extra time, and I’m going to answer a couple of Christmas questions. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and then Merry Christmas on Friday. And we’ve taken this week to look at the names of Jesus. But I thought maybe I would deal with one or two questions that you guys have sent, we love your questions. You can dial 1-800-KEY-LIFE, 24 seven, and record it. You can send your question to

Key Life Network
P.O. Box 5000
Maitland, Florida 32794

In Canada. it’s

Key Life Canada
P.O. Box 28060
Waterloo, Ontario N2L 6J8

Or you can email your question to [email protected] and we’ll take you and your questions seriously. And by the way, and you knew I was going to say this, if you can help us financially, please do. If you do it quickly, you can get it under the door before it slams at the end of the year and use it on your taxes for this past year, but you got to hurry. In fact, don’t listen to my answer to these questions. Go make out a big check to Key Life. I’m kidding. If you can, do help, if you can’t, we certainly understand and say a prayer for this ministry. These are some of the questions, I have a bunch of them. I can only do one or two, that have to do with Christmas. This is an email. What do you think of Christian sanctioning a pagan holiday like Christmas? Why do so many churches do it and lead Christians astray? Well, you sound like a Scrooge. I don’t think I’d want to spend Christmas dinner with you, frankly. We do it because it’s fun, that’s why. And because it’s Godly, that’s why. Do you know that when we take over pagan stuff, what that says to the world, it says, Jesus won. That’s what it says. And that’s why we celebrate. So if you take your Christmas tree which, I know is a pagan symbol, and you light it up. And you remember Jesus, you can stop for a minute and say, I just want everybody to know that, that Christmas tree, that was a pagan Christmas tree, that means Jesus won. And when Jesus won, I won. So there, put that in your pipe and smoke it. I don’t mean to sound so harsh. I understand you, I called you a scrooge, but you are just like the Puritans, the Puritans have gotten a bum rap, by the way, they were wonderful people, who got grace, but they just didn’t celebrate Christmas, for the reasons you said, and they were wrong. And who am I to say the Puritans were wrong, but they were. Because they didn’t understand the fact that Jesus won. And then this question, we get a lot, which has to do with Christmas. Can you explain the incarnation? No, I can’t. It amazes me all the time. It shouldn’t have happened. I don’t know how it happened, but it did. And because it did, I’m forgiven and loved and I’m going to live forever. And then the question, how can God become a human being? God entered time and space, that’s how. You look at things on a timeline, you’re born in one place and you die in another. You have a birthday at one place on the timeline, you get married. God looks at everything at once on a plane, past, present and future stand before him all the time. And the incarnation is when God who is outside of time, entered time. And in that place, loved His people and died on a cross for them. That’s how it happens, and by the way, I don’t have time to go into it, but that explains how Jesus could pray to himself. He was in time, the Trinity was outside of time, and when he prayed, he prayed to God who was outside of time, as the incarnate Messiah, a baby born in the manger who lived a perfect life and died on a cross in our place. He prayed from there, that the Trinity, who was outside of time. Hey, I got to go. First Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.

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