Confidence Amidst Concern - Part 1

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Tuesday, September 14. Problems of all kinds crop up that lead to distraction, frustration, and emotional turmoil. Maintain confidence in God amidst real concerns.

Another in our series providing helps to holiness. If you had to write on one sheet of paper in the middle of that sheet of paper one word, and you had to write the area of your life that most concerns you, or what most concerns you, what would you put in the middle of that paper in big capital letters? If you could write one word, somebody would say, well, my major concern this morning is my children. I don't know what's happening in the life of my children. Someone else would say, my major concern this morning is my home, my entire home.

I don't know what's happening in my home. A student would say, my major concern right now is trying to find out what God wants me to do. Here I am, I've graduated, don't have any earthly idea what I'm going to do. A mother may say, my major concern right now is trying to decide, shall I go to work or shall I not go to work? A businessman's major concern is his vocation.

Can I really and truly serve God like he wants me to serve him and still remain in business? Or someone may say, my major concern this morning is my financial situation. It looks like things are going from bad to worse, and I could be embarrassed.

I may have to call for bankruptcy. That's the major concern of my life, because if I don't get that straightened out, my whole Christian testimony could be wrecked. A teenager's concern might be his own moral life, the major concern of that teenager's life is his own morals. Can he gain victory?

Can he gain sustained victory? What's going to happen in his life? Maybe a senior citizen's major concern is that of his or her will. You have children, you have grandchildren, you want to be honest and you want to be fair and you don't want to be too generous in some areas. And for the moment, that thing is just gripping you. That's the major concern of your life. You see, little concerns oftentimes, if not dealt with, become major issues in life.

It may be that the reason God enlightens our mind and stirs our heart and zeroes our interest in and focuses our interest on a given area is because he wants to do something in our life or in someone else's life through us. And so our desire, our attention rises in a given area. Now it may be that the major concern of your life this morning is for someone else. It may be nothing that affects you personally, only your interest and love and desire and compassion for someone else. But you have a major concern in your life. And it may be that you say, I don't know exactly what to do with that concern. Now you and I can react in several ways, especially if they are concerns of ours personally. And the more concerned we are, oftentimes the more prone we are to react in the wrong manner. Now, you know, if you'll take any major concern and list the normal human reactions of how people respond to them and then look in the scripture and say, well, how would God have us to respond? Most of the time we'll recognize that our normal human reaction is wrong, that what God says we ought to do and what we would naturally do are not the same.

All right. How do we react to things that concern us? Well, sometimes we react in fear. I'm afraid that I may not respond the proper way.

I'm afraid this is going to happen. Sometime we respond with anxiety. We get all upset and we get all stirred up on the inside.

Sometimes we respond with a sense of frustration because of what somebody else may think about how we respond to a major concern. And sometimes our response is that we just want to run. We want to walk away from it. We want to leave it.

We want to escape as quickly as possible. And oftentimes this happens in a family when maybe one member of that family has a major concern and the rest of them are not interested and don't want to get interested because of the change it will demand. Sometimes that's true in a church. Our concern begins to rise and some people say, well, let's just ignore it.

It'll go away. We are afraid to face issues. And sometimes our response is love. You see, we will respond according, now watch this, according to our personal relationship to Jesus Christ.

Not always how intellectual, how smart, or even how committed we are from a human point of view, but you see our response to things that concern us are concerns for others. Our response is going to be according to our personal relationship with Him, not with that thing or with that person. So what I want us to do this morning is to look at what He says in His 138th Psalm about the fact that we can have confidence in whatever concerns us. You see, the believer should never back off and run from what concerns him, nor should we run from other people's concerns, other people's problems, other people's heartaches.

We can expect a lost man not to want to get involved in something he can't handle, but the child of God should never run from his brother's trouble. The child of God ought to have confidence that if this thing concerns him, God may want to use me to help him tunnel his way through this. Or if we have a personal concern, not to ignore it, not to back off, not to be afraid, not to shun it, not to resort to resisting the will of God, but to be willing for God to teach us how to have confidence.

I mean boldness, strong, established confidence to face any issue of life, whatever it may be. Now this 138th Psalm says three things to us that I want you to get in your heart, and the third thing, I want to list several things under that. So let's look at it for just a moment. Well, he says there are three things that you and I need to take note of. Number one, these first two verses, I will praise thee, speaking of God, with my whole heart before the gods will I sing praise unto thee. I will worship to thy holy temple and praise thy name for thy loving kindness and for thy truth, for thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name. All right, now, the first thing I want to say about these first two verses is this, that we should express confidence, we should express confidence amidst concern through praise. I mean the thing that concerns you most, zero in on that and begin to express praise toward God for that thing. You say, well, suppose it's bad. Now remember this, if you're a child of God and He has allowed that in your life, it is not bad.

Now it may not be what you're looking for, but if He's allowed it, you see, if you react the wrong way, it can become a bad experience. If you react the proper way, it can become a good experience so that we are to express confidence amidst concerns that we have by praising God. And notice how He says this. He says, I will praise thee with my whole heart. Now listen, how many times have you had concerns and you said, yeah, the preacher said I'm the praise Lord, praise the Lord. That's not with your whole heart.

You see, with your whole heart means that, man, you feel it on the inside. You may not listen. I didn't say you understood it, but you feel it. And you say, well, now you mean to tell me I'm to try to fake God out? No. Am I a counterfeit of praise?

No. Suppose I don't feel like praising Him. Praise Him anyway. You see, praise does not mean that you always necessarily feel what you're saying.

But the reason all the way through the Psalms we are admonished to praise God in difficulty and in major concerns of our life is because God knows the therapeutic result of praise. Then when you are facing a major concern, and I'll tell you what happens, if it is something that concerns you personally, your job, your finances, your family, attitude, influence, witness, relationship with others, what happens is a thousand things run through your mind like fear and worry and frustration, anxiety, setbacks, and what are the people going to say? All these things run through your mind. Now listen, it's all right for them to run through if you allow them to keep going.

Now watch this, because they're going to come through, it's all right to let them just come through, but they stop in your mind, settle in your heart, reach down into your emotions and cause all kinds of things, ultimately physical disease, if you do not know how to sift them as they go through. That is just let all these negative results and negative responses just pass right on through and then begin to praise God. Now watch this, you do not praise Him on the basis of how you feel.

I don't know where we ever got that from. Now notice what the Psalmist says, I will praise thee with my whole heart before the gods. Now let me explain what he means.

It doesn't mean he believed in many gods. That word refers to a people of great majesty and prominence, kings, judges, so forth. He says, I'll praise Him with a whole heart before men of renown. I will sing praise unto thee. I will worship toward thy holy temple and praise thy name, not because I feel like it, but I will praise Him because what? Because He has been loving and kind toward me.

Loving kindness. You see, you praise Him not because you feel all overjoyed. And you see, that's why He told us to praise Him. You don't praise God after you've gotten over the concern. You praise God while you're in the midst of being concerned in order for that to bring you through it triumphantly. We praise God what?

Not because we feel like it. Listen, you don't even praise God because things are getting better. You praise it the worse they get, what happens? The more you praise Him, you're praising Him for His loving kindness and you're praising Him for His truth. For thou has magnified thy word above all thy name.

Now watch that because it sounds like double talk. When he says He's magnified His word above His name, that means He has magnified His promises even above the attributes that describe God. Now why am I and how can I honestly, without being a hypocrite, how can I praise God when a major concern grips my heart? I can praise Him because I know that regardless of how difficult the situation comes, I am enveloped in the loving kindness of an omnipotent God. I can praise Him because I have this truth within my heart.

He will never leave me nor forsake me. I can praise Him for His loving kindness, praise Him for His truth and praise Him because He has magnified His promises to us. He wants us to claim His presence in whatever concerns us. Now listen, what happens when you praise God in a major concern?

What you're doing is you are bringing God personally, you are involving Him in what you're involved in. I want to thank you, dear Father, that you know what I'm thinking about, that you know my concerns. I want to thank you that you love me and my concerns. I want to thank you that you have the truth that will bring me through this. I want to thank you that your promise ever stands true. You see, praising Him, thanking Him, blessing His name, and when He says He will do that even before men of might and honor, that means unashamedly, courageously, boldly, publicly, He will make His praise known unto God.

Now listen, it doesn't matter what men think. When you're praising God, what you're doing when it's honest and true is you're putting those about you on notice that God is about to do something great and you're trusting Him to do it. Now you see, praise is honoring Him. Praise is focusing people's attention upon Him. When you and I praise God and honor Him and laud Him, what do we do? We are focused in the attention of those about us upon His mighty hand, His mighty work, what He is going to do in our life. Now listen, that has the greatest therapeutic reaction upon a person's life of anything in the world. The more difficult your circumstance becomes, the more you praise God, not to counterfeit, not to fake, not simply because someone said so, but because God requires that of us.

Now He understands we have to learn how to do everything. But if you, listen, if you will wrap whatever concerns you, I mean just wrap it every day, just wrap it in praise and thanksgiving and just praising Him and blessing His name, my friend, I'll tell you something, whatever that concern may be, you will watch God miraculously do something to it. Second thing, not only must we express confidence in this concern through praise, but secondly, we must establish confidence through personal experience.

Express it and then establish our confidence through personal experience. Now this is what He says in verse 3, in the day, referring to His personal experience, in the day when I cried, thou answered me and strengthened me with strength in my soul. And verse 6, though the Lord be high, yet hath He respect unto the lowly. Verse 7, though I walk in the midst of trouble, thou wilt revive me, stretch forth on hand against the wrath of mine enemies and thy right hand to save me. Now watch this, whatever experiences you have already had in your life, God has given you them in order to establish you, that is root you, get you anchored in so that whatever concerns may come may move you slightly but not throw you off balance.

And they'll hit you from every direction but they'll never be able to throw you off balance if you establish your confidence through personal experience. Now as concerns are going to come, they're going to always come and the older you get, the more different concerns that you're going to face in life, the situations, so that by the time you reach 65, 75 or 80, as some of you have already reached, then you've experienced about everything there is. Now you see, the believer should never be thrown off base. He should never lose his anchor because we are constantly looking to see the hand of God in our life, constantly listening to the voice of God as he gives us instruction. And you may be a salesman traveling from place to place, you look for God's hand in what you're doing, listen to God's voice as you travel.

Whatever you're doing, you ought to be listening and looking, looking for the evidence of God, listening for the voice of God because he is attempting to give you instruction and guidance that whatever may concern you, you will be equipped to handle. Now what he's referring to here when he says, in the day when I cried, you answered me. And notice what he said. When I cried, you answered me. What was his answer?

I don't know exactly what he was referring to here. Make it think of two or three things that happened to David at this particular time. But the important thing is here is, watch this, is not necessarily whether God did exactly what he asked him to do or not, but what did he do? He said, when I cried unto you, he said, you answered me by doing what? You strengthened me. You got me rooted in my circumstance so that I was unmoved and unshaken.

I may have been slightly moved, but not thrown off course. I did not lose my anchor by my faith in you. Now, sometimes the things that concern us, God allows them in order to strengthen us. And sometimes you're not going to cry out to God to do something. And his answer to us is not the removal of the hindrance, but strength to face it.

And the reason the Psalmist can come to this eighth verse and say, the Lord will perfect that which concerneth me is because by past experience, God has established his confidence in him through personal experience. He had his eyes open. He was reading God into what was happening in his life, had his ears open. He was hearing God.

I do not believe a parent can teach their child a greater lesson than this. Son, whatever's happening around you, look for the imprint of God. Whatever is going in your ears, listen for the voice of God, because God is constantly relating himself to us all the time. Now you see when a believer knows how to face difficulty in circumstance with confidence, he's not going to back off. He's not going to run. He's not going to despair. He's not going to be afraid. He's going to face it boldly because expressing praise builds confidence. Having been established by past experience, he knows that as God brought him through past circumstances, he will bring him through this one. Thank you for listening to Confidence Amidst Concern. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.