Sitting Before the Lord - Part 2

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Thursday, June 29. You don't ever find time to pray. You have to carve it out. Today, you'll get help prioritizing your relationship with God from the book of 2 Samuel. If you'll turn to 2 Samuel, chapter 7, in verse 18, then went King David in and sat before the Lord. Now, that phrase is also found in 1 Chronicles which also relates the same event here in his life.

But let me tell you what's happening at this particular time. The Scripture says in verse 1 of chapter 7, it came to pass when the king sat in his house and the Lord had given him rest round about from all of his enemies. So what's happened over this time, of course, he's defeated the Philistines, he's brought the territory under control, says that the king said unto Nathan the prophet, See now, I dwell on the house of Seder, but the ark of God, that is the ark of the covenant, dwells within curtains, that is, within the tabernacle which is made primarily of cloth and so forth. And Nathan said to the king, Go do all that's in thine heart, and the Lord is with thee. And it came to pass that night that the word of the Lord came to Nathan saying, Go and tell my servant David, Thus saith the Lord, Shall thou build me an house for me to dwell in? And then he gives him a message that he's to tell David. And if you move on down to verse 17, it says, According to all these words, and according to all this vision, so did Nathan speak unto David. So what's happening here, what's motivating David now to leave his house and go into the tabernacle and just sit before the Lord?

Two things. First of all, the prophet Nathan has said to him, God has given me a message for you, and this is it. And the second thing that motivated him was that David wanted to know what was meant by all that God had said to him through the prophet Nathan.

Let me just say this to you. When you and I practice what he says right here, the Bible says that he sat before the Lord, you and I ought to be able and willing and ready at times to do just that. And that is to sit before the Lord. And what ought to motivate us ought to be the same thing that motivated him. That is, that he'd gotten a message that he needed a very, very clear interpretation of.

Or, if you're not in the process of making a decision in our life and we really don't know what to do next. Or, if we are in a circumstance in our life and we don't really know what God is trying to say to us, and we need to listen to him. When he says that he sat before the Lord, it's the only time in the Bible that any saint of God is ever represented as sitting before God in prayer. Usually they're standing or they're kneeling or they're lying prostrate before the Lord. And the real truth of it is here, that it's not the posture here that's important in the first place. When he says that he went in and sat before the Lord, the important thing isn't that he sat.

The important thing was that he took time to be with the Lord. But how many of you have said, oh, I've got to just do so and so in my life? Let me tell you something. You're not waiting on him.

He is waiting on you. Now let me ask you a question. Because I'm going to give you seven things that demand something out of you.

But I want to ask you this. What are you willing to give to get God's perspective? So what are you willing to do to get that? And secondly, what are you willing to do for God to purify and to keep your heart pure before him?

And thirdly, what are you willing to do in order that God would empower you with the Spirit of God in your work, in your witness, in your walk, in your conduct, in your behavior, in your relationship to other people, in your finances, in your service before God, what are you willing to do to have God's omnipotence, God's anointing in your life? What are you willing? Let me ask you something. Are you willing to float through your Christian life and saying, well, as long as I get by, don't commit this sin, don't get in trouble, don't get in jail, don't run around with somebody else's wife and have enough finances and go to church and serve the Lord. I'm willing. I want to tell you, God wants us to be everything he planned us to be. Let me ask you a question. What are you willing to give for God's perspective, God's purity and God's power in your life? What are you willing to give? Well, sitting there right now without knowing, you probably say, I'm willing to give anything God says.

Well, you haven't heard it yet. And you see, it is so simple, so simple. I want you to write them down, the seven of them, they all begin with an S, so you will not forget them. Now listen, what is required of us when you and I sit before the Lord? Well, there's seven things I want you to remember.

First of all, write this word down, season dash time. It takes time to sit before the Lord. Now that first one is a humongous hang up. Look in Psalm 27 verse 14. He says, David says, wait on the Lord, be of good courage and he shall strengthen not heart. Wait, I say on the Lord. Now listen to me.

Every one of us has 24 hours of a day. And what you let me tell you something. Now watch this. You have to go back and ask yourself the question. Now what's hanging in the balance? God's perspective, God's purity and God's power. That's my goal.

Now if you lose sight of the goal, you're going to miss what I'm saying. What is it? Three things.

What are they? God's what? God's perspective, God's purity and God's power.

All right, first of all, you want those in your life? Sitting before the Lord requires time. All of us have enough time to sit before the Lord. Wait upon the Lord, be of good courage.

He will strengthen not heart. Wait, I say on the Lord. Now listen.

Sometimes sitting before the Lord just means sitting there for a season of time and just waiting. You won't hear anything. You won't do anything. You'll just sit there. And your first reaction is I am wasting my time.

And that came straight out of where? Hell. Whenever you're sitting before the Lord and you're just being quiet before him and it may be in a dark room or you may be prostrate before him in prayer or kneeling or just sitting. When you start feeling like I'm wasting my time, that is the devil doing the talking. There's no question about that because you see just sitting there, I'll give you an example. Say I sat for two solid hours trying to hear God say something to me and I couldn't hear.

I just couldn't hear. But I just kept sitting there and kept sitting there. And just one thing I couldn't get in my heart and last night I thought, now Lord, the only thing I can do is just wait. Sometimes we wait and you won't do anything and nothing will happen. God wants to bring to your attention something he wants to deal with in your life.

And I want to tell you something. You're never kneeling prostrate before God or sitting before the Lord and wasting time. It is an absolute divine impossibility. Something is happening while you are waiting. And sometime it's happening and you don't have any idea what's going on. You can't figure it out. You can't figure out God is a great mystery in some areas.

You'll never be able to figure out why he does certain things. But let me ask you this. You want God's perspective? You want purity? You want power?

Then let me ask you a question. Are you willing to stop doing something you've been doing or rearrange your time, reschedule your activities to give God some time? Now here's our problem. We are so activity oriented with so many plans. We plan God right out of the day. I'm here to tell you, I have to confess, I have to check up on myself every day.

And I come home at night and I look to see what I've done, I think, how in the world could I have spent all of my day doing that? All of them so very, very important. But every once in a while, he's not priority. And I'm here to tell you, I can feel it just like that. I'm talking about just taking time to be with him.

It takes time. The second thing is stillness. You'd be amazed how fidgety you and I are if we really got down to the hard cold facts, stillness. Now listen, we are activity oriented.

And so we want to get something going, we want to keep something going all the time. But to sit before the Lord still, or to lie before him or to kneel before him in stillness before God. Let me tell you what will happen. While you're sitting before the Lord, the devil will say, supper, you got to have supper in an hour and a half. The devil will say, you want to be on breakfast on time and your wife's gonna get upset.

The devil will tell you 1000 things. And listen, that's why you need to set your time where you're safe. And don't crowd God up between three things.

Listen, give him the first time and the best time. Because what you want to do is you want to get still and listen, you can't get still checking your clock. There's no way to do it.

You're going to get fidgety. You can't even concentrate. If you're trying to be still before God right quick.

You can't do that. You see, if you go back to the scriptures and read about Paul and Elijah and David, all of these men of God, what do they do? They spent time with God stillness before God.

The third thing, we need to move on him. The third thing is seclusion. And that's being alone. Jesus went away in the mountain by himself. Paul went away into Arabia.

Elijah was out under the tree by himself. You go all the way through the scriptures and you find Daniel, Joseph, all the scriptures, the prophets, they were men who knew how to enjoy seclusion alone with God. Now I want to tell you the confession of my own heart. The other day I was just down praying, listening to the Lord and talking to him about all these things that's going on and being quiet. I thought, Lord, I've been a lot of places in the world, most places that I've wanted to go with a few exceptions. I've done a lot of things that I've enjoyed, most of the things in life that I've wanted to do.

There's not anything in this world tonight materially that I want. God has blessed me. And as I looked about all the things that God did in my life, I could honestly say that no experience, no place I've ever been and nothing I've ever had is even in the running with the sense of absolute and total contentment and fulfillment and completeness that's found in being alone with God. And your conscience is clear and your heart is right before Him.

That is the pinnacle of existence. Doesn't mean that you'll not want something else later on because God gives us desires. But I'm saying there ought to be seasons, times in our life when you and I experience absolute and total complete fulfillment, just being alone with God. And if you can't, then there is something in your life that is keeping you from being what God wants you to be and is stealing your contentment. Because you see, you look at people who are lost and backslidden Christians living in carnality.

And I tell you, it grieves me when I see them struggling. No contentment, no peace and no joy and fighting against themselves. Seclusion. The fourth word is silence. Just be quiet before God.

He says in Isaiah chapter 30, I believe. Verse 15, in quietness and in confidence is thy strength. Just being quiet. You say, well, now, wait a minute. I thought you said we sit before the Lord to pray. No, I didn't say that. Talking is part of it, but it's not even the most important part.

Sitting before the Lord and being quiet. Here's what happens. Listen, let me tell you what's going to happen so you'll know.

If you said tonight, well, I think that's what I'm going to do when I get home. I'm going to do something different. I'm not going to turn on the television.

Let me tell you something. The first thing that'll happen is Satan will push the button, crank up the engines, and just your mind starts just like this. You begin to think about all the things that have happened today, what you're going to do tomorrow.

You say, I'm not going to think about all that. That time you've got to quiet it down. It just starts up again.

Cranky to crank. All kinds of noise is going on in your mind. You begin to think about all these things. You have to keep pushing it out.

But if you say, well, it's not working, forget it. Then Satan has defeated you. But if you'll sit there for a while, here's what'll happen. After a while, the noises will begin to diminish. The sounds will become silent, and it'll just be you and God being quiet. You say, well, but suppose there's lots of noise outside. It is amazing how God can deafen your ears, the physical noises, once you are quiet on the inside, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally.

But quietness. You see, most people pray and they start off, now, Heavenly Father, and you see, God, sometimes He just wants to say, cool it. Be quiet. Let me do the talking. Just don't say anything. God wants to speak.

Let me ask you this. How many of you in here do not want to hear from God? Then before you'll ever hear from Him, you've got to be quiet enough, silent enough, so you can hear Him when He speaks.

Sometimes He'll just bring a passage and just be like it says, Dear Charles. Sometimes it'll just be a thought He brings through your mind, and when that thought comes through, everything in you just melts, and it's just like God says, now, this is it. Absolute perfect peace overwhelms you, overcomes you, and the very thought that that's what God may want you to do is a peacefulness that just like, little by little, it just totally covers you.

God speaks to different people in different ways. Next word is self-control. Because you see, you will have to learn to concentrate on God. Some people's temperaments are different than others, and for some people, it would be a little easier to be still and quiet than for others. But self-control, because you may get hungry, you may get tired, you may get sleepy, you say, well, I can't concentrate, all these things, but remember what the goal is, your perspective on things, your purity before God, and your power with God. Listen, those three objectives right there ought to be worth whatever it takes to teach us to be able to sit before the Lord quietly and don't say anything. You see, sitting before Jehovah, Yahweh, Elohim, Adonai, Jesus Christ, concentrating upon Him, and not giving in to these emotions to get up and go do something.

Self-control. And then, sensitive. When you and I are sitting before the Lord, we must be very keenly aware to listen to what God's saying.

Sensitivity means that I am keenly aware of what's going on around me and my relationship to Him and what's happening. What am I really feeling? What am I thinking? What is God saying? Is God trying to say something to me? And listen, one of His rewards is purification. If I'm not sensitive, God won't get to me in some area that He wants to get to me about. And more than likely, you won't go before the Lord many times without Him saying, I want you to check up on thus and so.

It isn't just to have a bunch of sins read out to you, but we do have to be sensitive because you see, what He may say, He says, what about your relationship to so and so? What about this in your life? And what we have to ask is, what's our goal? If our goal is power, then my friend, purification always precedes power. And then the last thing is a submissive spirit. I've got to be willing to be submissive to Him, whatever He requires of me.

That means I've got to be available to Him. Submission before God. If I'm before the Lord and my spirit is just rebellious against God, I'm not going to get it. But let me ask you a question.

Listen, you have to ask yourself this question. Do I really want God's perspective about my life? Do I want purity in my life? Do I want God's power in my life? Then I must be willing to set aside seasons of time. I must be willing to be still, willing to be secluded, willing to be silent, willing to practice self-control, willing to be sensitive, and willing to be submissive to Him, whatever He requires of me.

It matters not what your circumstance is tonight. If you will do what I just shared in these seven things, what you're looking for, you'll find. What you need will be met. What you desire within the will of God, He will answer.

Your petition will come very clear. But here's a beautiful phrase. And David went in and sat before the Lord.

And I want you to notice something. Because the next chapter, he went out and defeated everybody that crossed his path. I mean, it was just one big, tremendous series of gigantic victories for God's people. For him, that was part of the reward of sitting before the Lord. Thank you for listening to part two of Sitting Before the Lord. 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.