Strengthening Our Wavering Faith - Part 1

Welcome to the InTouch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Wednesday, November 8th. What happens to your faith when bad things occur? Let's learn how to keep on trusting the Lord with a lesson on strengthening our wavering faith. The key to your whole Christian life is your faith. For example, that's how you were saved. That's how you have a personal relationship with God through His Son, Jesus Christ. When you come to pray, there's always the issue of faith. When it comes to healing and asking God for healing, there's always the issue of faith. In fact, your whole daily life is an expression of faith, either your unbelief, your doubt, or your faith. And yet, in spite of all that and the fact that we know it, there's one aspect of our faith that all of us have to deal with continually. We don't like to deal with it.

We'd like to eliminate it once and for all, but somehow we don't or we can't. So I want you to turn, if you will, to James chapter 1. And you'll recall that he's writing here to those who are going through difficulty and hardship and persecution. So having introduced it in the first verse, he begins the second verse by saying, Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.

And let endurance have its perfect result, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men or women generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith without any doubting, for he who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. But let not that man expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, being a double minded man, unstable in all his ways. Every single one of us has had the problem of wavering faith, because there's some things that hit us blindside or hit us right in the front. There are some things that you and I know that we need and we come to ask God for and we waffle in our faith.

We said, Well, now, here's what he said. Here's what I ask. I'm going to trust God. Hallelujah. Amen. But a half hour later, we say, Oh, God, I hope you will.

I hope you will. So what happens if we go back? You know what he says?

He says, Don't expect to get it. That's a pretty strong statement. I want us to examine for a few moments what causes us to wave in our faith. We have been saved by the grace of God. We have the Bible.

We have the promises of God. We know what he says. We know he's an unconditional loving God. We would agree that he's absolutely faithful.

He's absolutely trustworthy. Then what in the world makes us weave and wobble and to and fro and wave in our faith? Why do we do it?

Number one is this. If you and I are uncertain about what we're asking about, if we're uncertain about the will of God, if we don't have some promise from his word, and I don't say that you always have to find some promise. But if you and I are asking, making any request of God somewhere in the scripture, there is a promise that certainly would relate to what you're asking for.

Well, that's a sense of direction or finances or relationships or whatever it is that the promise is there. So if I don't know what the will of God is and I'm saying, Lord, here's what I'm asking you, then where do I start? Here's where I start. I start with this request. Father, here's my need. Here's what I'm asking for. I need to know what is your will about this.

That's where I start. What's the will of the Father? Do I have a right to ask God to show me how to pray about a certain thing? Yes. Do I have a right to expect God to show me exactly how to ask him or what to ask him for? Yes.

Does he want me to ask for the right thing? Yes. Is he committed to showing us exactly what to ask for?

Yes. Therefore, when I say, Lord, show me your will about this. How am I to pray about this? I'm not even sure this is what you want for my life.

Show me your will. God is under divine obligation to show you his will about how to pray for that issue because he wants you to ask the right thing. He says, Ask and it shall be given you. Seek and you shall find. Knock and it shall be opened unto you.

Everyone who asks receives. He that seeks knocks. And to the person who is searching out there, he says, God's going to open the door. God wants you to know.

So first of all, you ask him. So one of the first reasons we waver is we don't know his will and we don't take time to find out as well. We just hope it is. Listen, hoping. Listen, just hoping that you're praying right.

Won't cut it, friend. If you want God to bless you, then stop long enough to find out what's the will of the father in this. Number one, I need to know what God's will is.

If I don't, I'm going to waver my faith. Second thing is this. Second cause is that oftentimes human reason runs counter or is in conflict to our faith. There's some things that God would require of us that are absolutely not humanly reasonable.

For example, give me give you a scriptural illustration. First of all, you remember that when Jesus had barred Peter's boat, they were there close to the shore and he was standing in the boat and preaching. And finally, when they finished, he said, Peter, get your buddies together. Let's go fishing. He said, we fished all night long. We fished all night. We didn't get one single bite.

Throwing the net over, of course, we didn't get a thing. We're going fishing, Peter. Well, and I am sure this is what he must have felt.

Well, he is the master. But I've been fishing since I was a kid. My daddy taught me to fish. And last night we fished all night long.

We didn't catch a thing. Yes. Yes, master. We're going fishing because he was human. I mean, he knew all about fishing. And here's Jesus coming along in the morning.

Probably wasn't the best time, a time to fish anyway. The only difference was when Jesus is on board, you're going to get a big catch no matter what's happening. So what happens? He wavered in his faith. Now, every Sunday, many of you come to church in your own church. And you've never settled the issue whether to trust God or not. Oh, yes, I have. Well, prove it. Well, I've been saved.

Well, that's pretty good. Well, but why do you have a struggle every Sunday? Well, the reason I struggle every Sunday is because you talk about tithing. And you're telling me that it's reasonable for me to take one penny out of every dime and give it to God. And nine pennies are going further than 10 pennies.

No way. Prove that, for example, you say, well, I make one hundred dollars. And you're telling me if I give God ten dollars, my ninety dollars are going further than ten.

I can. It's a human reasoning. I can prove it won't work.

If I go to the store and something costs one hundred dollars and I give him ninety, he's going to say no deal. So don't give me this reasonable stuff that tithing my income is reasonable. I never said it was reasonable. There's nothing about it that's reasonable.

I agree. Human is not reasonable. But I challenge any person alive who has ever tied their income to deny the fact that you do far better financially when you trust God with one tenth of your income or more. Your 90 percent is going further every single time.

And I would challenge anybody. And I've been tithing and giving more than a tithe since my first job, which was 13 years of age. I made four dollars from that moment on. Under this present day, I've always given God more.

And I can tell you, when you put it on a piece of paper and try to add up and subtract it, it never works. Here's what I want you to see. If it didn't take any faith. Here's what happens when you and I trust God.

Do you know what happens? The sovereign, omnipotent, almighty, all knowing God who is sovereign of this universe. When you and I trust him, he listen, he gets involved in whatever I'm dealing with. And in his awesome power provides the need no matter what they say. That's why I didn't have to be reasonable. The Christian life is not reasonable.

Let me ask you a question. Can you reason this one out? How can one man die 2000 years ago on a cross? And you, 2000 years later, the absolute totally forgiven of your sin, have absolute total eternal security.

When one man back there that you have never met, never seen him. He died 2000 years ago. And today you're forgiven of your sin. That doesn't even make any sense, except that he's God. A lot of things don't make any sense, except that there's God. And so when you think about how he operates, God enables us in whatever circumstance we're in. It doesn't make any sense.

Agreed. Just remember that it is not even supposed to make sense. It just works because God's in it. He can take whatever you give him and multiply. When in need, give. If you feel lonely, then what do you do? You give yourself to someone else. You reach out to be a friend. When you're hurting, you reach out mercifully to someone else who is hurting.

When you're despondent and you're depressed, you reach out to someone. You say, well, that's hard. It's hard to do. Right. I understand it's hard to do whatever we give.

It should be given back. As you see, this is how wise God is. He didn't say, give money, give this, give that. He said, give and it shall be given you good measure. Listen, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, pressed down.

What is he saying? You're going to get more than you give. That's the way God operates. Not reasonable. So if I wait till I can reason it out, my faith is going to waver because I'm still not God.

How are you going? I don't understand how you're going to do that. I know it's what you said. I believe what you said. But so our faith wavers.

A third reason it'll wavers this. And that is when our feelings overshadow or overcome our faith. Now, most people have the biggest problem with their faith in this whole area of feeling.

For example, somebody says, well, yeah, I've asked the Lord to show me you. Well, are you trusting? Well, you know, I just you know, to tell you the truth, I just don't feel worthy of God answering my prayer. You'll never be worthy.

Forget it. So feelings of unworthiness. I'm telling you, feelings are total disaster because they change continuously, not daily, but moment by moment. You listen, if you go by your feelings, your faith is going to wobble all over the place. Then I think also in terms of wavering faith, I think about the fact that when we fail to see God at work in our circumstances. So somebody says, well, you know, I asked God, I got on my knees and I got the word out and I prayed.

And I said, I said, Lord, here's what you said. I'm trusting you. I'm believing you. And so what happens? Then we don't see anything happen. And listen, most of the time in big issues, God doesn't work real fast. And so what happens is because you and I can't see him at work. Because we don't see the end result.

Well, you know, if I get to see how it's going to turn out. No. Here's the problem. The problem is this. No wonder the Bible doesn't say that I'm to live by sight. I am to live by faith. And the whole issue of faith is I can't see.

Now, what does the Bible say? The Bible says that you're not to walk by faith, not by sight, not by feeling. Two real obstacles to fully trusting God are sight and our feelings. Because we like this idea of I want to feel that God's going to do it. I've had lots of answers to prayer that I didn't feel anything about.

I just said, God, here's what you said. I'm trusting you for it. I'm going to believe you for it no matter what I see and what I feel. And so oftentimes we are waiting for God to show us the end result.

He's not going to do it. Most of the time, ninety nine point nine point nine percent of the time, God is going to make us wait and lead us one step at a time. And then oftentimes, listen, when we least expect His answer, there it is looking right at us.

Now, that leads me to something else, and that is one of the primary reasons that we waver in our faith is because we listen to the negative counsel of other people. And so oftentimes we face a situation of circumstance. First, people think people are killing fun. Let me tell you what's going on. What would you do?

That is the worst thing you can do. Listen, everybody has advice and everybody has an opinion. Now, listen carefully, because most people have a hard time with this. God has a unique will for your life. His will for your life is not like His will for anybody else's life.

You are a specific individual whom God created for the purpose of ultimately bringing Him glory, but accomplishing something in your life and accomplishing something through your life and for you. Therefore, no one else knows the will of God for your life. That does not mean that God cannot give people insight to give you wise, godly counsel. But ultimately, you've got to have an affirmation from God. Listen, if you make decisions based on what other people tell you, you're going to make the wrong decision most of the time, because most people, in order to get your approval, are going to tell you what they think you want to hear so they'll feel good and you'll feel good.

That's why it's unwise. And so you may seek godly counsel. But even if you sought godly counsel, listen, you want God to affirm that counsel in some fashion. And so if you wait and you just want to hear what someone else says, because you heard people say, now, here's what I would do. They don't have any earthly idea what they would do until they're in your shoes. Listen, they've got to be in your shoes with your personality, with your emotional makeup, with your relationship to God, with your insight or your lack of insight, your knowledge or your ignorance. And there's so many things involved and them doing what, what, having you do what they would do.

Forget that. And yet that's what makes our faith way. Well, you know, I got in, I prayed and I asked all the showmen, here's what I believe God said. But but then, you know, I asked so and so. And they said, oh, God doesn't work that way. So, Lord, I here's what you said. And I believe what you said, Lord. And but then I went, I asked my best friend and.

He said. Man, you dreaming. I don't want you to be disappointed. So don't ask God for something that you're not going to have. Then you get disappointed and hurt your faith. Well, they're destroying my faith by telling me that. And I can remember as a kid growing up when I still remember how I went through that.

And this is what happened. Happened to go to a particular church is legalistic. And so I heard this stuff all the time that if you sin after you're saved, you're going to hell.

Well, you know, at 12 years of age and I say 13, 14, those teenage years, and I'd get on my knees at night and ask God to forgive me for whatever in my life had not been right that day. And then I remember what the pastor said. You sin against God.

You go into hell so that sinner that shall die. And then as I prayed, it's like I had this feeling you're not going to hell. So I thought maybe that's the Holy Spirit telling me I'm not. Yeah, but this is what the pastor said.

And as a kid, you know, I believe whatever he said. Well, he said I was going to hell if I sin. I know I've sinned and God get the Bible out and read me a few verses. And then I'd say, well, I'm not going to hell.

Then I'd lie down and I'd think, yes, I am. I mean, I'm telling you, listen, my friend, if you go to a legalistic church, you're already in trouble. You're already in trouble. It'll cause your faith to waver.

Listening to that kind of stuff cause your faith to waver. Well, I think also when I think in terms of one of the primary reasons is that we focus on the circumstances. Listen, you're going through some difficult and hardship in life. What happens when you look at your trouble? What happens to the size of your trouble when you look at it? It's bigger and bigger, more and more complex.

The longer you look at it, the larger it gets, the more complex, the more difficult it looks. You see, if I want my faith to be sturdy and strong, I need to get my focus on my father, not on my problem. If you don't keep it on him, here's what Satan will do. Satan will do everything in his power to cause you to keep your attention on the very things that destroy your faith. What we see, what we hear, what we feel, that's not the way God operates. Another thing I think is very important to remember here is this, and that is that when a person is ignorant of God's ways, when a person doesn't know how God works, you're going to waver in your faith. Now, when you and I learn the ways of God, we can face anything in life, no matter what, remembering that our God is absolutely sovereign. He is in absolute control of our life, only what he allows, only for his purpose, only for his timing.

He can change any circumstance, any purpose, any direction, any time he wants to do it. If I understand the ways of God, that's the whole issue of tithing. That's one of the ways of God, the whole idea of waiting upon the Lord for his time. That's one of the ways of God.

We could just go through the Bible. The ways of God are many, many, many ways, how he operates. So listen, when I understand, when I can grasp this truth that God allows hardship and pain and suffering for the purpose of purifying our heart, strengthening our faith, teaching us endurance, enabling us to walk steadfastly in order to use us in a greater fashion, I understand that's one of his ways that I can face those difficulties and hardship and pain and suffering, what, with a sense of confidence and assurance and even joy amidst that, because I know that the end result, I'm going to love the end result. Thank you for listening to Strengthening Our Wavering Faith. 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.