Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Monday, September twenty-third. Quite often believers in Jesus expend needless energy in trying to accomplish God's work at our own pace. Let's be reminded of the benefits of staying on God's schedule. God's schedule for your life and mine is based on His priorities and His timing. Somebody says, well, what's God's priorities? Well, I don't know all of them for your life, but I do know this one. God's priority in your life is simply this, to grow us into an intimate relationship with Him.
That's number one. It doesn't make any difference how much you serve Him, how much you give to Him, how much you talk about Him. The most important thing to Him is our personal intimate relationship with Him. Therefore, He's going to govern and guide your schedule and mine, our timing in different aspects of our life so that you and I will grow in that relationship. So sometimes that means He'll do things we don't like, many things we don't understand.
Sometimes there'll be pain and suffering and heartache and disappointment and discouragement and rejection. Other times there'll be this awesome pleasure, indescribable pleasure and goodness and mercy and kindness of God that is so evident. God is at work in your life and my life all the time. And the truth is, you can't think of a single moment in your life and no activity in which God's not involved. He may not be in approval, but God has a schedule for your life and mine. And listen to this carefully. You may not be on His schedule all of your life. You may live in rebellion and disobedience to God all of your life. And you may say, I'm not interested in God's schedule or His timing.
Listen carefully. There will be a moment in your life in which you will be on His schedule. There will be His perfect timing because here's what God says, it is appointed unto man once to die and after this the judgment. You and I have an appointment with God. No doctor's going to delay it. No wealth can keep you from being on schedule, nobody.
They put all kind of blood in you, give you all kind of antibiotics, pump you up, operate on you. You cannot extend your life one second. You're on God's schedule for death. So why not get on His schedule now and enjoy it, amen? Why live your whole life and get on His schedule at the last second of your life when you could have been on it the whole time enjoying God's best for your life? That's amazing to me how people can ignore God's schedule and His timing.
They can ignore that. Things fall apart, they do not work, needs are not met, whatever it might be. And somehow they never relate that to the will of God, the plan of God, the purpose of God. God has a purpose and a plan in every one of our lives, and He's working something. He is at work in your life and my life.
And what does He do? He works in every single aspect of our life to teach us what our intimate relationship is. He works through our children. He works through your finances. He works through your health. He works in your occupation.
He works through all of those things God is at work at. But why is it? Why is it that we find ourselves having to suffer consequences that really aren't absolutely necessary? So, when I think about that, I think about one of those consequences is we suffer. Sometimes we suffer physically. Sometimes it's financially. Sometimes it's in relationships.
Sometimes it's in your vocation. There are many different ways we suffer as a result of ignoring God's schedule. And I go back to say again, if God created you with a purpose and a plan which He has, then He has a schedule.
He has timing. And what He desires is that you and I would surrender our schedule, put our clock on the shelf, watch His clock, walk in His way, and watch Him work. Because God is at work in your life every single day in some aspect of it. And when I think about how good God is, oftentimes I wonder how in the world could a person just absolutely ignore the fact that God is at work in their life. So sometimes there is great pain, heartache, and sorrow. They're living with deep regrets in their life because they absolutely have failed to follow His will.
We think time's not important, time's very important. God is up to something good all the time. He's never up to something bad in our life. Look for example in, look past Isaiah and Jeremiah to Lamentations. Look at this verse, Lamentations chapter three, all right, look at this, verse twenty-two, the Lord's lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, do you get that, they never cease.
For His compassions never fail, hallelujah, amen. Listen to this, they're new every morning. Now some people need to read this every morning.
They get up feeling like I don't have the energy, I can't make it, God, mm-hmm, look at that. He says they're new every morning, great is Your faithfulness. Remember this, God's compassion and His lovingkindness is never run out.
Can't exhaust them, always available. And so He says they're new every morning. The Lord is my portion, verse twenty-four says, my soul, therefore I have hope in Him. Watch this, the Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the person who seeks Him.
It's good that He waits silently. You say, well, but let me tell you about my circumstances, let me tell you the truth. It doesn't make any sense what your circumstances are, God is still good to every single one of us.
The reason He may not appear to be good to you is because you're off His timing and His schedule, you're doing your own thing. You have chosen to have it your way instead of God's way. And so therefore, you want to accuse God and blame God for something when He had the best plan possible. Remember, He's all knowing, He knows the best plan. He knows the right time, He knows the right schedule. And if you choose to get out of His will, do it your way, your timing on your schedule, then listen, one of the very inevitable things that happens when you and I get on our schedule, our timing, we begin to manipulate circumstances, then all of a sudden instead of confusion, it's not working out right, this isn't working out and why I feel this, He feels that.
And what happens? You're out of His schedule. When you are not on God's schedule, you miss His best. Here's what He says, He says He stored up, He says He stored up goodness for us. And whether we receive it or not depends upon us. So when I think about what happens to people who miss it, they miss it and they miss God's best.
Well, okay, so what are the benefits? What happens when you and I say, watch this, when you and I are willing to say, Lord, I'm just giving my schedule to You. I want to be on Your timing.
And I have to do that personally, real, real often. Lord, I know, I see how much is on the schedule for the day. Some things I can control and some things I can't always control. Here's the schedule. It looks like it's just going to be from one thing to the other all day long. But God, if this is Your schedule and I have peace about it, it looks like it's going to be a little tough. But if I have peace, if I know this is Your schedule, I'll be up to it. Don't get to manipulating something.
Watch this, don't try to manipulate the schedule because you feel inadequate. Because you see, you're not to live and work in your strength anyway. It's the power of the Holy Spirit.
I'm going to come to that in a second. It's the power of the Holy Spirit. And so, we don't manipulate, don't you? First of all, you can't manipulate God. Think about this. When I think about people saying, well, all right, I want God to move on.
I've waited long enough. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to fast and pray. Well, you can fast and pray. What that really means to them is, listen, if I pray long enough, God's going to get faster.
That is, He's going to be the one who gets faster and I'm going to get what I want. And I can remember the first time it ever dawned on me. I'm sure it was earlier in the ministry when I was, really was, fasting and praying for something that was of great importance to me. And it suddenly dawned on me while I'm done crying out to God, I'm thinking, wait a minute, I can't make God do this. Just relax. I can't make God do this. And you know, none of us like to be out of control, do we?
We always like to, you can tie both of my hands behind me, but if I can still wriggle something, at least I'm not totally out of control. When you surrender your will, your purpose, your plans, your calendar, when you surrender it to Him, it's amazing what He does, but you have to surrender. We don't like it.
We don't like not being in control. But you cannot be in control and have a calendar in your life, which God sees and only He sees, where you are manipulating things so you get what you want when you want it. But God is a good God. And He wants to bless us with His very best. And so, when I think about all the benefits, just thinking about His goodness, we'll turn to the fortieth chapter. Go back to the fortieth chapter of Isaiah. So look at this passage, if you will.
Fortieth chapter and verse twenty-eight, all right, it's a wonderful chapter of Isaiah. Verse twenty-eight says, Do you not know and have you not heard the everlasting God? The Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, does not become weary or tired?
Think about that. God never gets tired. Well, we'll have to wait a while before we can say that. We never get tired.
We never get tired. Listen, His understanding is inscrutable. Man, you can't fathom His understanding.
He has it perfect. He gives strength to the weary. To him who lacks might, he increases power, though youths grow weary and tired, and vigorous young men stumble badly, yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength, mount up with wings like eagles, run and not get tired, and walk and not become weary. There's this awesome promise that when you and I are on His schedule, He will give us the energy and the strength to do what we need to do.
And on one occasion, I was in New Zealand and the pastor there wanted me to speak downtown to this sort of a business people's kind of thing, it wasn't just men. And so, before we left at one, somehow he forgot to tell me that I was going to speak eight times. I said, Well now, you mean eight times this morning? He said, Yes.
We started about eight-thirty or something like that. And it was a thirty-minute thing and I'd speak about twenty-some minutes and I had a few minutes and then I'd come back and start again. And I remember this passage and I read this passage of Scripture. I read it to myself and I said, God, here's what You promised. Those who wait for You will gain new strength, mount up with wings like eagles, run and not get tired, walk and not weary. And I said, Lord, I'm already a little bit tired. So what I did is I put the Bible under my head and lay down on that concrete floor wrapped up in my overcoat. And I said, Lord, I'm waiting on You. You said if I wait upon You, what I'm waiting for, Lord, is Your strength and Your energy and Your might and Your power and Your anointing, because I can't do this in my own strength. I can't do this in my own strength.
I'm waiting for You to help me. I preached all eight times. When I finished eight times, I wasn't even tired.
Not even tired. God supplies what we need. He says they didn't wait upon Him. And this Scripture's in here for a very practical reason. There are times what is required of us will wear us out if we don't listen to Him. We listen to Him and what happens? God gives us the strength and the energy.
When we don't, we get laid out. And I can remember back in the ministry when we had three television programs every week and two of them were live and I was doing everything else that a pastor does. And so finally, you know, that verse didn't work. The reason it didn't work was I was not on God's schedule, not in His time, and I was doing my own thing.
Now, I would have told you it was for Jesus' sake. That's sort of what I felt. But I was deceived, deceived myself.
Think I had to do all these things. So for a while I was tired on Monday, most of the time a little bit tired on Monday. In fact, I tell folks, don't ask me to make any decisions from two to five on Monday.
Because after that I'm fine, before that, or during that time I'm a little bit hazy, so that's, don't make any important decisions. Monday I was tired, Tuesday I was tired, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, I felt just like it was Monday. Finally, I was laid out for three months, just out. I was off of God's schedule. I was out of His timing. I was trying to do more than God expected me to do. And so what happened, He's laid me out for three months. You say, well, did you learn anything? Yes, I did.
First of all, that I wasn't Superman. And there was a difference between God's timing and His schedule in mind. And thirdly, I learned something else very humbling. I came back after three months. They'd had twelve different preachers in three months.
Tendence was up, money was up, everything was better. That taught me a lesson, that I am not indispensable by a long shot. And secondly, if you walk in God's schedule, you don't get in that kind of a mess, physically.
You don't get in that kind of a mess. Listen to what He says. He says, yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength. They will mount up with wings like eagles. They will run and not get tired, and they will walk and not become weary. Have you ever seen an eagle fly? You see, you think they're up there batting their wings.
They're not doing that. They couldn't fly very far, they just bat their wings. They just find the right air current and those currents just hold up their wings. That's why they just soar along and nothing ever happens and they can fly over it. And it's amazing how absolutely awesomely smart they are.
Now think about this. Here is an eagle who sees this fish from that distance and has the accuracy to know how fast to fly, how low to fly, and he's already figured out how big that fish is because if he put those talons in a big fish, he can't get it out. He can't do that. Once he clutches that fish, the fish is either going to take him under or he takes the fish. He calculates all of that. He goes right out of there and he's gone, got what he's after.
He's a success, makes proper judgments. He can see so accurately. That little old eye isn't as big, it's my little finger. And I happen to have gotten a great shot of that and when you look at his eye, he's got this, if you look at it, because I got him sideways, it's this very determined look. Don't even look like you're going to come get this fish.
I mean, it's an awesome, awesome picture. It says something about the strength and the accuracy and then he can, not only can he pick the fish up out of the water, he can soar so high. And so I come to this verse of Scripture and I read this, he says, you'll mount up with wings like an eagle, run and not get tired, walk and not become weary. I think the reason a lot of people are weary in whatever they're doing in life is because they're doing it in their own strength, in their own puny wisdom. You're going to do it their way, not in the ways of God. And I want to encourage you, there are a lot of benefits, many benefits, for getting in His schedule and His timing. Saves you from a lot of heartache, a lot of mistakes, a lot of burdens, a lot of embarrassment, a lot of failure. And I want to challenge you to ask the Lord Jesus Christ to forgive you for living a rebellious life because watch this.
Therefore, very definite requirements to get in His schedule and on His timing. And the first one is humility. God, I'm not sufficient, adequate within myself, I need You, Lord. Secondly is faith. I'm going to trust You that You know better than I do. I'm going to trust You, God, that You know better than I do.
And sometimes that's hard for us to face. Thirdly, it requires patience. I'm going to wait for God's timing no matter what. And the fourth requirement is courage, the courage to wait until God says, Yes, this is my will. And I want to encourage you, whoever you are, to ask the Lord Jesus Christ to forgive you of your sins.
And here's what you need to do. You say to Him, Lord, I know I've sinned against You, been living on my schedule all these years. I'm asking You to forgive me of my sin based on the death of Jesus at the cross who shed His blood, paid my sin debt in full, and made it possible for me to ask You for mercy and forgiveness of my sin.
I'm trusting Jesus Christ as my personal Savior. The moment you do that, He sets you right in the middle of His schedule for your life. And then the Holy Spirit will be willing to give you guidance and direction all the years of your life. Father, how grateful we are. You just love us so much, it's hard for us to figure sometime how You can. But You said You'd stored up goodness for us, faithful every morning, loving kindness, tender mercy, everything that You have prepared for us. And that even in the difficult times, all those things are still true. We ask the Holy Spirit to speak to every single listener that you could accomplish your purpose and plan for their life for their good. In Jesus' name, amen.
