Welcome to the In Touch podcast with Charles Stanley for Thursday, October twenty second. One of the greatest joys of a relationship with God is being able to communicate with Him. Today, you'll be challenged to slow down, be still, and listen for His voice. Here's guidance on answering the call of God. When you think about God, do you think about Him as a power or a person?
And when you think about him, do you think about him being distant, or do you think about him being close?
Well, the way you and I view him is the way we're going to respond to him. And the truth is, God isn't just a power; He's a powerful person. He is only distant to those who have distanced themselves from him. He is the God of mercy and love and goodness and kindness. He is the God who seeks the best for us.
He is the God who desires the best for us. He is the God who expresses His love and kindness toward us in every way possible. In fact, one of the most wonderful things about God is that He is not so distant that He cannot speak to us, but He desires to communicate with us. To speak to us, and to have us to speak to Him. We think sometimes that praying is we do all the talking, and that's sort of the way it is.
But God desires to communicate with us, and He communicates with us in ways that we don't even understand, probably. And sometimes we give the credit to someone else when truly it is God who is in the process of communicating with us. And when I think about all the aspects of God, the fact that He's willing to do that is one aspect of His character and His love for us that we need to examine. When I think about, for example, all the way back in the Old Testament, the Bible says in Genesis chapter twelve, the first verse, that God called Abraham to separate himself from his people and his family and go into a land that He would show him. Later in the book of Exodus, He calls.
Moses on the backside of the desert at a burning bush, to go and lead the children of Israel out of Egyptian bondage. Then, if you turn to First Samuel chapter three, you will find God speaking to a little lad, not only to grown men but to a little lad. And he says in First Samuel chapter three, now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord before Eli. And the word of the Lord was rare in those days. Visions were very infrequent, and it happened at that time as Eli was lying down in the place.
Now his eyesight had begun to grow dim, and he could not see well. Listen, what happens? And the lamp of God had not yet gone out. And Samuel, who was just a lad now, was lying down in the temple of the Lord where the ark of God was. That the Lord called Samuel, and he said, "Here I am." Then he ran to Eli and said, "Here I am for you.
Call me." But he said, "I did not call. Lie down again." So he went and lay down.
So the Lord called yet again, Samuel.
So Samuel rose and went to Eli and said, "Here I am for you. Call me." But he answered, "I did not call my son. Lie down again." Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord. Nor had the word of the Lord yet been revealed to him.
So the Lord called Samuel again for the third time, and he arose and went to Eli and said, "Here I am, for you call me." Then Eli discerned that the Lord was calling the boy, and Eli said to Samuel, "Go lie down, and it shall be if he calls you, that you shall say, 'Speak, Lord,' for your servant is listening." So Samuel went and lay down in his place. And you know I do believe that God does work in people's hearts and speak to them in such a way that sometimes they don't even realize He's speaking. You and I could go through the Old Testament, for example. Again, He called Gideon to go and deliver the people from the Philistines. We could go to the New Testament and find Jesus saying to the disciples as He walked by the Sea of Galilee, He said, "Follow Me, and I'll make you fishes of men." Then you could go all the way to the Book of Acts and find that here's Saul of Tarsus persecuting the Christians, throwing them in jail, and all of a sudden he is struck down on the Damascus Road, blinded.
He hears a voice, and God is calling him.
Now, once in a while, I'll hear somebody say, "Well, once when I was saved, I had a Damascus Road experience." Then I want to say, "I'm grateful to God." He didn't have to knock me down and blind me to get me to listen to him.
So when you think about his call in your life, let me ask you a question: How have you responded?
Well, you can respond yes, no, wait, or you can ignore the call. But remember this: When you say yes, that's very clear. When you say no, that's very clear. When you say wait, what you're really saying is no. God doesn't usually say ten years now.
Here's what I want you to do, but He speaks in today. He says, for example, "Behold, today is the day of salvation." God does not speak in sort of. Questionable, unclear, garbled language. He makes it very, very clear. Not always as clear to us as it is to him at first, but his his responsibility to make what he says very clear, whatever that call may be.
So when he calls you, you can say yes, no. You may say wait, but what you're saying is no, or you can just ignore his call, which is always very dangerous. You can say no to God's call. But what you are saying no to is you are saying no to the sovereign of the universe who created you. You are saying no to the best blessings that God can possibly create for you.
You are saying no to the one who knows you perfectly, who has your life all planned out, who has promised to bless you, promised to fill you with Himself, and to go with you every single step of the way wherever He may call you. Would you not agree that it would be very foolish to ignore God? It is very foolish to ignore the calls of God.
So you say, "Well, if He's called me, I'm not sure." At least it seems to me that I've never heard.
So what I'd like to do is I would like to sort of share with you the four ways and the four reasons God calls us, because He does. God desires to set up a communication with us, to establish communication with us.
So what does He do? The first call of God in anyone's life is the call to salvation, to trust Him as personal Savior. That's the first call. That's how He sets up His relationship with us. Because you see, if you've never trusted Jesus as your Savior, you don't have a relationship to God.
Now you may say, "Well, I believe He's up there somewhere, and I can talk to Him, and He talks to me." If you have rejected His Son. You have rejected the means by which you and I establish a relationship with Him, and so you may be hearing things, and you may be placing words in the mouth of your God, whoever this God is. The truth is, you have not heard from the God of the Bible until, first of all, God begins to speak with you.
So here's what happens: the Spirit of God begins to convict you. You begin to realize you need the living God. And you face up to to the point that you begin to speak to God that you've never seen Him, never felt Him necessarily, but you know God is trying to speak to you. You begin to confess your sins. You repent of your sins.
You do have a deep abiding sorrow for the way that you've been living. God brings you to the realization that when His Son Jesus died on the cross, that there was something about that death that made it possible for God to forgive you of your sins, and you begin to realize that God is helping you to understand what His death is all about. That He died and paid your sin debt in full. You may not use those terms. You may not understand very much about it.
But there's something about the cross, something about His death, you can't get through to. And yet, the Holy Spirit is working on the inside of you. What is He doing? He is enlightening your mind, enlightening your heart to help you understand. That if you ask him to forgive you of your sins, that the Lord Jesus Christ, who went to the cross and died for your sins, he's the one who paid the debt for your sins, so that you don't have to work for it, cry and beg and plead for it.
It is offered to you as a gift, and that's what we call the gift of God's grace: His love and mercy and forgiveness. And so, what happens? You have just enough understanding to cry to God and to ask him to forgive you of your sins and to cleanse you, and that you're receiving His Son Jesus Christ. Christ is your personal savior, and you're saved. That was His first call in my life.
That's His first call in your life. He's calling. He's been calling. And the truth is, you say, "Well, God has never spoken to me." Yes, He has. You just didn't recognize it.
He will use somebody, something you hear, something you read, to do what? To bring back to your mind that you need the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior. You know what? You may blast the way at God, ignore God, call yourself an atheist, an agnostic. You may hate the things of God.
You know what? Does that mean that God isn't saying anything? No, it doesn't, because you see, sometimes people are saved with the awesome. Resistance, everything in them—they do not want this. And the power of God is so strong; they have to break down, yield, and say, "Oh God, have mercy upon me and forgive me of my sins." His first call in your life is the salvation.
You say, "Well, there are some people who die who are not saved." That's correct, and you know why? Because they say, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no." You can say no so long that finally you can't even hear, you can't even sense the spirit of God. You can harden your heart so deeply, so long until finally you have absolutely no desire whatsoever for God in your life. You know what the Lord says when somebody says to me, "Well, I'm going to be saved one of these days." You don't know whether you will or not. The Bible says, "Behold, today is the day of salvation." He warns us against having a hardened heart.
Listen, it is a dangerous thing to hear the gospel and say no to the living God. It is a dangerous thing to hear someone share their testimony and invite you to receive Christ as your savior, and you shun them and shut them out and criticize them for telling you all about their religion, so-called. God calls us. And he begins to call us early. There are few people that I've known, very few people that I've known, who never heard the gospel message.
The first time they ever heard it, they were so convicted of their sin, they were saved the very first time they heard the gospel. But you think about how many times you've heard it, and you've said no, or you've said wait, or you've said I'm not ready. And the Bible says, "Behold, today is the day of salvation." How are you going to stand before God one of these days and say, "I said no, I said no, and I said no," but I meant no? You see, to say no to the gospel of Jesus Christ is the most deadly thing you can possibly do in life. His first call is a call to salvation.
And you may not have recognized what's been going on in your life till this very moment, when you're beginning to think about it right now. You're saying, "You know what? I've had these feelings you're talking about. When so and so witnessed to me, I had this funny feeling in my heart. You see, it may be a funny feeling, it may be a strange feeling, it may be a difficult feeling, it may be a very disturbing feeling.
That's the work of the Holy Spirit doing what? Cultivating and stirring you up.
So that you will hear and receive the message of the gospel, and let me say to you, as parents, when your five or six or seven or eight or ten-year-old teenage kids come to you and say, "You know, I want to trust Jesus as my savior," just because you're a child, maybe five or six or seven years of age, doesn't mean they don't understand. There are many people who are saved at the age of five. You know what? They may not understand much, but they may have more faith than you do. For the simple reason, they heard the pastor say, "If you ask the Lord Jesus Christ to forgive you of your sins, He'll forgive you for your sins." And your child believed the testimony of the Word of God and was saved.
And here you are coming up with all the excuses why you can't be saved. Never listen. Never hinder a child. You say, well, but suppose they make a mistake. You know what?
God loves children so much; He'll correct the mistake. He'll get that straightened at the right time. Don't ever hinder a child from coming to Jesus early in life. God is speaking to them. Isn't that the normal way?
For example, you raise a child in a home where mom and dad read the Bible. The children hear the word of God. They see their parents praying. Is it strange that at the age of five or six years of age, when you've been talking about Jesus all of our known life, and that He's the Son of God, and that He loves us, and that He forgives us of our sins, and He walks with, is it strange that a child would want the same Jesus in their heart? No, it's not strange.
That's a normal, natural way it ought to be. But if you live like the devil in front of your children, and then wonder why they don't go to church, blame yourself. You wonder why they're not saved. Look back in your life and ask yourself the question: What kind of testimony was I? Because that's the most awesome testimony of all—that of the life of a parent.
God's first call is the call to salvation.
Now, for a lot of people, they say, "Well, I'm saved, and that's it." That is not it. That is only the first call.
Now, watch this again. You do not grow into salvation. You become more and more enlightened, more and more understanding, until the moment. You receive him as your savior. That call finally is answered once and for all.
His sins are forgiven. You become a child of God. Your name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life, and you are forever secure. Call number one. Call number two is a call that most people never even think about.
I want you to turn, if you will, to First Thessalonians. And this particular call of God is specific about something, but it is an example. First Thessalonians chapter four, and verse three says, "For this is the will of God, your sanctification." And then he narrows it down to that is that you abstain from sexual immorality. And then he says in verse seven, "For God has not called us for the purpose of impurity, but in sanctification." All right, and remember that. Turn over, keep going to First Peter, and look if you will in verse fourteen.
Listen to what he says. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lust which were yours in your ignorance. That is, here is what he's saying: As obedient children, don't let the world shape you back into what you used to be like. Don't go back into that. First Peter chapter one verse fourteen.
Listen: As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lust which were yours in your ignorance, but like the holy one who called you, be holy yourselves. Also, in all your behavior, because it is written, you shall be holy, for I am holy.
Now you say, "Well, does that mean what?" What do you mean by holy and sanctification?
Well, sanctification simply means this: that you have been set apart by God for the purpose of God to live a holy, Godly life. And the word sanctification and the word holy both come from the same Greek root.
Now, does that mean a sinless life? No. And oftentimes we want to take words like sanctification, relegate them to some denomination or so. No, listen. Sanctification it is a process.
Salvation is an act, no process. Save once and for all. What does he do? You receive him into your life. Listen, sets you apart as a child of God for the purposes of God.
Now the Bible says we're to live a holy life. What does that mean? Here's what it means. It does not mean a sinless life, because all of us have a little carnality in us, and we're going to falter at times and sin against God at times. Not because we want to, because we are weak in certain areas of our life.
Probably everybody has some area of weakness, but sanctification is a process. It begins the moment you are saved, and it lasts for the rest of your life. What is that? That is the Holy Spirit, who came into your life the moment you were saved and sealed you as a child of God. Doing what?
Beginning to work and to conform you to the likeness of Christ.
So He's the one who begins to show you this in your life needs to go. This you need to add to your life.
So what happens? Little by little, God begins to work righteousness and holiness as the way of life into our life. When you not trust the Lord as our Savior, the Holy Spirit begins to do what? He begins to bend our wills and our desires. Our hungers and thirst in life toward the living God.
We want what He wants. We desire what He desires. We want to behave. We want our conduct to be in keeping with who He is.
So what's happening? Little by little, day by day, year by year. And the truth is, the longer you and I live as believers, listen, the more holy our conduct and our conversation, our character ought to be. Tragedy of tragedies that many, many people trust the Lord Jesus Christ as their savior, never thinking about that God wants me to live a holy life.
Well, that's what the holiness do. No, here is what the Bible says: Be holy, even as I am holy. And that we're to live a sanctified life. In sanctification, that passage he says we're to be sanctified. Therefore, we do not commit immorality.
We're to be sanctified. Therefore, we follow the will of God. And the truth is, every single day of your life, once you've been saved, is a day of opportunity to walk obediently, a disobediently, to live out a sanctified life, a holy life, or unholy life.
So that it isn't once and for all; it is once and forever. A matter of living holy before God.
Now think about this. When you think about the kind of life that you live, that you get up every day saying, "Well, do the best I can today." I know I'm going to sin because you know, after all, saved by grace, we're still sinners. Is that your attitude, or should it not be? Thank God He saved me, and the Holy Spirit's living on the inside of me. And Father, today, by Your help and Your strength.
And your divine guidance, I'm going to walk holy before you. I'm going to be obedient to you today. I choose to live a sanctified life, and therefore I'm trusting the Holy Spirit to guide what I say, guide where I go, guide what I touch, guide what I think, guide what I feel. I want to walk holy before you today. Have you ever said to him?
You want to walk a holy life, or have you been one of those persons who's never even dreamed of the idea of being holy? Because that is this pious, pious kind of person who is godly, separated from everybody else. No, you know what? Wear the same kind of shoes and socks clothes anybody else wears. We drive like other folks drive.
God's put us down here not to be pious and holy and live in some kind of a temple, but to walk among men and do what? Demonstrate the life of Christ. He's in the process of conforming us to his likeness. And if that's true, is it not true that the longer we live, the more of him people should be able to see in us? The softer our hearts, the more tender our hearts, the more willing we are to serve and to love and to be kind and gentle and understanding.
Should not these characteristics of the spirit be more evident in our lives the longer we live? And when I think about people who are growing old and getting cynical, there is something wrong. They've missed it somewhere. Because God has called us to salvation, a once and for all call to sanctification, all of our life. Thank you for listening to the Call of God.
If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by in touch dot org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
