Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Tuesday, May 17th. Let's focus our attention on the life of Abraham. His response to the Lord lays the foundation for a better understanding of the promises of God. It's one thing to know a promise of the Scripture, it's something else to experience it.
So, when we talk about the promises of God, the Bible's full of them, and we talked about He's an awesome, loving God who desires to give us promises by which we're to live. And if you'll think about it for a moment, many people wonder why God doesn't answer their prayer. One of the primary reasons is the fact they ask for things that are not the will of God.
And secondly, they doubt. And one of the primary reasons people doubt God answering their petition is because they don't have any foundation for it. That is, they ask and it's a matter of feeling and hoping and wishing, but no foundation. If you're asking God to give you guidance in some area, or if it's something that you need in your life, you need, listen, to put a foundation to that so that you can get anchored in that. You need to have a promise from God's Word. And there are many promises in God's Word.
And there's a promise for every single solitary thing that you and I need is here. And I can recall one of the most significant times in my life when I was really searching the Lord to know His will for my life about the Holy Spirit. And I was getting ready to begin teaching in a Bible institute as well as pastoring the church, my first church. And so, I knew that I needed to be filled with the Holy Spirit to do that because all these pastors had been pastors a long time. And here I was right out of the seminary, green as I could be.
And I was a little bit afraid. So, I was just praying and I'd been reading and I'd read all kind of books on the Holy Spirit and how you'd be filled with the Spirit and so forth. And so, came down to Friday afternoon before school starts on Monday. And I'm in my study and just reminding the Lord that I want to be filled with the Holy Spirit. And so, I don't remember everything that I was going through, but I was troubled for the simple reason I knew that it hadn't happened. And so, I was just really struggling.
And I remember it was around four o'clock in the afternoon. I still have that prayer rug that I used to pray on in that time. And somehow I turned to First John chapter five. Now watch this. First John chapter five, and all I was asking God, Lord, just show me how to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
I desperately need that. So, I turned to First John. I don't know why I turned to that particular passage.
Turn to the fifth chapter. Listen to these two verses, how very clear they are, beginning in verse fourteen. This is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He will hear us. And if we know that He hears us, we know that we have the petition that He desired of Him.
There was no ifs, ands, buts as far as He says. This is the confidence we have. We know that He hears and we know that we have the request. I read that passage of Scripture and asked myself the question, why have I not read that before now?
Because all it says is something very simple. If you ask God for something, that's the will of God, and you know He makes it clear in His Word that it's His will, and you know that it's His will, you can ask Him and He says, we can have confidence He will do it. When I accepted that promise on the basis of what I was asking Him to do to fill me with the Holy Spirit, from that moment on, God changed my whole life and my whole attitude about the Holy Spirit. And it was one of those moments in life that was absolutely essential for me. And He knew that all of my searching had to finally come to some kind of conclusion.
And it was a conclusion that was real simple. Just believe what I've told you. This is the confidence you and I can have. That if we ask anything according to His will, He'll hear us.
So that. When you're saying, Lord, I want You to show me Your will in this decision I'm having to make. Well, will He do that?
Yes, even if why? He says this is the confidence we're having in Him. That if we ask anything according to His will, it is His will for me to seek His will. And if I know that's His will, then He's going to answer that prayer. He's going to answer that petition. And I think a lot of people's prayers go unanswered because of doubt.
Because they don't have a foundation for the request. This is what I feel. This is what I want.
This is what I'd like to have. The foundation for your request is the promises found in the Word of God. All of these promises. So, when we think about the fact that our whole Christian life is centered around the promises of God. Why do you know that you're saved?
Because He promised. If you confess Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, believing in the resurrection of Christ, thou shalt be saved. And what Paul said to the Philippians chapter, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. All the promises about salvation, about answered prayer, about healing and all of these are promises God gave.
Listen, not for our entertainment, but, and listen, not just to read, but to read, to believe, and to do what? He wants us to activate the promise. That if that's the promise from God, I need to claim it. I need to believe it. Then my prayer has some strength to it.
Otherwise, it may be just something that I'm thinking about. So, what I want to do in this message is this. I want to use one story, one event in the Old Testament as a track to show you. How does God answer prayer? How does He deal with His promises? We said sometimes He has unconditional promises.
They're going to be that way, nothing's going to change it. So, I want to take you along that track. Now, it's not that you simply have never heard the events. I want you to see principle after principle in this scenario with Abraham. Because, now watch this, our life is not like his life. Our events are not like his events, but God doesn't change.
The same principles that worked in his life work in our life. So now, let's start with the very beginning and I want you to turn to the twelfth chapter of Genesis. We've read this passage before. But I want us to read this very clear promise that God gave to Abraham in these first few verses. Beginning in chapter twelve and verse one. Now the Lord said to Abraham, Go forth from your country, from your relatives, from your father's house, to a land which I will show you. And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great. And so you shall be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. He says, And you, all the families of the earth, will be blessed. Now that's eight promises.
And notice what is not here. He didn't say if. He said, I will show you. I will make you. I will bless you. All the families of the earth will be blessed. Here is an eightfold unconditional promise by God to Abraham.
Now what I want you to see is I want you to watch what happens in this man's life. Because a long period of time takes place before God fulfills all these promises. And one of the reasons we miss some of God's best blessings in our life is because His time schedule doesn't meet ours. And of course we see, here's a perfect example in this passage of Scripture that shows us between chapter twelve and twenty-two, what happens when people are not willing to wait for God's promises, when they take things in their own hands, and what happens as a result. So, let's look at this and the first thing I want you to jot down in your notes is simply this, and that is that the promises of God are stated clearly. That is, God would never say to you, now here's what I'm thinking about. Or He wouldn't say, I want you to consider.
Or He wouldn't say, well, here's what I'd like for you to do, but you figure it out. God's promises are crystal clear. God's promises are crystal clear. God's promises are crystal clear. And so, He makes it very clear that there's not a single hazy, shady kind of uncertain promise in the Word of God. So therefore, He's going to make it very, very clear.
But the second thing I want you to notice is this, and we'll go right through these chapters here. God's never going to leave you to sort of figure it out for yourself, and so He makes it very clear. So, I want you to jot down Psalm thirty-two, verse eight.
We have referred to it many times before because it's so very, very important. Let's know what He says. Now watch this, no matter who you are, you and God are talking about some issue in your life. Verse eight, I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you should go. I will counsel you with My eye upon you. I will instruct you.
That is, if you're challenged by something that God is requiring of you, He says you can count on this. I will instruct you. I'll teach you in the way which you should go. I will counsel you with My eye upon you, which is His way of saying, I'm right there with you. I know where you are now. I know where you will be. I know where you could be.
I know where I don't want you to be. I will counsel you with My eye upon you. I will counsel you with My eye upon you. I will counsel you with My eye upon you.
I will counsel you with My eye upon you. So, the important thing is that we recognize that God is going to guide us in whatever He tells us to do. You think about all the decisions you have to make in life. Think about decisions that pop up that you and I don't even plan on. Things that we don't even have any details about. Things we don't even have any details about. Things that we don't even plan on. Things that we don't even have any details about. Things we don't even plan on doing. Things we don't even plan on doing. Things you and I live in a world that's wicked, vile, corrupt, you name it. And Satan is our enemy. And therefore, God wants to be involved in every aspect of our life. Then there's the third thing that's important, and that's this.
I should be spending and doing what? Just what we're talking about here. Meditating upon His Word. What did He say? How does He operate? In every change of our life, what does He want to do? He does it in a way that only He can get credit for it, number one. And secondly, He wants us to learn to trust Him.
And in order to do that, you've got to stay in a right relationship with Him. And so, what we find in these passages here, beginning, for example, in the seventh verse. Now, Abraham's already on the move. The Lord appeared to Abram and said to your descendants, I will give this land. So he built an altar there to the Lord who appeared to him. Then the Scripture says in verse eight, then he proceeded from there to the mountain on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. So what do you find Him doing? He moves in the direction God wants Him to go.
And then He takes the time. And when they built an altar, it could have been all kind of altar, but usually, for example, a stone altar. And that pile of stones represented. You just think about all the technology we have.
Their technology was real simple. Pile of stones here, pile of stones there. He went back to the same pile of stones because He wanted to be reminded of what God said to Him. This is why I encourage you to keep a diary. This is why I encourage you to write down what God says to you.
Because you, listen, Satan will steal it. He will take it right out of your mind. And so, therefore, he went back to do what? To listen to God again and again. Because what God was saying to him, you're leaving your family, you're leaving everything, you're going into an unknown land, Canaan, and I'm going to show you how to get there.
I will take you there. But he was not so self-confident thinking, well, just hear it one time. And I do believe that God oftentimes speaks to us the same requirement over and over and over again, because He knows, think about how busy you are on any given day. He knows that our minds can be contaminated with all kind of stuff. He wants us walking in the center of His will, why?
Because He wants the best for your life. And if there's anything I could say to someone, God wants the best for your life. But you've got to cooperate with Him. He's going to do His part. He's going to show you the way. He's going to make a way. He's going to provide the way. He's going to do everything that a sovereign, loving God can do to help you on your way in life.
But if you violate that and you decide you're going to do it yourself, you're going to get in trouble. It's very, very simple, very clear in the Word of God, which leads me to this next point. That's this, that changing course from God's pathway, changing course from God's guidance, what does that do? Well, first of all, indicates that we are doubting God's promise.
Now, Lord, I know that, I know this is what You said, but Lord, I must, this can't be true because this is totally unreasonable. Well, if you look at this passage of Scripture, the Scripture says that Abram, in verse nine, Abram journeyed on, continued toward the Negev. In verse ten, there was a famine in the land, so Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land.
Now, here's what you'll find out. First time Egypt's mentioned in the Scriptures. Every time he headed to Egypt, he got in trouble. For example, Sarah's handmaid, she chose an Egyptian maid, which really got him in trouble. And when his son came along in the twenty-sixth chapter, and they were having a famine also, and God said to him, said to Isaac, right in the middle of a famine, do not go to Egypt. So, when God gives us a sense of direction, we have to remember that, watch this carefully, whatever the circumstances are, we don't decide, we're going to redraw the map and to change the course of the compass so we can go where we want to go.
So, here's what happens. The Scripture says, there was a famine in the land, so Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land. It came about when he came near to Egypt, he said to Sarah, his wife.
He said, Look, Sarah, you're a beautiful woman. And when these men and the king's men see you, they're going to want you. And all they have to do is to kill me, then they've got you.
So, here's loving Abraham. Now, here's what you do. You lie about who you are. And you tell them that you are my sister. In that way, think about it, you'll be able just to belong to Him, and now I won't lose my life. So, what happens?
First of all, he didn't have any business going to Egypt. Watch this carefully. You mark this down. When you choose to walk away from what you know is the will and purpose of God in your life, you are going to have trouble. So, what happens? They get down there and that's exactly what happened.
They saw her and so they take her in. And then God just sends a plague. Now remember, God's promise to Abraham is unconditional.
Nothing's going to change it. So, He's not going to allow all this. So, He sends a plague and reveals Himself to the king. And so, here He comes saying, Abraham, why did you lie to me? Why did you do this?
Scared the poor man to death. And if you'll notice, the Bible says that when Abraham walked out of Egypt, he walked out of Egypt very, very wealthy. Somebody says, oh, well, that wasn't such a bad idea after all.
Yes, it was. If you think you're going to disobey God and God's going to bless you, watch this carefully. It may look like you're getting blessed, but you're not.
And many people have been blessed with wealth that absolutely destroyed their life or destroyed their family or whatever it might be. So, he walked away and what I want you to notice in this passage is simply this. God says, here's my promise.
Here's what I'm going to do with you. And He, listen, Abraham didn't have nearly understanding of what God was going to do with him as you and I do. Because remember this, Abraham, his son Isaac, his son Jacob, his son Judah, through whom the genealogical line of Jesus can be traced all the way to Bethlehem. So, he didn't have any idea, ultimately, this awesome, huge, eternal plan of God through him. Think about what God told him. All the specific things He told him.
Then there's a family and he says, I better head out somewhere else. Got him in trouble. Well, that's not the only trouble he had, but it's part of it because he stepped out of God's plan, out of God's will. And this is why somebody says, well, I don't know that I know the will of God that much. That's why meditation, praying, reading your Bible, focusing your life on God makes the difference.
It's just that simple. That none of us are smart enough to do it on our own and neglect the Word of God, which, this is how we get in the direction in our life. And I think about times when I've faced big time decisions and read some passage of Scripture and He makes it crystal clear. And then what happens is when the doubts come, your anchor is right there.
Here's what you said. And I can remember one of the toughest times in my life when I was going through a difficult time at church and people want to get rid of me and this, that, and the other. And so, I said, God, I want You to show me how am I to respond. I know what You told me, Lord. He led me to this passage in Scripture. No weapon formed against you will prosper, not one. That's been one of those anchors in my life through many years and through many battles.
No weapon formed against you will prosper. That's the heritage of the servants of God. Thank you for listening to The Fulfillment of a Promise. 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.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-04-17 13:17:37 / 2023-04-17 13:26:53 / 9