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When It Is Wise to Wait - Part 1B

In Touch / Charles Stanley
The Truth Network Radio
November 14, 2024 12:00 am

When It Is Wise to Wait - Part 1B

In Touch / Charles Stanley

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November 14, 2024 12:00 am

Follow God's timing rather than your own and see how His plan and purpose for you can blossom into great blessings.

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Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Thursday, November 14. Are you on the verge of making an important decision? Before you ignore God's directives, let's consider the ramifications carefully and avoid those consequences.

Our series When It Is Wise to Wait continues. Wait for the Lord, be strong, and let your heart take courage. Yes, wait for the Lord.

Now to some people that may be a strange idea. What do you mean, wait for the Lord? Why should you have to wait on God? Is God ever late?

Indeed, He's not. Then what in the world do you mean by waiting upon the Lord? Well, what we mean is simply this. To wait means to pause and wait for further instructions. When a person is waiting upon the Lord, what they're doing is remaining in their present circumstance, remaining in their present position, and waiting for further instruction from God. Lord, what do I do next?

What is the next move? This does not mean that you do nothing. It does not mean that you're just sort of passively sitting around doing nothing, waiting for the Lord. Because waiting for the Lord is not passive, but it is an activity. That is, it is active.

It is quiet activity. We wait by remaining where we are, doing what God says to do to the best of our ability until God intervenes in that situation and changes it, or intervenes and says, now here's what I want you to do now. People who say, well, you know, I don't like my job, I'm just going to quit and wait on God. Well, I want to tell you, I'm not going to say that God would never tell anybody to quit and wait upon Him, but most of the time, waiting involves doing what I'm doing to the best of my ability, right where I am, with all of my heart until God says move here, move there, move over yonder. Usually, He's going to move you from what you're doing to something else He wants you to do that is actively waiting upon God and waiting for His direction.

So when we talk about activity, we're talking about that. That is, He's not going to say just shut it all down and do nothing. So what is the attitude? What's the right attitude about waiting upon God? Well, I can tell you what mine has been sometimes. Very impatient with God. I have been frustrated when God didn't operate on my schedule. There have been a few times I'll have to admit I've been angry. And sometimes I would like to manipulate the circumstances so I can say, now God, I've got this thing all figured out.

Now what about blessing this? Which is a real temptation sometimes when things don't work out to suit us and we have to wait. And so sometimes we wait angrily, frustrated, nervous, impatiently, you name it, complaining, groaning, moaning about God. What's going on? Why aren't you doing something? And what we have to remember is this.

Just because I can't see what God's doing doesn't mean that God isn't doing something. So I have to learn to wait. So we are impatient.

Now, what should our method be? So I want you to get your Bible out now if you've got it out. Let's go through some Scriptures.

Because He tells us how we're to wait. First of all, I want you to turn to Psalm thirty-seven. Psalm thirty-seven, verse seven.

Two things here. First of all, He says, Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him. So I am to wait patiently. That is, I must be willing to endure whatever is necessary until God intervenes.

And notice what He says here. I'm not only to wait upon Him patiently, but I'm to wait upon Him in faith. He says, Rest in the Lord.

Trust Him. I am to wait upon Him, trusting Him. I am to wait upon Him patiently, waiting for God to do what He has promised to do. And then, I want you to turn to Psalm sixty-two.

Psalm sixty-two is one of my favorite ones. The Lord keeps bringing me back too often times when I'm in the process of waiting and trying to find out what He's up to in my life. My soul waits there only upon God, for my expectation is from Him. And in the New American Standard He says, My soul waits in silence for God only. That is, sometimes we are to wait quietly, silently before Him. And you see, it's real difficult for us to do that because we're all so active.

And our whole generation, this whole society is active. You remember when the apostle Paul got saved on Damascus Road? And he had this tremendous Damascus Road experience and fell down blind, couldn't see anything. They took him away and finally his sight was restored. And do you remember what God said to the man there?

He said, Ananias, He's my chosen vessel. Now, the natural normal thing for Saul of Tarsus to have done was, having been saved so graciously by the Lord Jesus Christ, having heard the voice of the Lord, having had his eyesight restored, so he was, listen, he witnessed two miracles. The miracle of his own new birth, the miracle of his blindness, having his sight restored, the natural normal thing for Saul of Tarsus to do was to head toward Jerusalem, get in the city square and say, This is Saul of Tarsus.

And they already knew about him. I mean, he had a terrible reputation as a persecutor, but he could have stood up on the city square in Jerusalem and he could have said, I was saved on the Damascus Road and besides that, I was made blind. I heard the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ, the resurrected Lord. Now I can see and he sent me to evangelize and I want you to come to Christ. He could have started his evangelistic campaign and whole missionary endeavor. You know what God told him to do?

I want you to go to Arabia out in the desert and I want you to be there all by yourself. I don't want you to talk to anybody but me, God said. Sometimes waiting upon the Lord is to wait silently. Just be quiet and listen. God, what are you saying to me? And I could never say this to you enough. Quiet meditation with the Word of God, at least a little bit every day. If you skip a day, don't get discouraged.

Just next day get back to it. This is God's instruction book. This is God's answer. This is God's compass.

This is everything you and I need to know what to do next. And he says we're to wait upon him patiently, trusting him and we're to wait also silently. Now, I want you to turn to, back to the 27th Psalm where we start in the very beginning. He says, wait for the Lord, verse 14, wait for the Lord. Yes, he says again, wait for the Lord. Now how are we to wait?

We say we're not to wait passively, but expectantly. That is, when you and I are waiting upon God, here's what happens. We learn to sharpen our discernment. When you're waiting upon the Lord and you're spending time in his Word and you're listening, here's what you begin to do. You begin to look for the evidences of God at work in your life in ways that you never saw it before.

And you will see how God's putting pieces together in the most exciting sort of way. Listen, if you miss that in life, you miss one of the greatest principles of the Christian life, learning to wait upon God. And if I wait expectantly, my discernment begins to be very sensitive.

I begin to see the evidence of God putting things together in my life and will know when the right time comes. So he says in this passage, wait upon the Lord. Again, he says wait.

And when he says twice, wait upon the Lord, he's saying to us, do it steadfastly. Wait upon the Lord, be strong and let your heart take courage. Wait upon the Lord, steadfastly. Don't move off. That is, you just wait till you get direction from God.

Hang in there, focus your attention upon Him and just wait. Not only that, he says we are to wait courageously. He knew that you and I would become fearful.

He says wait for the Lord, be strong and let your heart take courage. Be strong, steadfast, courageously. And you see courage is in the absence of fear. Most folks think that if you have courage, you don't have any fear.

No. Listen, courage is calmness and stability in the midst of fear. All of us have been in the midst of things that caused us fear. But there's an innocence of calmness and quietness and steadfastness no matter what may happen. And you see, waiting upon the Lord, if I wait upon Him, I'm to wait upon Him fearlessly, courageously, steadfastly, patiently trusting Him silently. But I am also to wait standing upon the Word of God. And I want you to turn to Psalm 130. Standing upon the Word of God, Psalm 130.

Listen to what he says. In the 130th Psalm, the Psalmist says, verse five, I wait for the Lord, my soul does wait and in His Word do I hope. And what he's simply saying is this, I know what God has said, and I'm waiting for Him, I'm taking my stand upon the Word of God. Now, one last thing that I want to talk about, and that's what's the consequences of not waiting. Well, I want you to jot down these five things so you'll think about them for your own life. Number one, when we fail to wait, we get out of God's will.

It's just that simple. When God says, don't do anything till I tell you, we say, Lord, I know what you said, I think I know what to do. Did you know, listen carefully, did you know that even when you do the right thing out of God's timing it's disobedience? Even when you do the right thing out of God's timing it's disobedience.

And what that's going to do, even though it's the right thing, it's going to bring frustration and confusion to what could have been a blessing. And so first of all, one of the consequences is we get out of God's will. Now here's the danger of getting out of God's will. When you and I step out of God's will, we immediately position ourselves to vulnerability to Satan. When we're out of God's will, we are more vulnerable to Satan's attacks to lead us astray and to destroy our life than any other time. So there's always a consequence not to listen to wait upon the Lord.

The second is we delay God's planned blessings for our life. There are times when God has exactly what we want, what we want God to do, He's preparing to do it. When we refuse to wait, what we do is He just has to delay it.

That is if God knows that I'm going to need greater faith out here for this greater position that He wants to put you in, if He knows you're going to need greater faith and greater experience, what the very thing that you want in life God wants you to have because it's His will. But if you are not willing to wait, what you're going to do is delay the blessing. You get out here and mess it up, then God has to just let you wait that much longer until you learn the lesson. We're the ones who delay the blessings, not God. And we delay them by getting ahead of Him. The third thing I want you to notice is we bring upon ourselves pain and suffering by not waiting upon the Lord.

I've seen this happen. I've seen men walk down this church aisle and who've said to me, my wife divorced me three months ago and last week I got saved and God's radically changed my life. You say, well, it took the divorce to get Him saved.

No, it didn't. God would never tell a woman to divorce her husband to get her husband saved. God never tells me to disobey over here in order to bring obedience over here. That's not the way God operates. Listen, that'd be so confusing. We wouldn't ever know what God's up to in our life. But you see, if she'd have just waited three months, you say, well, it took that.

No, listen, God may have used something else. And sometimes the person says, I don't have to put up with this on my job. I'm leaving, not realizing that if you stayed in a tough situation, and I can give you some examples that some men have given me, if you just stayed in a tough situation where it was hard and difficult, just hung in there and demonstrated the wonderful spirit that a spirit-filled Christian can demonstrate, you may end up being the president. But because it wasn't going your way, and it wasn't on your time schedule, and you weren't willing to wait for God, you just said, listen, I'll do my own thing.

You sure can, and blow it. Well, I'm going to get married. I've got to get married. Why do you want to get married?

I'm 30 years old. I've got to get married. That's 30 years old having to do with marriage.

There are folks who are 40 who are not married. And you may say, poor them, and they're saying, poor you, if you marry the wrong person. You see, I have seen people sit in my study and weep and weep and weep and weep because they did not wait for God. And we bring upon ourselves heartache and suffering and trials, difficulties, hardship and sorrow. We bring a lot of that junk upon ourselves.

Why? Because we won't wait. Look what happened to Moses. He wanted to get Israel freed from Egyptian bondage. But he wouldn't wait for God to show him how to do it. He's going to do it Himself. You know what it cost him?

Forty years on the backside of the desert. Now, another thing I want to say about this is, when you and I refuse to wait upon the Lord and do our own thing, we always hurt somebody else. Because we're not islands and we live in relationships, husbands, wives, children, friends, people you work with, we live in relationships. And what happens is we disobey, we get ahead of God, we act behind Him, don't get in concert with His will, we always hurt other folks. There's no such thing as a husband, wife or children getting out of God's will living in sin without everybody in that family hurting. And the body of Christ hurts when somebody in the body is hurting out of God's will living in sin.

And how many times have men said to me, if I had just waited, I want to plead with you in Jesus' name. Don't make financial decisions without the wisdom and the direction of the great financier. Nobody knows finances like God. Why did He say so much about it in the Bible?

Because He knew it was going to be a big problem in so many people's lives. He is willing to give you direction if you are willing to wait, whether it is the purchase of a house or an automobile or a dress or something else, it makes no difference. You say, well, you don't mean to tell me we ought to ask God about things like, what about toothpaste? No, don't worry about toothpaste. But there are a lot of things we need to ask Him about.

And you're smart enough to know what to ask Him about. You see, we get in trouble financially because we jump. We do it now instead of waiting for God's timing. And then the last thing I want to say is that one of the consequences of not waiting upon the Lord is the confusion it brings into our life. There's so many people walking around today in confusion. Think about this. They just live from Monday to Friday to get their paycheck, have the free weekend, go back to the gruel and the grind of next Monday, do it again, no sense of direction, no sense of purpose, no sense of achievement, no sense of accomplishment, just living, working, making money, spending it. You see, they're living in confusion.

Why? They've never stopped to ask God, what do you want to do with my life? How do you want me to invest my life, which belongs to you? And if you and I would wait and seek His direction, here's what would happen. Every day of our life could be profitable, meaningful, and bear rich rewards and fruit for the kingdom of God and fruit in the life of your family and in your own life.

There'll be more joy and more peace and more contentment and a greater sense of satisfaction if we have a sense of direction. I think about so many pastors. They get in a church and things don't go right and people don't like them. They don't like the folks and they have a big stew about it all and they just up and leave without asking God.

I don't have to put up with this. So what happens? They move to some other church. Without asking God, is that what you want? So the next church that calls Him, this man who is out of God's will, even being willing to consider that, has now gotten that church out of God's will. This pastor over here goes to this church who's out of God's will now because their pastor's gone. You say, well, does that mean everybody gets out of God's will? God straightens up all messes where men and women are willing to be obedient to God. But if I always run because things don't suit me, I'll always be on the run out of the will of God, out of step with His timing, because I fail to wait.

Now I say one last thing. Listen carefully. There are those times in our life when we come to some critical, crucial decision. We can go right or we can go left. And if we come barreling up to this intersection in our life, whether it's marriage, finances, job, whatever it is, and not stop to be sure we have God's mind, we just go our way. There's some decisions that are irrevocable. Can't ever change them because there's some opportunities that only come once. That's why it is so very, very important that we wait until we know that God has said, now this is good, this is right, and now is the time. Thank you for listening to When It Is Wise to Wait. 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.
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-11-14 06:41:23 / 2024-11-14 06:49:03 / 8

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