Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Wednesday, September 4th. God's grace is greatest in our worst moments. Let's learn how the Heavenly Father is sufficient for us in every circumstance. If it is grace and grace is the love of God and His goodness and mercy toward us without regard to worth or merit, and in spite of what we deserve, is there anything that could hinder the grace of God if it's not dependent upon my works or dependent upon anything within me?
Well, yes, there is. Now, I want you to turn, if you will, to James chapter four, and I want us to read the first six verses of this chapter. And in this chapter, he begins by talking about some major problems that people have and how the flesh operates in our life. And so he begins by saying, What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war on your members? You lust and do not have, so you commit murder. And you are envious and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask.
You ask and do not receive because you ask with wrong motives so that you may spend it on your pleasures. You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose? He jealously desires the spirit which He has made to dwell in us. But He gives a greater grace, therefore, it says, God is opposed to the proud but gives grace to the humble. Now, he states here very clearly, the one thing that hinders the flow of grace in our heart is pride. It isn't some other sin, it's pride, because all other sins that a person commits shouts this loud and clearly. I need something that is no matter what the sin is, it is an expression of need. But when it comes to pride, that shout is I don't need it, I can handle it, I'll take care of it.
I am self-sufficient within myself. God hates that attitude. He hates pride because He sees that as the greatest inhibitor in our life, but not only for receiving the grace of God, but being used by God in every fashion of our life, it is the greatest inhibitor of all.
And I think there are many, many verses of Scripture that you and I could turn to that would indicate that, passages of Scripture, for example. Let's take in the fourteenth chapter of Isaiah, what is it that caused Lucifer to become Satan? That is, what caused this angel to become God's archenemy? Because he wanted to be like God. That is, jealous of who God was and His power. What about Eve?
What was Eve's problem? What did Satan say to her? He said, you want to be like God? You want to know what God knows? You want to be able to experience what God experiences?
And so, in order to be equal to God and know what He knows, she said yes and ruined the whole thing for us. And all through the Scriptures, God hates pride. Every indication of pride, God judges it because it is the biggest stumbling block to the grace of God. Now, if in your life, for example, you don't sense that God is blessing you the way you want to be blessed and the needs in your life that are not being met, what you have to ask is, what is it that's holding up the grace of God, which God says He is committed to meeting every single one of our needs, no matter what that need is. What's holding it up? There must be something within us that's causing God not to be able to release the full blessing in our life that He desires to release and it is His will to be good to us and to love us and to grace us with blessings as well as Himself.
What is it? And so, we have to ask, well, Lord, could you be indicating in my own heart that there's pride here, that there's something here that would cause you to be not able to bless me all the ways you want to bless me and I can't look around and find somebody else for whom to blame. I have to look at myself and say, God, what's on the inside of me? Now, I used to think that the older you get, the easier it would be to live the Christian life. And the older you get, the simpler things would become and the things that used to bother you earlier in life wouldn't bother you no more. And after all, somehow it would just get easier and easier and better and better until finally when you get about sixty or seventy or eighty years of age, you'd just be better and better and better.
Well, I hate to tell you who are twenty and eighteen, men, it ain't so. It's just not that way. Because oftentimes it gets more difficult and oftentimes you think, well, God, why is this still a problem and why is this still a heartache and why don't you just clean out all of this?
Well, God knows why. And I wouldn't say this evening that I have reached any particular stage in my own Christian life except to realize how absolutely inadequate I am and that no matter how long I live the Christian life and how much I read this Bible and how much I believe every single word of it, things don't get easier because we live in a world where Satan never gives up. And secondly, here is the fallacy. If this were true, if you and I could get better and better, if somehow you and I could improve, then there would come a time in our life when it would be easier.
But here's the problem. Nowhere in this book does it say that I'm going to get better and better because there's something about all of us that never changes and that's the flesh. There's not a single verse in the Scripture that says, listen, sooner or later your flesh is going to get sanctified.
No, it's not. It's going to be the same today, yesterday and as long as we live in this life, the old natural human nature about us does not change. You say, but now wait a minute. You mean to tell me if I'm saved and I'm reading the Bible and I'm praying and giving and witnessing and sharing and growing in my Christian life, things aren't going to get easier? Well, ask the apostle Paul to get easier for him.
Absolutely not. You say, well, do you mean to tell me as hard as it is now it's going to be that way forever? I didn't say that.
I'm just saying, my friend, Satan will never let up, number one. Secondly, if the human flesh, that is if this fleshly nature of ours could be improved, then finally we could say, well, you don't have to a certain, well, just things just get easier and easier. The problem is that's not the way it is. And there's so many examples of that. And sometimes the more successful you are, the more difficult it is because, because of the temptations to be prideful over our successes and over our accomplishments and achievements in life. And the greatest danger we have is succeeding. For the simple reason it's Satan's trap.
You say, but now wait a minute. Are you telling me if God blesses me, I'm in danger? You sure are if you don't know how to handle it because it can be a trap. I think I can handle that.
You see the do it yourself program is Satan's program. You can handle it. You can do it. Just don't worry about it. That depend on me completely is God's program. And my friend, there's always that tendency after a while to think you can handle it. But by the grace of God and the goodness of God and the love of God, he brings us to those areas in our life and those times and situations and circumstances where no matter how well you do it, he's not going to let you feel adequate. And so no one likes to feel weakness unless you realize that it's your greatest asset.
No one likes to feel inadequate unless you begin to realize it's your greatest asset. God, I can't. You're going to have to. I know I can't.
God, if you don't do it, it's not going to get done. I'll give you some examples. I was sitting at a dinner table one night and this man said to me, he's a businessman, a very successful businessman. He told me this story. He sold his business and got a whopping sum of money. He wouldn't have ever had to work again as long as he lived. And something happened that the folks who were to pay him legally got him in some kind of a situation where for four and a half years they paid him absolutely nothing. He lost his property.
He lost everything. He said to me, he said, you know, when I lost it all, I remembered exactly what I thought when they wrote me the first check and I knew how much money I was going to have year after year. He said, I can still remember exactly what I thought. Now I've got it made. He said that haunted me. He says it has haunted me ever since.
I've got it made. And what did God do? He had to take it all away from him to remind him that he had to depend upon God before that and he still had to depend upon him. I really believe with all of my heart, we are the ones who cause God to remove His blessings because of this self-sufficiency and this adequacy we find within ourselves that's not of God. Friend, your weaknesses and your failures are oftentimes your greatest assets.
And I wouldn't say that I've learned it, but I'm in the process of learning it. That my weaknesses and my failures are not to be shunned but really and truly to be welcomed because sometimes they're our greatest protectors. Well, here's what he says. He says he gives a greater grace. Listen, when we're going through difficult and hardship and sin and weakness and failure in verses one through five, he says God's grace is greater. He says, but now if the problem is pride, he said God is opposed to that.
He says it here and he says it in First Peter chapter five. He says, you know, God hates pride. He's not going to put up with pride. God will put up a lot of things.
He's not going to put up with pride. It is the one thing that hinders us above everything else. I want to read you something that was a real blessing to me, and I took it not only as a blessing, but I also took it I think as a warning in my own heart because Dr. Alan Redpath, who was pastor of the Moody Church in Chicago and had written several books which I'd read and admired him greatly, he gave this testimony about himself. And so I wrote it down so I can quote him exactly as he said it. In 1964, he had a cerebral hemorrhage that just absolutely incapacitated him mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically. And he was in absolute total despair. And he said what happened to him was that he got into such despair, things began to cross his mind that he hadn't dealt with and hadn't felt like he needed to deal with in twenty years. Sinful thoughts, temptations to impurity, bad language, other problems that he'd not wrestled with in twenty years were now his daily conflict. And he said after weeks and weeks of despair and asking God to deliver him from these attacks of the devil and take him home, finally he decided, Lord, I just want to die.
Listen to what he says. At that moment, for the first time in months, God seemed to draw near to me. A deep conviction of God's voice came to my heart saying, you have this all wrong.
The devil has nothing to do with this. It is I, your Savior, who's brought this experience into your life to show you two things. First, this is the kind of person with all your sinful thoughts and temptations which you thought were things of the past that you always will be. But for my grace, I never intended to make you a better man.
In the second place, I want to replace you with myself. If you only allow me to be God in you and admit you're a complete failure and that the only good thing about Alan Redpath is Jesus, then I can use you again. He says he'd known and preached Christ's life within him for years and years and years as a theory. But only after God put him in the darkness of despair did he realize that somewhere along the way he thought he'd overcome this and that and he'd gotten better and now he'd succeeded in life. And my friend, that is a trap. It can happen to any one of us.
It's a trap. The best thing you and I have going for us is failures, weaknesses, and absolute total dependence upon God. And just reading what he said really convicted me because sometimes I complain like everybody else. I think, God, I've had enough of this. You know when I've had enough? When he says I've had enough. That's when you've had enough.
When God knows you've had enough. But reading that made me realize that our troubles and our heartaches and our difficulties do what? They keep us dependent upon God. What is the key that keeps the grace and the goodness and the love of God flowing in our heart?
Here's what he said. Therefore, God is opposed to the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. That doesn't mean pious. It means those who are dependent upon him.
Those who recognize there is not a thing in us that is good apart from Jesus. That you and I will never improve within ourselves. That the only thing spiritual within us is the person and life of Jesus Christ. Humility says I recognize my weaknesses. I recognize my dependence.
I am totally dependent upon you. God, if you don't do it, it's not going to get done. And what God hates is pride because he knows that just absolutely damns up the blessings he wants to send our way. And so in order to keep the grace of God flowing in every area of our life, whether it is spiritual blessing or if we want to divide them up into material blessings or emotional or whatever it might be, it is the goodness and mercy and love of God. It is the grace of God that he desires to send toward us.
What is it that keeps it flowing? My absolute willingness to confess and acknowledge, God, I need you. Now, human nature doesn't like to feel it's always in need. Human nature likes to feel adequate, sufficient.
I can handle it. God says, no, let's trap. If you want my grace to flow towards you, the one thing you have to keep a check on is pride. Because that's the thing that turns it off just like that. And the thing that keeps it moving is simply humility before God.
That is a sense of dependence. I don't mean some pious thing. I mean a genuine sense, God, if you don't do it, is this not going to happen?
It doesn't make a difference whether you're teaching a Sunday school lesson or do it. Listen, you may have reached a high level in your vocation or in your studies, and you may be well respected among your fellow students or among your peers in your job, but to whom are you giving the credit? You say, well, if I went around and said, well, Jesus did it, Jesus did it.
I don't think you ought to say that. If somebody thanks you, then accept their thanksgiving. You know whether you give God the credit or not. You don't have to say, well, Jesus did it. The world doesn't understand what you mean by that. Now, if they say to you, well, how do you explain this? Then you have a right to say and the privilege and the wonderful testimony to be able to say, well, you know, I really couldn't do it, but I met somebody, the Lord Jesus Christ, who's in my life, and I just trust Him, and really He's the one who does it through me.
Don't you just love it when some professional baseball player or football player, they get him on the television, a camera right down there asking him something right after the game, and he just blurts at, well, you know, I'm just trusting God, and they cut it off and move on to something else for the simple reason. I'll tell you why. Something in the world's spirit cannot handle that. I mean, it's like throwing a fire at them. They can't handle it. You know why? Because it strikes against their pride. This Jesus of Nazareth 2,000 years ago, you telling me this dead man helped you knock three home runs tonight, is that what you're telling me?
Yes. You know what they're saying? They don't understand it. My friend, they can't. You know why they can't? Because it is the work of God. They can't understand it. God can use anybody who's weak enough and dependent enough, no matter who they are. Now, the human nature just revolts against that, because the first thing that comes to our minds are all the good things that we think about in our life that are good.
What's good about them? What's the motivation behind them apart from Christ? And I think it was interesting what Dr. Redpath said. And God said to him, all this junky stuff you're thinking that you're absolutely horribly amazed about, that's what you really like apart from me. Now, we don't like to think that about ourselves, do we? We like to think, well, God should have improved a little bit.
And what happens? He gives you enough failure to realize, God, no I haven't. I still need you. And this is why He says, let us come boldly to the throne of grace where we can find grace to help in time of need. And I think the reason He said grace to help, that's an acknowledgment when I come, Lord, I need you. God delights in pouring out His blessing upon those who are weak and needy and understand that apart from Him, they have no hope. If you and I want the grace of God to flow with all of its fullness, all we have to do is to remember, every morning we wake up today, God, I am dependent upon You.
Lord, I'm trusting You. Apart from You, dear God, I can't, I can't be and I can't do apart from You. And I want to say again, our weaknesses and our failures are probably our greatest assets to keeping any of us usable by God and the grace of God flowing to the fullness in our life.
So I would simply challenge you to ask yourself this question. Lord, at what point and in what areas of my life do I feel pretty adequate? At what point in my life do I feel like, now I think I can handle this now. Whatever that point is, you put a circle around it in your mind because that is the valve that more than likely is going to shut off the flow of grace in your life. The point in which you feel adequate and sufficient and you can handle it is the most dangerous point in your walk of God. Where you feel the weakest and the most dependent upon Him, that's your greatest asset.
So here's the ultimate question. Do you desire to be usable by God enough to welcome, submit to, yield to, and give thanks for your weaknesses, your inadequacies, and your failures? Thank you for listening to today's podcast titled, Keeping Grace Flowing. 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.
