His Empowering Presence - Part 2

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Tuesday, January 31st. All of us go through difficult times that can leave us feeling discouraged, defeated, and just plain sad. But those emotions don't have to linger. Today, you'll hear why believers are never without hope. God desires that every single one of us be aware of His presence in our life. And so I want you to turn, if you will, to Psalm 42, and the title of this message, His Empowering Presence. God does something in the life of a person who is aware of His presence in their life. The 42nd Psalm, and here David is expressing his hungering, thirsting desire for God.

Listen to what he says, beginning in verse one. As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night. While they say to me all day long, Where is your God? These things I remember, and I pour out my soul within me. For I used to go along with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God, with a voice of joy and thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival. Why are you in despair, O my soul?

And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him for the help of His presence. For the help of His presence. God desires that every single one of us be aware of His presence. Now, it's a legitimate question to ask, and that is, well, how does God, how does God make His presence known in our life? How does He do that?

So I want to give you a list of things that I hope will be helpful. Now, let me say right up front, I can go through the Scriptures and explain how He's made Himself present in the lives of people in the Old Testament as well as the New. But the question comes, how does He do that today? And of course, He gave us the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, early New Testament days, following the Gospels and the Book of Acts. And the Holy Spirit now indwells every single one of us. And so all of us have God on the inside. But listen carefully. It's one thing for me to have Him on the inside of me, which means I'm always in His presence, and He's always in mine. That's one thing. But it's something else for me to be aware of His presence, to experience that, to be able to feast on that, to be able to be encouraged by that, to be able to be fearless and bold, and to be courageous and peaceful and contented about that. If I'm not aware of it, it doesn't make any difference. It's like walking on the same road every day after a while, you don't see the flowers anymore because you've seen them so often.

Or maybe you've been that way so long and never paid any attention to them, and you decided you're going to start looking around, you still walk that way for a while before you understood and began to look and understand. God wants us to be, listen, He wants us to be aware of, sensitive to, experience His presence. So what I'd like to do is to give you some examples. And I'll have to give you those examples from my own life, because that's the only ones I know for sure. That's the only ones I know for sure except the Word of God. I hear people tell me about their experiences, the presence of God.

So I just want to give you some that I hope will be helpful to you, and certainly one of them is this. And that is that sometimes God speaks so clearly, so forcefully, quietly, silently, but very clearly, we know that it's God. I can remember the man who called me and said to me, I was thinking about you all day yesterday. And he said, I had this strong feeling, this strong urge to call you. And so he said, I didn't know why. Well, the end result was an absolutely fantastic gift that he gave to the ministry.

But do you know what he kept saying to me after I would talk to him on the phone after that? He said, you know, I will never forget the fact, and he was in his seventies when he said this, he said, I will never forget the fact that all these years of my life, for the first time, I knew I had heard from God. Are you going to wait until you're in your seventies or eighties or whatever it might be, before you understand for the first time you've ever heard from God, that you've been in His presence, that God has spoken to you very clearly?

I hope not. He's so willing to speak today, if you will let Him, right now, if you will let Him. One of the ways He speaks, He speaks very clearly, very forcefully, though questioning our mind about it, we know that God is speaking because what He says will always be consistent with His Word.

What He says will always be consistent with the life of our Lord, whatever the Lord Jesus Christ, if you look at His life. Sometimes the way God makes His presence known to me is He will awaken me in the middle of the night. No warning. Wake up. God is right there. Do I see Him? No. Can I touch Him? No. Is it absolutely dark? Yes.

Do I sense His presence? Absolutely. Is that a fearful time? No. It is an awesome time to know that God loves you enough to awaken you to say this is the solution. This is the answer. This is what you are to do. Am I an exception?

No. God loves every single one of us. He's willing to do that for anybody who is willing to make themselves available, to anticipate and to expect God to work in our life. But if you don't expect it, then more than likely, you don't anticipate it. You won't get yourself in a spiritual position where God is willing to or ready to speak to your heart. Sometimes the way He makes His presence known is instantly instantaneous guidance.

You will be in a situation where you instantly need to know what to do next. And God makes Himself very, very clearly known. Sometimes He will say something very clearly to you that you know is exactly, has to come from God.

For example, sometimes I will wake up in the middle of the night or sometimes I will have been studying and maybe moving around doing something else. It's like God says, I'm ready to give you the message. Go right now. Well, I made the mistake a couple of times of deciding when I would go. And when I sat down in front of the computer, it was flat zero, nothing.

I promised God I would never do that again. Now when I sense His presence and He says, I want to give you the message now, sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes in the daytime, sometimes in the afternoon, it can be any time. I want to give it to you right now. I know to get up no matter what time it is.

Go sit down and here's what I've discovered. My fingers and I can type pretty fast. I cannot type fast enough because my mind is so far beyond because God is speaking. I know that's the presence of God.

Oftentimes it's something I hadn't even thought about. Maybe an aspect of the message that never crossed my mind before has to be God. God wants us to know His presence. He wants us to sense that He is for us, not just in us, but for us, on our side, willing to meet every single possible need that we have. And so sometimes He will give you a very clear word that you have to absolutely know that it has to be Him.

Sometimes it's meditating upon a passage of Scripture. So sometimes He'll bring you to a passage and you can't get away. What's God saying? He's saying, I'm here. I want to say something to you.

I want to speak to you. He's not going to speak audibly more than likely. Somebody says, well, I heard God, I heard the voice of God. Well, I want to say amen and praise the Lord.

I've never heard His voice, but I've heard it loud enough in silence that it couldn't have been any louder. And sometimes He'll get you to a passage of Scripture and you'll think, God, what are you saying? And God will begin to show you something that maybe you had not felt before. And you'll sense the presence of God. Sometimes your heart will suddenly just overflow with gratitude and thanksgiving.

Nothing will be going on necessarily. You could be in church, but not necessarily. You'll just know that you're in the presence of God and you're overwhelmed. God just, He will remind you of how good He is to you, how He's walked you through difficulty and hardship and trial, helped you through the most amazing things in your life. You'll just know that's God's presence. And what will you do? You'll just want to praise Him and worship Him and bow down to Him and maybe ask Him to give you some passage in the Scripture. Maybe you won't do anything, but just be quiet.

Sometimes He may come in a different way. And I think sometimes I feel in my own heart, one of the most precious times, it's like God says, get along with me. I know to stop whatever I'm doing and go in the study and get on my knees and say, okay, God, I'm listening. What do I hear?

You know what? Sometimes I don't hear a thing. I don't say a thing. I just either kneel there and lie there and be quiet.

Most of the time I hear something. One thing I know for certain, when the living God tells me to get on my knees right now, the wisest thing I can possibly do, no matter what I'm doing, is to stop and get on my knees and listen to Him. Because what happens, that's God's way of making His presence known to us.

He doesn't owe us anything. He doesn't have to say anything dramatic. Think about this. If you love someone and someone loves you and you have an intimate relationship with them, can't you ride for miles in a car and never say a word and feel very complete? Can't you sit by their side and love them and be loved by them and never say one single word? Just because you and I get on our knees doesn't mean we need to talk. It may mean we're so overwhelmed we can't talk. We just want to listen, just want to be quiet, just want to be in the presence of Almighty God. One of the ways that God makes His presence known to us is in circumstances.

For example, here I'm traveling in the highway and all of a sudden you know you're getting ready to have a wreck as sure as you're sitting behind the wheel. Next thing you know, God delivered you right out of that. And most people, even who aren't even believers, will say what? Thank God. Hadn't thought about Him, hadn't thanked Him for years.

Thank God. Because what, you know what it is? Deep down inside, there's something within humanity that knows deep down inside had to be somebody beyond themselves. And so He'll reveal His presence in circumstances.

It may not be anything as dramatic as some safety issue. He'll make His presence known in all kinds of ways, something you have to remember. And you say, Lord, I need you at this moment. And He's there. He's there in so many ways. And I think about how people respond and oftentimes God will make Himself known.

And what do they do? They just say, well, thank God I thought about that. Never give God any credit. Thank God I weaseled my way out of that one.

If I hadn't have been skilled as a driver, I'd have had a wreck. You know what God wants? He wants the recognition of His presence. And I think to me personally, these are the times that are so precious to me. And oftentimes I can't explain this, except that usually it's on a Sunday morning. Not always, not very often, but it'll happen.

Usually I'm shaving, getting ready to get dressed. And all of a sudden, not even thinking about anything particularly, burst out crying, so overwhelmed, drop on my knees weeping before God and saying not one thing. You know why? Because I know that suddenly God's presence is real. I don't have anything to say. I don't know anything to say.

I'm not asking for anything. I am simply in His presence and He's made His presence so known. I am absolutely totally overwhelmed. I remember, and I've told you this before, but it fits this message. I remember exactly where I was on my way to church downtown by myself. I can remember this is one of those times when I was overwhelmed with the presence of God, out of nowhere wasn't even thinking about anything like this. It's like the Lord sitting in the seat beside me said to me, I made you for myself. I knew that I was in the presence of Almighty God. You see, if you will ask the Lord to make His presence known to you, if you ask Him to sensitize your heart, that you want to be aware of His presence, you want Him to speak to you. You want an intimate relationship with Him. God's not going to force it.

Why should He make His presence known to you if you're going to ignore Him time after time after time? Give somebody else credit. Well, this is just what happened. What's one of those circumstances, one of those acts of faith? I want to tell you something. There's no such thing as fate in the life of a believer. Because all of us under the hand of Almighty God who says He's established His throne in the heavens, and He rules over all. No such thing as fate.

If you live by fate, you are a lonely person. Because you don't have God in your life. And so He makes Himself and His way known in our life in all kinds of ways. Sometimes it may be in a worship service. You just know that you sit in the presence of God.

There may be 3000 other people around you, but it's just you and God, just the two of you. He's speaking to your heart. Maybe a song that's being sung, and you sense His presence. Something that your pastor says, and you just know that God suddenly spoke to your heart.

God's presence real to you in those moments. How do you respond? How do you respond when these things happen? I think, first of all, you stop and listen.

God, you want to say something to my heart? The second thing you do is this. If He says, here's what I want you to do right now, you do it immediately. If He says, here's what I want you to do, then you ask Him when.

If He just says, I will show you when, or He doesn't say anything, you just know He will. You wait upon Him. You listen to Him. You listen for Him. You look for the evidence of His presence, and He will show you exactly when He wants you to do whatever He's called you to do. You see, God's not some mysterious figure up in heaven. God is a loving, intimate, precious Father who lives on the inside of us through the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit, desiring to make Himself known in every possible way.

Now watch this. I want us to go to the 23rd Psalm that we all know so well. 23rd Psalm, and listen to this now. I want you to notice how it begins. He says, the Lord is my shepherd, very positive.

I shall not want, very positive. He makes me to lie down in green pastures, great for sheep. He leads me beside quiet waters, wonderful for sheep. He restores my soul. He guides me in the paths of righteous for His name's sake.

All of that's fantastic. But when do I need Him? Listen to this. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, even then I will fear no evil. And what's the basis of fearing no evil?

What does He say? You're with me. Think about this. In the Scriptures, the only basis of courage God gives to man is His presence. The only source of contentment is His presence.

The only source of real joy is His presence. Listen, you eliminate the presence of God in your life and you won't have any of that. I want you to turn to one last passage in Isaiah 43. You want to mark this one. Isaiah chapter 43.

Look at this. We go through tough times, difficult times, and you're probably saying, but you just don't know what I'm going through. This much I do know, that my Heavenly Father is adequate to make you adequate to face whatever you're facing with the awareness of His presence. Listen to what He says in this passage, Isaiah 43. Let's begin with verse one. But now thus says the Lord your Creator, O Jacob, and he who formed you, O Israel, do not fear, for I have redeemed you. I've called you by name in your mind.

Now watch this. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. And through the rivers, they will not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched, nor the flame burn you, for I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

What did He say? When the waters get deep, I'll be there. When the fire gets hot, I'll be there. Notice He didn't say when you run through the fire. He says when you walk through it.

You know why? Those of us who know Jesus Christ as our Savior, we don't have to run through the trying times, trying to get out, though that's human nature. We can walk through them because we're walking hand in hand with a God who controls the depths of the waters and the temperature of the heat in our life. He is sufficient no matter what. If you've never trusted Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, you don't have Him living inside of you. You are estranged from Him. You are separated from Him.

That bit of loneliness that is still there, no matter how many people you crowd around you, you know what that is? That's the longing of your heart for God, no matter who you are. And I want to encourage you to ask Him to forgive you of your sins. And tell Him that you're tired of living life without Him, that you don't want to spend the rest of your life wondering what God would have done with you if you had allowed Him into your life and allowed Him to make His presence known and to guide you and direct you, give you His courage and His contentment and His peace and His joy. Why live a life with so much absence when you can live it with so much of the fullness of the very presence of God? Father, we pray the Holy Spirit will sink this message deep in the heart of every single believer, creating within all of us a deep, abiding hunger to know you and to walk in your presence and to be aware of your presence and to respond in the right fashion of humility, thanksgiving, and obedience. For we ask it in Christ's name. Amen. Thank you for listening to His Empowering Presence. 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.