When Opportunities Appear - Part 2

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Wednesday, November 10th.

Are you a little bored with your life right now? Here's more from the series Opportunities Before Us. Well, I want you to turn, if you will, to Ephesians chapter 5. And Paul in this chapter has been talking about the Christian life and how to live a godly life. He talks about walking in love and the life that we used to live is a life of walking in darkness and that we're not to participate in the life of darkness any longer. So, he comes down to this fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth verses that I want to mention a couple of things about. He says in verse fifteen, Therefore, be careful how you walk. And when he uses the term walk, it's a term which simply means to walk about.

That is, it's a way of life for you. He says, Be careful how you live out your life, not as unwise men and women, but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil. Now, when he says making the most of your time, there are two Greek words in the Scripture for time.

One of them is kronos, which is like your watch and there are watches that have some of that name in them. And then kairos, which is simply a matter of an opportunity. Make the most of your opportunities, what he's saying, which of course is your time, because the days are evil. So then, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

Now, I want to say something I'm going to say probably after every point in this message. And that is, we are to, listen, we're to be careful how we walk. We're to be wise about our decisions and we're to be alert to opportunities. Because many people live in the midst of opportunities every day and never somehow are able to recognize them. They think of opportunities as making lots of money or having a new house or going here and going there. They're opportunities in life that are far more important than those. And if you miss them, you're going to miss some of the most exciting times in your life. And if your life is boring and you sort of settle down into a rut, it's because your eyes are closed.

Because you're not being able to see what God has right before you. And I trust that in this passage and these passages, you'll begin to see some opportunities that maybe you've been overlooking. And once you begin to get engaged and seize these opportunities, your life is going to be exciting. All of these passages are familiar on purpose. I try to choose the ones that I think most people would be conscious of. And so, I want to begin with the first one. Look at Luke the fifth chapter for a moment, another incident that is familiar.

And I chose the familiar ones on purpose. One day, Jesus was teaching and there were some Pharisees and teachers of the law, scribes, sitting there. He was in this house.

And the house is full of people, jammed full. And so, the Scripture says in the eighteenth verse that some men were carrying on a bed a man who was paralyzed. And they were trying to bring him in and set him down before the Lord.

But not finding any way to bring him in because of the crowd. They went up on the roof and let him down through the tiles with his stretcher into the middle of the crowd in front of Jesus. Seeing their faith, He said, Friend, your sins are forgiven you.

Now, here's the issue. These guys knew their friend was a paralytic, could not walk, could not go anywhere. They loved him. They said, Jesus is close by, we're going to get you to Jesus because we hear He heals people from all kinds of disease and sickness. And He can raise them from the dead.

We're going to get you there. They saw an opportunity for Him to heal their friend and they weren't quitting. They just started pulling the tiles loose and I suppose Jesus began to see the dust coming down, hurt all that. And He just sort of stopped and then they let Him down right in front of Jesus. Well, did that disturb Jesus?

No, He was blessed, blessed, blessed, because He saw that these men saw an opportunity for Him to heal their friend and they weren't going to stop under any condition until they got Him to Jesus. Now, you say, well, you think I'm going to have an opportunity like that? Now, yours will be harder probably. I can think of things much harder. Here's the issue. When you see an opportunity, watch this, an opportunity to do the right thing, an opportunity to do a good thing, an opportunity to do what God's called you to do, an opportunity to affect somebody else's life, are you going to see it as an opportunity and have a little handicap here or there and so forth? And so, you're going to say, well, maybe I misread God. That's the poorest excuse. That is a pure compromise. That's the work of the devil. I guess I made a mistake. I guess God didn't really want us to bring you over here because the Lord already knew that He was going to be busy and wouldn't have time for you.

Besides that, we're just causing all this commotion. They didn't say that. They saw an opportunity, watch this, and they loved this man enough to, listen, to be rejected, to cost them money, whatever's necessary. They loved him enough to get him to Jesus to get healed. And not only did he get healed, he got saved. Sins were forgiven. Jesus healed him right in front of everybody. The person who got rejected was not those guys. The person who got rejected was Jesus for healing him and for giving him of his sins. You say, well, I don't think I'd ever get in that kind of situation. You don't know that. If you knew that you could take one of your friends, somebody that you love dearly, and you had to travel a very, very long ways to get him healed, would you do it? Jesus gives us awesome opportunities. And then we have to decide, am I going to seize it? Not how much do I have? How long will it take? What will it do? In other words, all the excuses we can come up with, we have to lay that down.

An opportunity is a favorable time in which God wants to work in our life for us, but also for someone else. What do you think those guys thought about on their way home rejoicing? Listen, they threw that cot away. They were going home praising God and thanking Him for healing and thinking, you know what? We don't care how much it costs to put those tiles back. We'll put them back and we'll pay for somebody else to put them back. Our friend is healed, praise the Lord.

They took advantage of an opportunity that looked like it couldn't work. A man's life was changed. But those four men, their life was changed likewise. So, then I think about this whole opportunity to witness.

Think about this. The apostle Paul, I'll just mention several things. First of all, when he was in jail at Philippi and the jailer came out and said, What must I do to be saved? Well, there's an opportunity for the apostle Paul right in his face. Here's a man who's saying, Tell me how to get right with Jesus Christ.

Took advantage of it. Paul traveled the whole Roman world. What did he do in the world in which he traveled? He was continually sharing Jesus Christ in all kinds of situations.

Now, the Philippian jailer, that was an easy one for him. When he got to Athens, for example, in Greece, he knew about these philosophers meeting up there on Mars Hill and all the talk and so forth and Acropolis and on and on and on. And he had seen these statues said to an unknown God.

And they were up there with their philosophy about life. And so, Paul, he just sees this as an opportunity. He could have said, Well, now, they're not going to listen to me. They've got so many Gods already. They've got one they can't even name. They don't know who he is. So, they say to an unknown God.

So, why would I want to get in the middle of that? Paul just says, Here's a great opportunity. So, he walks right into the middle of them. He stirs up a little conversation. And he preaches this awesome sermon in Acts to them and takes advantage of an opportunity to present. He says, Look, you don't know who this God is. You've got this statue to an unknown God. I've come to tell you who He is. He is Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the Son of God, and the only Savior of the world.

And to talk about the cross and what Jesus Christ did. He took advantage of an opportunity that didn't look like one because it was so shut and dried up with these philosophers who thought, Who is this guy showing up telling us about a man who was crucified and rose from the grave? And so, they didn't listen to Him very well.

And when He left, well, what did He do? Here's what Paul didn't do. He didn't say, Well, now, if I think they'll listen to me, I'll talk to them.

But if I don't think they will, I'm not going to. That wasn't the issue. The issue is this. He had an opportunity to say to a group of men who did not believe in Jesus Christ, who was not really aware of who He was. He just said, Here's an opportunity and I'm going in.

And he told them exactly the message they needed to hear. Now, everybody that you meet who needs Jesus is not going to be all that pleasant. In other words, they're not always going to want to hear what you have to say. So, you have to ask yourself this question. I meet somebody who's unsaved. This is an opportunity. It doesn't mean I only have an opportunity if I can get them saved. If they're not saved and I know it, I have an opportunity. I may only be able to say to them, Well, tell me where you're from.

Where did you go to church that don't go to church? How's everything going with you? Pretty good.

Not too good. In other words, listen, you can start with anybody who is unsaved and if you have the right spirit and you realize it's an opportunity, God will use your fumbling and your bungling to do something in their heart. And you know what'll happen? They'll think they're not very smart, but I really couldn't argue about that.

I'm not impressed by that so-called Christian, but I did hear what he said. You see, you're not responsible for that. You and I are responsible for telling it. We're responsible for living it and telling it. They're responsible for their response. And so, if you and I are not taking advantage of our opportunities to tell people about Christ, it's because either we feel like there's something in our life that's not right or we're afraid or we think that somehow somebody's not going to listen and that's not an issue at all.

We're not responsible for that. Well, let me give you a couple more right quick. The nineteenth chapter of Luke is another story that we know really well.

So, I want you to turn there for just a moment because here is another opportunity of a different kind. Jesus is passing through Jericho. And there's a man there by the name of Zacchaeus.

He was a chief tax collector and he was rich. And he was trying to see who Jesus was and he was unable because of the crowd for he was very small in stature. So, he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree in order to see Him, for he was about to pass through that way. Now, let me tell you something about who he was. Zacchaeus wasn't just the guy who climbed the tree.

Zacchaeus was a tax collector collecting taxes from Israelites for the Roman government and they called him a publican and a sinner because they saw him as a traitor. So, he is about Jesus coming and he has an opportunity maybe to see Him. Hadn't seen Him before, didn't know anything about Him much, just things he'd heard. But here was an opportunity for him to see Jesus.

They had strong curiosity. So, he goes out on the street and he tries to, because the Bible says he's real short and he couldn't see over the crowd, so he tries to get up in the front. And they see who he is, you're not getting by me. Because they hated him.

They saw him as a thief to some degree. So, nobody let him in. So, he could have said, well, I guess there goes my opportunity to ever see Jesus, may not come back this way again, which he didn't. But he refused to give up his opportunity. He ran ahead, the Scripture says, and climbed up into a sycamore tree.

Now, a sycamore tree would be easy to climb. So, he climbed up so he was above everybody else. And so, here is his opportunity. Now, isn't this just like Jesus? I love this. When he saw Zacchaeus, he stopped and said, Zacchaeus, come on down.

I'm going home to eat lunch with you today. He came down and what happened? He said, well, how do we know he really got saved?

Here's how you know. He said, I'm going to give back four times what I've taken. He talked about what he, how he was going to give away so much of what he had because he knew that some of it was dishonest. And when he finished confessing and repenting of his sins, Jesus said, this man, he's become a believer. Now, suppose Zacchaeus had said, ah, crowds are too big.

I can't get in. I guess this was my chance and I missed it. And so, now let's go back. He saw an opportunity and he wasn't going to let some excuse keep him from seeing the Lord Jesus.

Changed his life. And think about it, we're still talking about him. We don't know any of those Pharisees and Sadducees. We don't know anybody else's name in that whole crowd.

The only person we know is Zacchaeus. He took advantage of an opportunity to meet Jesus and we're still talking about him. What would you have done that day? Would you have said, well, we might as well go home.

We can't see him. Or would you have said, here's an opportunity of a lifetime and I'm not going to miss it. I wonder how many opportunities you have missed because somebody didn't like it, somebody was in the way, you thought it cost too much.

In other words, you missed a wonderful, wonderful opportunity. And you see, it changed his life. Can you imagine the testimony that he had in town when he started giving people back what he had taken from them because of his relationship to Jesus Christ? He became, listen, think about this. Not only did he get right with God, he became the most popular man in town and the strongest witness to who Jesus was by a transformed life.

Opportunities every day, every different facet of life in all kinds of situations and circumstances. And then I would just come to one last one in the tenth chapter of Mark. And Scripture says in the seventeenth verse, as Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up to him and knelt down before him and asked him, Good teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus, knowing what the issue was, that he not only had riches, his riches had him. And so, he said to him, he said, Sell what you have, give it to the poor and come follow me.

Look at the difference. Here was an opportunity to have the gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ. And he rejected it over something material that would one day pass away and he had nothing left.

So, I'll ask you a question. Would you happen to be one of those persons who has heard the gospel many, many times, but you have refused the opportunity to ask Jesus Christ to forgive you of your sins and to repent of them? You have turned down Christ's offer of salvation. You have refused to seize an opportunity to have the gift of eternal life. I don't know what your reason's been. Doesn't make any difference. It's a poor decision. Let me just say this. It's one opportunity, if you miss, you'll spend eternity suffering the consequences.

That's not what I think. That's what God says. So, what will you do about it? The wisest thing you can do is this, is confess to Jesus that you're a sinner because you know you are.

Confess to Him that you've wasted a lot of your life. That you've let other things take His place in your life. That you have rejected over and over and over again the message of the gospel. You've heard it and watched it on television. You've heard it on the radio.

You've heard it from your friends. But you've never been willing to take advantage of the opportunity. If you're willing to ask Him to forgive you for that and tell Him that you believe that His death on the cross was for your sins and He paid your sin debt in full on the cross. And that He's the Son of God and that you're accepting Him as your personal Savior and surrendering your life to Him. To turn it down one more time could be your last opportunity.

You say, are you trying to scare me? If I could, it would get you into heaven, I would. But I can't.

But you have no assurance that you'll ever hear it again. The wisest thing you can do wherever you are is to make a decision right now to accept Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, surrender your life to Him, and let Him work and live through your life. And that is my prayer. Father, how grateful we are that You're patient with us, that You're loving, You're kind, You're forgiving. And I pray the Holy Spirit this morning, not will but has already deeply penetrated every single heart to think about these opportunities that we've mentioned, knowing that there are numerous opportunities that are unmentioned. I pray that every person here would consider seriously each of these, especially what Jesus said to Mary and to Martha.

This is the most important. Let there be confession and repentance this morning over failure to spend time each day with you in meditation and prayer, learning from you. Let there be confession and repentance, God, over opportunities to bear witness but fail to do so, and many other things that may come into our life. We want to be godly people. We want you to have your way in every single opportunity, and we want to seize them courageously, confidently that you will work at the great benefit to us and the people involved. We love you and praise you in Jesus' name.

Amen. Thank you for listening to Part 2 of When Opportunities Appear. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.