When We Feel Frustrated - Part 2

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Tuesday, January 25th. Do you ever have that frustrating sense that something is just not right? Learn how to interpret those feelings of unrest and turn your focus to Jesus Christ. Now the title of this message today is part of our series, The Source of Our Strength When Feeling Frustrated.

And let me just say while you turn to Isaiah 14 that all of us have those moments of frustration. Your lawnmower won't start. You know, your babies are crying and the telephone's ringing and the doorbell's ringing all at the same time. Or you're working on this document on your computer and you're almost finished and this little time bomb comes up and says, sorry, systems failure, and the thing goes blank on you. And or you're out on the expressway and all of a sudden you look, you hadn't looked, you know better than this, and all of a sudden the motor dies and you look at your gas tank, your signal and it says empty. Now you just ask yourself, what am I going to do? All of us face those kind of times.

I'm not talking about that primarily in this message. I'm talking about those seasons of frustration when we go through periods of frustration in our life and how we deal with those and what happens. So if you'll notice in the 14th chapter of Isaiah, he says in verse 27, for the Lord of hosts has planned. Who can frustrate his plans?

And as for his stretched out hand, he says, who can turn it back? Now there are periods of frustration in our life that have nothing to do with sin or mistakes necessarily. First of all, it'll be a frustration that you're not, you don't feel driven to prove something. You're not blaming someone. You can't put your finger on a circumstance that you really think if I change that, everything will be different. And so that frustration oftentimes comes instantly without any warning. Sometimes it comes as a process over a period of time and somehow you cannot identify its cause. You see, most of the time when it's something that's a result of something inside of us that's going on that we are responsible for, man, we got a whole lot of things we can put our finger on. But when it's God's frustration, you can't put your finger on it. One of the purposes that God begins to bring about frustration and this restlessness within us, He wants to get our attention about something about our life. It's probably something that you and I never thought about, never considered, never gave it any thought. And so we think, well, you know, I must be sick.

Give me a couple of buffering. I mean, do something. And what it is, it is a restlessness that you can't put your finger on. You just feel it. If it is something that you and I have not thought about, most of the time, God doesn't say, there it is. But He brings this restlessness, this sense of frustration. Little by little, He begins to move us in His direction. And it is a time, it is a process that goes on within us. And it may be, one of His reasons may be to resolve something in our past that we talked about before that we don't even realize needs to be resolved. And so we think, well, why am I so frustrated? And I can look in my own life this very day and tell you that God has done that in my life a number of times, this frustration that I could not put my finger on, nobody to blame, nothing that I could say was going on wrong until finally He got me back yonder to dealing with something that I never even thought about was an issue.

It never even crossed my mind that it would have any effect on me later in life. And so His purpose is to bring us into the fullness of who He wants us to be. So how's He going to do that? One of the things He's trying to do is to stir up, to agitate us. Listen, you say, well, God wouldn't agitate you, yes He will. This frustration until He agitates us, until we come to the place of thinking, God, maybe you're trying to say something to me, now we're cooking. And so what happens?

Part of that is a purifying process. Well, ask yourself the question, God, is this frustration a result of something you're trying to say to me? Are you trying to change the direction of my life? Are you trying to get me to think differently?

Do you want me to think differently about you? I can tell you, one of the greatest challenges in my own life and one of the ways God has worked on me is to change my thinking about Him. And He's taken some real work in my own life to get me to thinking the way He thinks. Listen, to get me to thinking about Him, the way He wants me to think about Him. So what He wants to say to me, I will be willing and able to accept it as coming from a loving, genuine Father who genuinely loves me. He loves you enough to intervene, inject Himself into your life and say, now, I'm not going to let you accomplish any of this.

I want you to deal with something. And what does He do? He puts a pressure on and a pressure, pressure, pressure. Now, if I weasel my way out, and you can do that, and I run and refuse and run to the pill bottle and run to something else in life, I'm going to miss God's best. But His purpose is always something good. Now, when He does that, here's what happens. When you think maybe that God may be doing something in your life, and you see, He's far more interested and personally involved than most people think He is, then the first thing you do is this, you say, okay, Lord, if you're up to something in my life, first of all, I want to deal with anything and everything you bring to my mind that I know about. And so here's what God does.

Now watch this. What does He do? He takes the surface stuff first that anybody can see. He takes all the surface stuff first, and you deal with that. Then you say, okay, Lord, what else?

Then what happens is this. You have a right to begin to expect and anticipate God to do something in your life. When you begin to realize that God is doing something in your life, and you begin to anticipate that He is up to something, what happens? Then you and I begin to tune our hearts toward Him. We want to hear what He has to say.

We really and truly want to know what's going on. If we can just grasp this loving Heavenly Father loves me enough that He wants to say something to me personally. And listen, He desires this intimate relationship. He desires to have oneness with you. He desires to work in your life. Now I want to give you several examples of how willing God is to work in our life and sort of how He moves.

It will be different in everybody's life. But I want you to remember, whether you are 16 or 86, God does send frustrations into our life to get our attention, get us locked in on Himself so we can hear what He's saying so He can do what? He can move me in my attitude, move me in my understanding, move me geographically.

It makes no difference, but move me. Well I remember a lot of instances in my life, but I just mentioned two or three of them here. Some of them became a reality to me. My wife and I finished two years of seminary, we finished up the second year and we were going to Fresno, California to preach and I was going to preach that summer and she was going to sing.

That was going to give us some experience and I'd never been a pastor except one summer and so she was going to lead the choir in this little church, they didn't have a pastor and so we were just going to go out there and fit in for three months. And we had it all worked out and everything was just fine. I can remember just like it was today. Saturday morning, I got up early that morning, began to pray and all of a sudden with no warning I remember how frustrated I felt, I thought, what's going on? It's like I was churning, nothing was wrong, school was about out, grades were fine. I thought, what's going on God?

I couldn't find anything to blame anything on. I thought, uh-oh, what's going on? So when Chief finally got up and we, I said, I want us to pray, something's not right. Did you know we prayed all morning?

We prayed almost around six o'clock in the evening, all day long. About that time, we concluded those were our plans, they weren't God's plans. Now suppose I'd have gotten up and felt better and I said, I need to go out and walk or eat a big breakfast or take a muffin or something, everybody's, let's go, let's just go do something. You know what are we to miss? We'd have missed the will of God. That's what we'd have missed. We'd have missed the will of God desperately. Let me show you how we'd have missed it.

We ended up spending three months up at Lake Lure in North Carolina taking it easy. You can imagine that. You say, that doesn't sound very spiritual.

I know it doesn't. But you see, that's the flesh. That's why God wanted us because about the last week we were up there out in the lake fishing, this man came down. He said, called me. He says, your name Charles Denner? I said, yeah. He said, you're a seminary student?

I said, yeah. He said, I want to talk to you. He came over. He said, pastor's going to be gone two weeks. Will you preach in the church? I said, why sure. So to make a long story short, I preached up there.

They called me. I was pastor of that church and taught in the Bible Institute. But suppose we'd have said, no, we're going to Fresno. No matter what, that's what God said, we're going.

I'd have been out of the will of God. You say, well, I'm not a pastor. It has nothing to do with being a pastor. It has to do with what is the will of God for your life. It may be a job. It may be what school God wants you to go to.

It may be, He wants to make a geographical change in your life, where you live, what's going on. What I'm saying to you is those frustrations, if they're divine, if they're from God, you better listen. Another quick one. When I was a pastor in Bartow, I'd been there about 11 months and I was preaching up in Alexandria, Virginia for a Bible and I came back to the hotel and I got in to pray that first night and all of a sudden I felt real restless, I thought, what's going on? Revival's going good, church going good, everything's fantastic, love Bartow, two blocks away, two big lakes, Andy and I go fishing every afternoon. It was wonderful, restless. Next night I came back, restless, got in to pray and just think, God, what's happening?

What's going on? Third night, same thing. Fourth night, I said, Lord, I got to handle this. I guess something's got to happen.

I took a legal pad, I drew a circle in the middle of it, five lines. I said, it must be this, this, this, this or it must be something I never thought about. So I came back the next night, I said, Lord, what in the world's going on? I'm so frustrated, it's like the Lord said to me, when I got in to pray, I'm going to move you. And when I said when, it's like just about this fast.

Here's a screen, like a screen you'd set up in your home to show slides on. Bottom left hand corner, top right hand corner, big bold black capital letters, September. Take a long story short, September the 30th, I moved to Atlanta. Suppose I'd have said, what's all this frustration about? To the pastor the next day, let's just go play golf.

Let's do something and I need to get over this feeling I've got. You'd never know me and I wouldn't know you, I'd be out of the will of God. I'm saying to you, when God sends frustration in your life, He has a definite specific purpose in mind. I could give you lots of illustrations, but just those that say, listen, He loves you just as much as He loves me and He's just as interested in your job and your family and your work and your children and your things and your goals and your ideals in life as He is me or anyone else. All He wants is when He starts rustling up your nest and getting you frustrated instead of blaming, looking somewhere else. First of all, look inside and ask God, is there something He wants to deal with? And secondly, look to Him and say, Lord, are you trying to say something to me?

Listen, at least give Him a chance. Don't go running off somewhere or blaming someone else or trying to change your circumstance. It may be that God is just loving you. God is so in control of your life and my life.

We don't have to worry about what people do to us or circumstances. We belong to Him. If we're listening to Him and He sends these frustrations into our life, don't look to somebody to blame.

Look to Him and say, God, are you trying to say something to me? Do you want to change something about my thinking, my attitude, my actions, my habits? Do you want to change where I am, what I'm doing? Do you want to change my major? Do you want to change my occupation? Do you want to change my vocation? What are you doing, God?

He loves that. You know what will happen? That frustration will turn to the most wonderful excitement that you know that God is up to something now. There are two things.

Sometimes it's a process and the process sometimes is sort of prolonged. You think, God, what are you waiting for? Come on, just let me have it.

Tell me what it is. No, He's got His own timetable. And then sometimes you know you're getting close. You know you're getting close.

But you know what? You can't make Him, this is hard for me to accept sometimes, you, listen, you can't make Him tell you one second quicker than He intends to. Now listen to me carefully.

Four times the knot, what He's trying to do is going to hit you when you're not even thinking about anything like it. All of a sudden, there it is. You think, well, where did that come from? It came from that long process of listening, waiting, sifting, sanding, working, frustration, anxiety, having pity parties, and all the other things that we do in the process of having God speak to us. Now you say, okay, I got you. What do I have to do to make all of us a reality? I want you to listen very, very carefully because this is the end. It doesn't make any difference if your frustration is the result of something that is wrong in you, wrong attitude, blame, blame, won't change this.

It can be, that, that can be the cause of it, sin or something, whatever God's dealing with in your life, it can be that, or it can be frustration that God sends into your life because He wants to change, move, alter something in your life. It doesn't make any difference which one it is. Listen to this. The answer is the same. Answer is the same.

What is the answer? Now don't trip over this. No matter what's happening, I need to acknowledge this, Father, I may not be worth two cents in my own thinking. I may be so messed up and so much sin in my life and I've been so fouled up, God may feel that way. Lord, I know you love me anyway. I have to, listen, if you don't begin with acknowledging God's love, it's not going to work. Now listen to me. God, I know you love me. I don't feel very lovable. I don't think I love you very much, not according to my actions and habits and God, but I know you love me. Secondly, I'm going to trust you.

And listen to this. Trusting Him means that I'm just depending and relying and surrendering myself to Him to do in me and for me and through me and to me, whatever He chooses because He has the power to do it. He can change anything about me I want to change. He can put me somewhere I can never put myself. That's why I don't underestimate God.

Don't say, oh, I could never do that, don't underestimate Him. You know what it is? It's coming to the conclusion that this wonderful, loving Father loves you in me with all of His heart and secondly, all He wants me to do is to trust Him and if I trust Him, I just surrender my life to Him and just say, Lord, here I am. You just do whatever you want to do and listen to me. I don't care what you're going through. I don't care how deep, dark, frustrating, how much turmoil, heartache, suffering. I don't care what you're going through.

I can tell you with all of my heart. Once you acknowledge His wonderful, fatherly love for you and you say, Lord, because I know you're a wonderful, loving Father who's always doing the right thing and the good thing, I'm just going to trust you. Here's what happens. The frustration disappears. The peace rolls in. The quietness of your spirit overwhelms you. There is a joy. There is a sense of contentment.

There's a sense of absolute peace because you know what? You know that God is going to shelter you in every storm. He's going to be your shield from every attack. He's going to be your wisdom for all decisions. He's going to be everything you need, no matter what. If you want God's best, stop looking around, look up, yield yourself to Him, just surrender yourself to Him. Just say, God, you're a loving Father. You want the best for me. That's what I want, so I yield.

You come out a winner every single solitary time, no exception, because there's no exception to the goodness and the love and the grace of Almighty God. Thank you for listening to part two of When We Feel Frustrated. 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.