We need more good news. Good news still makes me feel good. Good news lasts a long time. Don’t you like good news? You know you can be the bearer of good news. Proverbs 16:24 says, “Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul and health to the bones.”
That was written 700 years before Christ. He knew what he was doing Proverbs 17:22 says, “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.”
Colossal Good News – Proverbs 15:30
So, yeah, I’m tired of bad news; it weighs you down, it raises your stress, it gives you fatigue, it gives you anxiety, it gives you depression, it gives you insomnia, it gives you stomach problems.
I’ve had some of those seems like all at once. Seems like sometimes, so I got rid of the news apps on my phone. Anybody like me? The first thing you do when you get up in the morning is grab your phone?
Okay, I know you jump out of bed and pray in tongues and everything, and that’s good. I’m glad you do that, but you grab your phone, so I got rid of those news apps. I don’t want to hear really, and I know you have to preach this, somebody has to preach this, but I don’t really want to hear so much about how the world is going to hell in a hand basket.
I really want to feel. I really want to hear something about the fields are white for harvest, that’s what I want to hear more about. I don’t want to hear about all the sin in the world. I really want to hear more about where sin hath abound, grace does much more abound!
Boy, there ought to be a lot of grace flowing around now. There ought to be a lot of grace. Let me tell you a story about the effects of good news.
Many, many, many years ago, I went to the doctor and he discovered a lump on my body, okay, and he said we’re going to have to send you down, it was the Old Saint E in Covington, and cut you open, and get a piece of that and see if it’s cancer.
So, that was a hard day to hear that, and I was pretty young and I was pretty scared. I was sweating it really, I mean, I wasn’t living for the Lord, I don’t think yet, I know I wasn’t. So, I went down there and they had this big long row of beds.
I think they put the beds in the row in order that they were going to take you in and cut on you, and I was supposed to go in at 10 o’clock, and there was one guy in front of me, and they were working on him. I’ll be like Pastor Tom, I don’t know if I should mention that, but then he always does, and he was getting a shave, and if I can say this properly, it wasn’t his face, okay.
That was in my near future too, so it was 10 minutes till 10, four minutes, three minutes, two minutes, and I was scared to death, not just of the surgery, but of the possible outcome. So, about 10 o’clock, my doctor came walking down the hall, Reuben Almario, and he came up and he said, “I want to examine you one more time before we take you in surgery.”
He looked up at me with this big surprise on his face and he said, “Well, that lump has gotten smaller. You don’t have cancer. You can go home.”
I want to tell you, I don’t remember much after that, but I know there are nurses there who still talk about who was that madman who almost trampled me getting out of here?
Good News will do that for you. We need more good news. Good news that still makes me feel good. Good news lasts a long time. Bad news, you got to keep piling it on. Good news makes it last a long time.
That fourth verse, Proverbs 15:30 in the NIV, it says, “Light in a messenger’s eyes brings joy to the heart, and good news gives health to the bones.”
You know you can be the bearer of good news. You can be the bearer of good news. It doesn’t have to be a great healing, it can just be kind words. You can give someone some good news. I’ve heard it tonight. You know the word gospel actually means good news.
Now, all you evangelists, don’t get mad at me, but the gospel is not, it’s not a hundred percent about getting people saved. It is not all about, I mean, that’s the important thing. You got to get them saved, but for you evangelists, after you get them saved, then they come in. They got to hang around with us for the next 30 years, okay?
So, they’re going to need some good news to stick around, and I say it in a funny way, but it’s the absolute truth. If they get saved and come around and we’re a bunch of bad news whatever, I wouldn’t stick around very long. They need some good news.
The gospel means they can have life, and have it more abundantly, with some joy and some laughter, if they get some good news once in a while. Don’t you like good news?
I was at the eye doctor not long ago and sitting there, and I just wanted to be out doing something else. You know how they put you in one room and another in another room so you don’t really know that it’s an hour before they actually get you in there? I’m sitting there and I said out loud, “Lord, I need some good news.”
So Dr Thon comes in, and the first thing he says is, “Well, Mr Rust, I have good news!” God’s good, isn’t He? And he said my eyes were just fine. That put a little something in my step as I left.
You know good news lasts a long time. I remember a day in 2020, in November, when I finally got Pam to say, “Okay, I’ll go to the hospital,” and I said, “Well, I’ll drive,” and she said, “You ain’t driving me! I’ll call the ambulance. If you drive me, they’ll make me sit in the emergency room for 12 hours.”
By the way, if you can avoid it, now, don’t go to the emergency room. I was in yesterday. Every room was full, and they have people sitting around on the walls at like a battle zone or something, but, anyway, they took her, took her out, and they said, “Well, we’ll come and get her.”
They didn’t really want to, this is 2020, and they took her, and I went to the door and they said, “Mr Rust, you go back and sit down,” which was a little upsetting because they’re hauling my wife off, and she’s real sick, and he said you go back in. You can’t go.
So he took her to Florence and then to Fort Thomas and over there where they put all the covid people, and she was there for a while. I didn’t call her much. I wanted her to rest. We texted some, but I do remember the day, I do remember the day when she said, “You don’t want to see my x-rays because both my lungs are completely full of pneumonia and they’re going to put me on a ventilator.”
Now back in 2020, a lot of people believed that was a death sentence. It wasn’t. That was just the last thing they tried. So I went to praying. I went to pray and walking around and around. it’s a wonder there’s not a path there where I walked around and around and around.
I really got straight with God. I think He appreciated finally I wasn’t so spiritual. And I said, “Now Lord, You said, You said, ‘Ask and you shall receive.’ Well, I’m asking,” I said, “You said, ‘Knock and it’ll be open.’ Well, I’m knocking. You said, ‘Seek and you’ll find.’ Well, I’m seeking,” and I don’t know what else, but I told Him a lot of things.
He doesn’t mind. He’s not intimidated. So, the next morning that wonderful sound of a text message or an email came on my phone, and it was a message from Pam. She said, “I haven’t felt this good in a long time!” And then she said, “I don’t mean just in the hospital, I mean anywhere!” And a couple of days later, she was home.
Good News! That still has powerful effect on me. That still has a powerful effect! You see why good news is so important? And I remember crying as I texted Pastor Tom and told him because she’s his favorite Aunt. He doesn’t say that but, Amen! That’s what she tells me. Amen!
You know in this business of good news, which you can give someone. I did mention that right? You can give someone you have to kind of do it on purpose though. Don’t sit around waiting for God to come give you a forehead smack. Do it on purpose. Do it on purpose. You never know, you might start prophesying.
