Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Thursday, September nineteenth. When it comes to your relationship with Jesus Christ, you can expect the unexpected. Let's continue the Ways of God series with a reminder that God often makes surprise visits.
God has a purpose for everything He does in your life and mine. He has certain goals for us. He has plans for us. He has a will for us. And sometimes those things hit us as surprises in our life. So, when we talk about surprise visits, what I want to talk about in this message is God's surprise visits.
Because one of the ways of God is this. He visits us as a surprise. That is, it's a very surprise that suddenly we are aware of the presence of Almighty God. So, here's what I'd like to do. I'd like to ask you a question. Well, let me ask you a question.
Well, let me ask you a question. For many of you who would say, well, I don't believe God shows up anymore. Well, that was the Old Testament. That was the New Testament. This is a different day.
It's a different day, but let me ask you a question. Has God changed? No, He has not. Methods change? Yes.
Time and circumstances and civilizations come and go. He hasn't changed. He has changed. And so I ask you, that you listen to what God has to say to you, if God has something to say to you personally, specifically, or maybe to help you open your heart so that when He does say something to you in a very unusual way, you'll know it's God and not your imagination. You say, well, would God ever visit me in such a fashion that I would feel overwhelmed?
Yes. Yes, if it's necessary, if it's His will, it cannot be anything you concoct yourself. Somebody says, I'm going to fast and pray and see if God will visit me, forget it.
He's not going to be manipulated. It'll only, listen, you may live all of your life, listen carefully, you may live all of your life a very godly life and never experience what I'm talking about. Does that make you any less holy than anybody else? No. It's just that God didn't choose to do that. And if He does, does that make you superior and more important than someone else?
No. It just means that God made a choice. And what I want you to see is this, we all live on the same level. God has a plan and a purpose that suits us individually, tailor-made for your life.
What He wants you to do is yield yourself to Him, let Him guide your life the way He chooses. And you go all the way back whether it's Adam or Abraham or Moses or Joshua or Gideon or Zechariah or the disciples or Saul of Tarsus, and you now know that one day there's going to be a surprise visit that's going to impact all of us. Jesus says, I'm coming back. And that's going to be a surprise visit.
How do I know that? Well, the simple reason He says He's coming like a thief in the night. You don't expect it, you don't anticipate it, can't manipulate it, can't do anything about it, He's showing up.
Now, always has a purpose to inform us, prepare us, comfort us, assure us. It may be that He does that in such a fashion to meet a particular need in your life. And I could give you some other instances, but simply to say this, that's how good God is. God's not a mystery. He's so awesome you can't fully explain Him. If you could, you'd sort of be like Him.
We're going to be like Him only as Jesus is allowed to live His life in and through us. And you see, since you don't know all that God has planned in your life, think about this. Let's say that you're, whether you're fifteen or thirty-five or forty-five or six, whatever you might, let's just say you're young. Let's say you're twenty-five or thirty years of age.
And more than likely if you're that young and you keep good health habits, you could live to be a hundred today. Think about this. What will God do in your life for the next fifty, sixty, or seventy years if you surrender your life to Him and let Him have yourself, all that you are? What in the world will He do with you?
You can't even imagine. But here's the devil's lie. Oh, you're just one of millions. Why do you think God's going to use you? Why do you think you're somebody special? You know, I know why every single one of you is special. Because Jesus would not have died for you if you were not.
Because you see, all of us in the same category. We came into this world with a sinful nature, been away from God, and every single one of us has sinned against Him many, many times. And when He died, He died for every single one of us individually.
The billions of people that have inhabited and will inhabit this earth, the same redemption that took place at Calvary, covered us all. He loves you as a purpose and a plan for your life. So, don't dictate to Him when He will, when He, why He can't, why He won't work in your life in a special way. You see, it's not a certain age, not a certain culture, not a certain language, not a certain color. Has any, none of that has anything to do with it.
The thing that has the most to do with it is this. Do you even desire that kind of relationship? Do you believe that you can have that kind of a personal relationship? Listen, whereby the power of Almighty God works in your life, not under certain circumstances, but every day. But will He flow through you with this awesome power, wisdom, and knowledge to accomplish what He has for you, if you allow Him to do it? Don't discredit yourself. Don't set yourself aside as somebody exceptional, that is exceptional to His blessings and His goodness and His mercy and kindness and to His awesome will in your life.
There's not a single one of us who can predict what our life's going to be like later. Does He make surprise visits? Yes.
Does He have a purpose for them? Yes. Can you manipulate them? No.
Can you arrange them? No. Can you pray for them to come down from heaven?
No. It is something God chooses to do. And just as He chose in the Old Testament, just as He chose in the New Testament, and just as He's been choosing down through the centuries, God, listen, is this awesome, present God.
Not distant, but present. And He took great pains, Jesus did, to say to His disciples over and over and over again, I'm going away, but I'm coming back. I'm going to be with you. I want you to know that I'm a with-you God.
I'm not a separated God, I'm a with-you God. I'm in your corner. I'm on your team.
You're on my team. We're going to do this together. You do not have to think about your life alone, but with Him. So, think about it.
Why is it that people oftentimes miss God's choice and blessings in their life? And let me ask you this question. Now, you have to be honest, and if you're not honest, it won't make any difference, because I can't tell the truth anyway, whether you're going to do this, that, or the other. I want you to think about this. If you could have anything in the world that you wanted, above everything else, anything, would that one thing be? An intimate, loving, listen, unequaled, indescribable, awesome relationship with Jesus Christ, whereby every day of your life, you and He are walking hand in hand, heart to heart. And you're understanding more of His ways. And you're seeing Him in ways you've never seen Him before. That is, if God just dumped into your life this awesome understanding and relationship and intimacy that could not be equaled by anything else in life, was that what you would want?
Or would you have to say, well, that's not exactly what I had in mind. What is it that you want more than Him? Here's a God all down through history, these surprise visits. You may say, well, how will I know that it's from Him? What is it in my life that would keep me from having a surprise visit from God?
Well, see, nobody else can answer all those questions except that I can help you answer one of those. Why is it that God is not more intimate and more personal in your life? One of the primary reasons is there's sin in your life. It may be very quiet and very private, but you know it's there.
Nobody else in the world knows it's there but you. It may be just in your thoughts, but it may be in your thoughts, your motives, and your actions. You see, as long as you're living in sin, holy God who cannot tolerate sin, He can tolerate the sinner but not sin. But a person deliberately, willfully living in sin and expecting God to do something dramatic in their life, that's one reason.
A second reason is this. For the simple reason of our ignorance of God and His ways. If I put Him in a box and say, here's how God operates, this is the only way He operates, then what have I done? I have limited God by my unbelief and my ignorance.
Sometimes it's just pure unbelief. I just don't believe that God could possibly work in my life, whether it's a prayer or a prayer or a prayer. I don't believe that God could work in my life.
And that's not right for me. I don't believe that God could work in my life. I don't believe that God could work in my life. And if I'm willing, one of these surprise visitations, to answer a particular prayer that I have or to show me something about myself I've never known before, to show me something about Himself that I've never known before, I don't understand.
Is there anything in your life at this moment, in your thought life, in your emotions, in your relationships that would cause God to back off? He wants to use you, but He's not going to force you. He wants to make an impact through your life, but no pressure. He may put a little bit of pressure on you. He may say to you, here's what I'm going to do in your life.
He may say to you, here's what I want to do. But if you don't do thus and so, I won't do that, and here's what'll happen to you. See, we don't have much reverence for God anymore. We sort of take God with a grain of salt to some degree. We like it fine, we give Him credit. If we don't like it, we ignore Him. That's not the God of the Bible. The God of this Word is that God is holy and righteous, sovereignly overruling in everything on the face of this earth. He wants to, listen, not only to love you, but He wants you to understand, to sense that love and sense the expressions of His love in your life. Now, think about this.
You can have that kind of relationship with Him. Well, you know one of the primary reasons people don't? Too busy. Think about what happens to you in any given day. Tomorrow morning, Monday morning, you'll wake up. And you have to take a shower and get dressed and get all primped up and everything. Then you get in your automobile or whatever and you drive to work. Well, as soon as you get up, your mind starts working.
Things that you're going to do, things you, people you're going to see, things you're responsible for, and then you get off of work and you get back in your car and go home and then you've got to prepare dinner or go out of whatever it might be or take care of your children, all the things. And by the time the day's over, whew, and you're dead tired. How many times during that time did you even think about Jesus? Busyness. And think about this. It's easy for God's people to get caught up in the world. What the world promises, what the world offers, the pleasures, if you don't have this, you're not living in it.
You get caught up in the world, what happens? Instead of getting caught up with Jesus, that's not some religious preacher talk, that's reality. That you love Him, that you want to be obedient to Him. It's not pressure to obey Him, it's a joy to obey Him. You want what's best for your life.
You want that relationship to be right. And you can live in it, caught up with the world, too busy, living in sin, unbelief, all of those things cheat us. Listen, Satan will cheat you out of the gifts God has for you. And if you and I disobey Him, we cheat Him out of the promise and the possibility of using us. So, what's the consequences?
Here are the consequences. First of all, you miss His message. What did He want to say to you? Secondly, you miss His will. What's God's plan for your life? Thirdly, you miss the opportunity of being used by God.
You miss all of that. You miss the blessing of God, what He would have done in your life if you'd have just let Him. And probably one of the worst things of all is the impact we have in other people's lives, which is a negative impact. You want to make a godly impact on your children. They have to see it, hear it, feel it. And one of the wisest things you can teach your children, number one, how to listen to God.
So, as they grow, they will know and learn very early in life, you can say to your son, you can have a personal relationship with God. Well, He's up in heaven, but He's also here. Talk to Him.
Listen to Him. I want you to develop that relationship because it's the most important relationship in your life and one of the most important things you'll ever have to learn, how to hear Him, how to talk to Him, how to listen to Him, how to receive Him, how to believe Him, how to follow Him, how to obey Him. He makes surprise visits, and when He does, He has something very specific in your life. With Adam and Eve, it was a terrible confrontation. With Joshua, it was this awesome assurance that victory is right in front of me.
With the apostle Paul, it was a shocker. It transformed his life. So, here's my question. This God who is so willing to visit you when necessary from His perspective, whatever the reason may be, what is there in your life that you prize more than you prize? This intimate relationship and this awesome possibility of God using you to impact the lives of other people. You see, you are going to impact your children, the people you love, the folks around you, your family, your friends. Is there anything that's valuable to you? Is any pleasure in life more valuable?
Any material thing is equal to the kind of godly impact you can have in somebody else's life. Watch this. People all around you are looking for somebody that they can like, want to be like.
As an example, they're looking for somebody in whose life they see something that makes them want to be like that. You're a child of God. You have that. You have that something inside of you and that's somebody Jesus. And I want to challenge you to surrender your life to Him.
Everything. Now listen to this. Here's Satan's lie. Oh, you're going to miss out on life if you become one of those committed Christians. That's the devil's lie.
Here's what God would say. You can't believe what I have in store for you if you'll just let me work in your life and bless you the way I choose. Who are you going to believe?
The devil or Almighty God? And it's my prayer that you'll believe Him because then I know you will never be disappointed all of your life. And Father, how grateful we are that You love us like that. So personally involved and interested, having a purpose for each one of us, I pray that those who are listening, who have never trusted You as their personal Savior, that You would speak to them right now in whatever language they're hearing this, to know that You are the God of this universe and You speak all languages.
And the truth that You speak is truth for every culture, every language, even those languages that have never been written, but are still spoken. That Jesus' death at the cross paid our sin dead in full from beginning to end. And that through Him, we can have a personal relationship that is startling, intriguing, almost unbelievable, uplifting, encouraging, comforting. We love You, Father, and we thank You for loving us. In Jesus' name, amen. Thank you for listening to God's Surprise Visits. For more inspirational messages like this one, visit our online 24-7 station. And if you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
