How Do We Find Favor with God? - Part 2

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Tuesday, April 12th. God promises to bless those who are surrendered to Him, but it's not up to us to evaluate how He measures out those blessings. Here's more on finding favor with God. Have you ever felt like you had found favor in God's eyes? That somehow you had His unusual support, His encouragement, His strength?

Maybe something that God had given to you, something that your heart desired, that you really and truly felt like, well, God has really and truly favored me. Well, what we're going to talk about in this message is how to find God's favor. It's very evident to me that one of the ways that you and I can have God's favor is to walk with Him.

What does that mean? To walk daily, trusting Him, obeying Him, seeking Him, loving Him, worshiping Him, serving Him. You walk with God, here's what's going to happen. You walk with God, you're certainly going to obey Him. You walk with God, you will love Him. You walk with God, you'll trust Him. You walk with God, you'll worship Him. You walk with God, you'll serve Him. One of the ways that you and I can find favor with God, now watch this, one of the ways that you and I can find favor with God is the right relationship with Him, walking with God. A second way that you and I can find favor with God, we feed upon the Word of God. We get God's truth into our heart because what that does, that enables us to think the way God thinks. And we know how to respond to circumstances and situations because we see how God operates. The only way to learn the ways of God is to feast upon the Word of God, put those principles in practice, and then watch what God does in your life.

But there's one other that I think oftentimes we forget. So I want you to turn, if you will, to Colossians chapter three, a very important verse here, Colossians chapter three. I do believe this is absolutely critical if I want God to favor me. Now, as we said, God's going to favor us in some situations and circumstances. We don't even realize He's favoring us or He favors us when it is His pure grace. The truth is we don't deserve any of it. But I want you to watch these verses here now because, listen, one of the reasons God will favor us is based on the quality of the work we do.

Look at this. Chapter three, verse twenty three. Whatever you do, do your work heartily. That means with enthusiasm.

That means with confidence. That means to the best of your ability as for the Lord rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you'll receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve. Now, if I want God to favor me in my labors, in my work, in your vocation, if I want God to favor me, what does God expect of me? He expects me to do my best to give it all that I've got heartily. He expects me to do my labor, whether you work on a truck or in a building, it doesn't make any difference what you do. He expects me to work for Him. It doesn't make any difference who my authority is.

It doesn't make any difference who my boss is. I'm working for God. Listen to what He says. He says it is the Lord Christ whom you serve. This man or this woman may be your boss at your work, but it is Christ whom you and I are serving.

Listen to what He says. Whatever you do, do it heartily as for the Lord. How can I expect God to favor me, favor me financially or favor me in my work, favor me to get ahead, favor me to get promoted if because I have a job of sweeping floors I don't have to do a very good job of it?

That may be your job. You say, well, you know, after God's not into sweeping floors, let me ask you a question. Is He interested in holiness?

Yes. What's holiness, clean heart? Is He interested in orderliness?

Yes, He is. God is interested in things being done orderly. He's interested in things being done on time.

He's interested in cleanliness. He's interested in us doing a good job because remember this. You and I are servants of the living God. We represent Him. Listen, we're on loan to that business whether it's sweeping floors or sitting behind the desk or running the whole business. We're on loan from God as one of His servants to serve in that position and the Father is the one to whom you and I have to give an account.

Look at this. Whatever you do, do your work heartily as for the Lord rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you'll receive an inheritance. It's the Lord Christ whom you serve. You want God to favor you in your business? Do your best.

You want God to favor you in your family? When you say to your children, well, I didn't, you know, I just shoved it on the rug or I got by the best I could. I'm not going to sweat for these people. You know what you're saying to your children? Don't do your best.

You can get by. And one of the things wrong with the economy in this country is there's so many people today who are so lazy and who are willing to get by doing as little as they can and do sloppy work and not complete what they began. They start and they don't finish. They don't seem to care. And they think, well, it doesn't make any difference because as long as they get paid, that's all that matters. What they have forgotten is this.

They've forgotten who the boss is. They've forgotten who ultimately pays their eternal salary because he says, look at this, knowing that from the Lord you'll receive the reward of your inheritance. You work eight hours a day, five days a week, and we wouldn't call this an inheritance, but you get paid a salary.

Listen to this. You and I work a lifetime at whatever God calls us to do, and there's a payoff. You do a sorry, poor, sloppy, lazy job, and then you expect God to favor you and to bless you and to be good to you. And in spite of the fact that what you do, He is good to you, what I want you to say is this. If you want God's favor, the best that God has to offer, then you do your best in return.

Now, I want you to notice something here because I want to say something at this point that I want you to think about before you respond to. Does every good and perfect gift come from God? Remember what the Bible says?

Amen. James, every good and perfect gift comes from God. Well, every single talent and gift you and I have, no matter who we are, it comes from God. That is, everything comes from God.

Now, think about this. There are people out there that you and I know who are not Christians, who are extremely brilliant. Where did their brilliance come from? Well, they came from their parents. No, it came from God. And so there are people who invent, there are people who discover, there are people who create things that help the whole human race, and all of us have been blessed by people who have created and those people whom God has gifted and favored with a creative mind, who can invent, who have discovered. We've all profited from that. I'm very grateful for people who have invented a lot of things that have become a part of my life. Now, where did it come from?

It came from God. Now, here's what I want you to remember. He says all of His goodness is for the purpose of leading us to repentance.

So here's what I want you to see. Somebody says, well, now, wait a minute. You're giving these people credit. I'm not giving anybody credit. I'm saying that God has chosen to favor people. Ultimately, His reason is that the Bible says, very specific in Romans chapter 2, to lead them to repentance.

It may not only be creative abilities, but it may be extremely, listen, vast wealth. Somebody says, well, now, are you saying that God did it? What does the Bible say? He says the gold and silver is mine, says the Lord. God is the one who makes one wealthy. So it all has to come from God. In other words, God has a right to choose to favor anybody He wants to. He doesn't have to ask you and me.

You know what? We don't even have to understand it. God isn't even under any obligation whatsoever that I understand why He chooses to do what He does in people's lives. And so you and I can think about some people who live in our own city and other places we know who will maybe be very wealthy or who have been very creative in lots of ways, and God has favored them with the gifts that they have. Listen, if you don't give God credit for that, then who gets the credit? You can't give it to the devil because the Bible says every good and perfect gift comes from God. So what I want you to see is that God has the right to favor anyone He chooses to, for any reason He wants to, to accomplish His purpose, no matter who they are.

Now, when you think about that, let's think about this. A person, that person has nothing to do with God's favor because he's just decided, he made a decision, a sovereign will decision to favor that person for an overall or for a general good of maybe many people. But if they die without Christ, they're lost. And no matter all the good that came from what they did, you know what?

They have absolutely no benefit whatsoever because apart from Jesus Christ, there is no salvation no matter how many good works you've done, how much money you have, how much you've given or what you may have been able to create. It is all from God and there is a day of accountability by which we shall all give an account to Him. So therefore, those who have been extremely favored by God in certain ways, the Bible says to whom much is given, what?

Much is required. And so people who have been so favored by God, who ignore Him, who maybe fight against Him or who totally shut Him out of their life, those people lose it all. And this is for eternity, they lose it. And I want to say to you, if you happen to be one of those persons that God has favored and you look around you and all that you have and all that you possess and all that God has taught you and all that you know that you have taken on yourself thinking that it was your hard work and your creative ability and this is what you did and this is me, myself and I, I want to remind you that every single good thing that you possess, every good thing that's come your way, whether it's the brain that you work with, whether it's the material possessions you have, every single one of them, the Bible says that God is the source of it all.

He could take it all away in a split second if He chooses. And the most important thing is that you recognize there is a day of accountability. You will give an account before God. You may not believe in Him.

You may hate the idea. You may ignore Him. But all the ignoring and all the unbelief in the world does not eliminate the day of judgment. So therefore, if you're a wise person, you will acknowledge that God is the giver of all that you have and you will lay it before Him as a gift and you will offer yourself to Him and for the forgiveness of your sin and you will trust Him as your personal Savior lest you die without Christ. And lest you die, listen, with all that God has given you and for all eternity be eternally separated from God. What a horrible, horrible mistake that would be and what a horrible loss that would be for you. But that's the only alternative you have. You give it to God and let Him favor you in this life in ways that are spiritual and have eternal consequences or you take His favor in this life, ignore God.

And spend eternity regretting it. It's just that simple. Now there's some very specific reasons that people don't feel God's favor. So I want to give you a list of them and I want you to write them down because you say, well, you know what, sometimes I feel God's favor and sometimes I don't and I don't know why I don't feel God's favor.

So I'm going to give you a list of things you can just check yourself off on, all right? Number one, why don't we feel God's favor? First one is this. Things don't go the way we want them to go. They don't go the way we expect. We say, well, now God, if you really love me, if you care and if you're really good, you do us and so. So one of the reasons we doubt His favor, don't feel His favor is things don't go the way we expect them to go.

A second one is this. God doesn't answer our prayer. And we think, well, God, if you really cared, I mean, and so we don't feel the favor of God.

That is His approval. We don't feel His support. We don't sense any gift from Him. We don't feel encouragement doesn't answer our prayer. A third reason is because He delays His answers to our prayer.

Sometime He's going to. We know it's the will of God. We know that what we've asked for is the will of God, no question, and He delays. We say, well, God, if you really cared, why don't you, and all He's doing is delaying it for a more perfect time for you and me. And so oftentimes we think He's not favoring us. Another thing that comes to our mind is this, and that is we don't understand the suffering and the pain and the disappointment and the heartache we experience.

We all have that at times. We get disappointed. There's heartache. There's pain.

There's suffering. We don't understand. We don't understand what God's up to in our life.

And so when these things hit us, we don't understand. We think, God, if you really were a God of favor, if you're a good God, then why do you allow this? Why do you allow me to hurt like this? Why do you allow such pain in my life? Why do you allow such suffering? Why do you allow these things to go on and on?

Why do you allow this to hit me? God, if you really were favoring me, why would you allow these things to happen? And sometime when that happened, we don't feel like we have God's favor. One of the reasons that we feel like He doesn't favor us is because we make this big mistake. Now watch this.

We look at our life and compare ourselves with other people and say, well, God, if you were favoring me, you'd give me some of that. You'd give me this. You'd help me do that. I'd be over there. I'd be up there. I'd have this position. I'd have this salary. I'd live over yonder. I'd drive this.

I'd wear that. And so what happens is when we get to comparing ourselves with other people, we overlook oftentimes many ways that God is favoring us all the time. Comparing ourselves with other people is a big mistake.

Another issue here is this. We fail to achieve God's goal and purposes in our life. If the goals that we've set for our life, the things that we believe that's what God wants us to do, and we miss that goal, we don't achieve that. And we think, well, God, if you favored me, you certainly would have allowed me to do that. And so these are some of the reasons that we don't feel like God favors us. And there's one more reason we have this feeling.

Do you want to know what it is? Say amen. Amen. Do you know why we don't feel like God's favoring us? Why? Because He's not.

That's the reason. That's the reason we don't feel it. He's not favoring us. And when He's not favoring us, you're going to feel it.

For example, now watch this. When you choose to walk in sin continually, not a sin here or there, continually, when you choose to walk in sin and disobedience to God, listen, God oftentimes, most of the time, I think most all the time, He's going to withdraw His favor. Now, we're always going to have some bit of His favor, but He's going to withdraw some of His most precious expressions of favor to us. One thing for certain. God is not going to favor us with His best if we're living in sin.

There's a second thing, and that's ingratitude. He says this is the will of God. What's the will of God?

That we give thanks in all things. So if I want God to favor me, we've talked about those ways. If He is not favoring us, then there must be some reason.

Now watch this. If you don't feel that God is favoring you in some fashion, don't look up to Him, look on the inside, because the reason is here. He says He has stored up favors, stored up goodness for those who trust Him, for those who obey Him, for those who love Him. If you're not experiencing God's favor in your life, that is, you don't feel His approval in your life, you don't sense His support, you sort of feel like you're out here on your own alone, sort of fighting the battles in life, and God, where are you? If some of that's going on in your life, you look on the inside and ask yourself the question, God, what's the reason? Is there something in my life that ought not to be there?

Am I just an ungrateful person that I've complained about this and complained about that? When's the last time I began to count the ways you favor me? And here's what you'll discover. You'll discover that God favors you in so many ways that you just keep overlooking. But more than likely, if you sense that God is not favoring you, you're going to find out on the inside. If you ask yourself these questions, I've given you about eight or nine of them there, those statements, if you look at yourself and look at those, more than likely, you're going to find out why. You don't sense God's favor.

Now, watch this carefully. Sometimes a person has a false sense of guilt. They feel guilty about something that God has already forgiven them for. And so they just sense, well, how could God favor me when this has happened in my life? Listen carefully. Sometimes God favors us and because of our attitude, because of our sense of false guilt, because of our sense of poor self-esteem, and that's what guilt creates in our life. We don't even recognize His attempts and the expressions of His favor.

Listen to me carefully. He's a good God. He's a loving Heavenly Father. He has provided the best for you. He has planned His very best for you.

It is His delight to favor you every possible way that He can. If we want to experience it, get in the right relationship with Him, walk in His ways, feast upon His Word, treat others the way you want to be treated. Let your heart be bent toward Him and do your best at whatever God called you to do. You will experience God's very finest favor. Father, you're a loving, wonderful God, so patient with us, and we pray that the Holy Spirit right now will take this simple truth, drive it home to our hearts that each of us examine these aspects of our life. Looking at your favor upon us and then asking, how much more of your favor could I experience, Father, if these issues in these areas of my life were right? I pray the Holy Spirit, Father, will sink this truth into hearts. Let it take root and let it bear the fruit of Godly living, of a righteous life, of a good life, of a profitable life, of a fruitful life, of a joyful life, of a peaceful life, of a contented life, of a happy life. For we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you for listening to Part 2 of How Do We Find Favor with God? We would also like to invite you to join us in celebrating 45 years of God's faithfulness. Stop by intouch.org slash 45 years to learn more. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.