Welcome to this weekend's In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley. It's natural to be lured by the admiration of others, but the world's applause fades quickly. Today's podcast concludes the promise that is ours when we yield to the Lord in humble submission. All of us like to be lifted up, blessed, admired, loved, cared for. We want to get ahead in life, whatever that may mean to you personally. We want to do our best. We want to achieve and to accomplish. We want to get wherever God wants us to be in life. And oftentimes people have the idea, well, you know, I can't and I want and this won't happen and they this and they that and oftentimes miss God's very best in life. When He makes the promise, He says, if you and I willing to humble ourselves before Him, He will exalt us. Now you're saying, what does it mean to be exalted? We'll talk about that in a moment.
But I want you to think about something. If God makes a promise, He's obligated to keep that promise. If I wanted to keep the promise, I'm obligated to fulfill my responsibility. And in this particular chapter and in these verses, He tells us what that is. Now, let's think for just a moment if we can capsule in one simple phrase what it means to humble ourselves before God.
We've talked about it in great detail, but simply this. To humble ourselves means to submit ourselves to the Lord Jesus Christ as the sovereign ruler of our life and to walk in obedience to His will for our life. It means simply to submit ourselves to the Lord Jesus Christ who is the sovereign ruler of our life and to walk in simple obedience to Him. That light of that, let's look at this whole promise and what He said here. He said, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God.
What does He mean by that? Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God. Now, I think there are three things in this passage that I want you to notice primarily. He says, first of all, if we're going to be exalted, number one, we must humble ourselves. Number two, He must be the one who exalts us, not we ourselves.
And thirdly, it must be in His timing. That is, we must humble ourselves before Him. That is, we yield ourselves to Him, acknowledging Him as the sovereign ruler of our life. He has the right to do so. And then we wait upon Him and trust Him to exalt us in whatever way He chooses.
And then number three, it has to be at His time. So let's think about this for a moment. He says, under the mighty hand of God.
What does He mean by that? Well, in the Old Testament, the mighty hand of God was usually a symbol of God's hand at work. And He says, for example, it was by His mighty hand, He delivered the nation of Israel out of Egyptian bondage. And oftentimes you will see that phrase, the mighty hand of God.
By the mighty hand of God. So that, think about this, whatever God is doing in your life, He's doing by His mighty hand, which we know is the most awesome, powerful hand that there is. That is, He is absolutely omnipotent, so that.
Listen carefully. God has the power to put you, place you, give you the position, give you the authority, give you whatever you need in life. That is, whatever in any way that God wants to elevate you, He has the power to do so no matter what. Now, there are three reasons I think you and I should humble ourselves before God. Number one is because He's God and He deserves our reverence and our respect and our submission. Why should you and I humble ourselves under His mighty hand? Because of who He is, number one. Secondly, because He wants to exalt us.
And number three, because He cares for us. Now, oftentimes a person says, well, you know, I just, things just don't seem to be going my way and I can't figure out, think about this for a moment. God says if you humble yourself before Him, He will take care of you.
Now, oftentimes a person will come along and say, well, you know, I've worked hard at this job and, you know, I've been diligent and I see people getting passed over me. Why don't you say, God, I'm going to humble myself before you. I'm going to submit my future in your hands instead of criticizing and trying to manipulate my circumstance and trying to get ahead, being anxious and fretful about the whole issue. I'm going to put it in your hands, God. I'm going to trust you.
I'm going to believe that you'll do exactly what you say you'll do. You said if I submit myself to you, if I humble myself before you, you will exalt me. And it may be that you need to ask yourself the question, God, is it I? In other words, am I the one who wants to exalt myself?
Is this something that I want to do? Or God, is this something you want to do? And oftentimes, listen to this, people miss God's best.
They miss the best opportunity, the best privilege and the best of God's blessings because they want to do it their way and in their timing. And God doesn't put up with it. It may look like He does from the way the world operates, but you know what? If you'll just think back how you see people rise and fall, rise and fall, rise and fall, here's what He says.
He says, you exalt yourself, I'm bringing you down. And we may think because a person is able to sit on some pedestal for a few years that we think, well, somehow they beat God at the game. No, they didn't.
No, they didn't. God is the one who is in charge. He's the one who's in control. And so, therefore, we come to Him and we say, well, Lord, You said submit ourselves to You totally and completely and follow You, then what can we expect? Oftentimes a person who reaches thirty or maybe thirty-five years of age, maybe a little older, and they'll say, you know what?
I've been trusting God to give me a mate or give me a partner and here I am at this age and, you know, I'm still not married and I'm, yeah, they are fretting about it and fuming about it and thinking God's overlooked them and God doesn't care. And so, they can give you a big story about that. Well, think about this. Does God know all about where you are in life?
Yes. Is He concerned about you? He said He cared about you. Could it be that God is waiting for you to submit yourself to Him and turn it over to Him and surrender to Him and let Him decide what is best for your life, who is best for your life, if anybody's best for your life? You see, one of the things we don't particularly like is we don't like God's requirements.
And sometimes it's difficult for us to face them. Think about the apostle Paul for a moment. The apostle Paul was a Roman and he was a Jew and a Pharisee and a person of great respect and honor and authority. He trusted Jesus Christ as his personal Savior and all that went down the tube in a moment. Then he was considered a renegade.
He was considered later a revolutionary. He was considered totally rejected by his own people. And then the Christians, they didn't like the idea, they didn't want to trust him because he used to be a Roman working for Rome and working against the Christians.
So why should they trust him? All of a sudden, here's this man with all the accolades and all the recognition and praise and honor and suddenly he's out there by himself. Then the Christians finally take him in. And so what does he do?
He spends his life, he invests his life going this place and that place and establishing churches. And the whole time he did it, the entire time he did it, the Judaizers were after him, persecuting him, stoning him, beating him, ended up in prison, finally died. So well, and besides that, to top it all off, he says in 2 Corinthians chapter 12 that in the midst of his ministry, God gave him this thorn in his side.
Whatever it was bothered him greatly. He said, I prayed and prayed and prayed. God said, my grace is sufficient. And then here's what he said. He said, I learned something. I learned that God was saying to me, in order to protect you from exalting yourself, I sent you this thorn to give you enough heartache, enough trouble, enough pain, enough difficulty that you could not exalt yourself because you felt so humiliated.
You and I don't like that kind of thing. We want God's blessings. We want his elevation.
We want the best he has. And sometimes, listen, the best God has for you and me is humiliation, difficulties, trials, pain, suffering, heartache, disappointments, accusations, persecutions, you name it. We say, well, how in the world could that be? How could that be from God? The apostle Paul just told us, he said, because God had blessed him with such awesome revelations of himself, that in order to protect him, God sent him whatever's necessary to keep him humble so that he would not exalt himself. And that they would not worship him in some places.
Here come those men that turned the world upside down. They wanted sometimes to worship Paul and his partners. No. He said, God gave me enough pain that I couldn't do that. Is that a blessing from God?
Yes. Here's what he said, Paul, I have elevated you and lifted you to such a position in life that you're going to be, now Paul didn't know this, my spokesman until I return. You're going to write letters that seem to be very short and very unimpressive at this moment, but they're going to guide people for all eternity. You're going to make an impression upon the world second to none than my son, Jesus Christ.
You see, we don't particularly like that kind of thing. But the issue is this, that we want God to exalt us in his own way, in his own time, that we must do it, listen, his way and in his timing. God knows exactly what to do, how to do it and when to do it. Listen, don't look at other people as those who can keep you from being where God wants you to be.
I learned that lesson a long time ago, I hope, I certainly hope I have. When I could see how God moves the circumstances of life to place us where he wants us, when he wants us there, no matter what somebody else thinks or what they may do to become an obstacle in your life. Remember, it's the mighty hand of God who moves the circumstances of life. If we truly believe that he's the sovereign of the universe, that he controls all things and if he doesn't control them, then they're up to faith and we're all in a mess every day. But because he is in absolute control, he's the one who's moving the circumstances of your life. You say, well, I certainly wish my circumstances had changed.
Here's how to get them to change. You get on your face before God or sit or have you talk to him, you get yourself in a position of being totally submitted. If you will submit yourself to him. Now, is that easy?
Depends on what you're wrestling with. When you submit yourself, here's what you're doing. You're saying, God, I'm turning over to you.
I'm taking my hands off that Lord. Whatever you want to do, it's fine. I'm going to do exactly what you say. What you do is you position yourself. Listen, with submission comes the position of God's favor. When you humble yourself before God, you put yourself in a position to have the favor of God. So if things aren't working out the way you think they ought to, ask yourself the question, is there pride? Is there arrogance?
Maybe it's very deceptive. It may be in this area or some area you never thought about before. But if you really want God's best, if you want to be where he wants you to be, with what he wants you to have, you've got to be willing to humble yourself and say, God, no matter whether it's painful, whether I like it or not, whatever it is, God, here I am. Is that easy? No, I can tell you, that's not easy. It's not easy to give up things or whatever it might be. Not easy to give up positions. It's not easy to lay down your desires and your will and your purpose, to lay it all down and say, God, I'm going to trust you because I know that you're much wiser than I am.
He'll do it. Now, with that in mind, let's talk about why do people exalt themselves and not wait upon God? I want to give you a number of reasons and I'm going to start them all with the same letter because I think sometimes people take notes a little bit better when they get it that way.
And secondly, you need to remember these. And so, let's think about why do people exalt themselves? Why do they do it?
Well, there are probably lots and lots of reasons, but I want to give you some of what I think's main ones. Number one, they're impatient. They look at themselves and they think, well, you know what, I better get it now. If I don't get it now, I'm not going to ever get it. Who says so? Well, if I get passed up this time, I'll never make it.
Who says so? You see, watch your focus. Are you looking at circumstances or at the mighty hand of God? If God could do for you in the past what He's already done for you, can He not do in the future what He knows is best for you?
Yes, He can. So impatience is one of the primary reasons. Secondly, is insecurity.
I don't have it. I need to be in that position. If I don't, I don't know what's going to happen in the future. So a whole sense of insecurity crops up in a person's life. And then thirdly, identity.
Some people's identity is wrapped up in status. In other words, where do I live? What do I drive? What do I wear? How do people see me? How do they recognize me? In other words, I'm not interested in being number two, number three. I've got to be number one. Something inside of that person is so insecure. Something inside of that person that is so wrapped up with their identity in their job. Now listen, if I should ask you today who you are, tell me who you are.
Most of you would tell me your name and your address and so forth. But that who you really are is you're a child of God. That's number one above everything else.
Everything else secondary to that. Because you see, my whole future's wrapped up in that relationship. You're a child of God.
You don't have to worry about your status. Do you know what? Let me ask you a question. How much can you buy with a cup full of status?
You can't buy anything because it's people's imaginations. It's the way they see you or oftentimes the way we see ourselves. Number four is ignorant of God's ways. When a person's ignorant of God's ways, they want to jump in there and do it themselves. And they want to exalt themselves and they work at it.
And sometimes they're willing to be critical of others, judgment of others, accuse others, do anything they can to degrade someone else in order to get their position. I can tell you, you won't be happy when you get it. And God didn't have anything to do with it. And finally, God will bring you down at some point. Then another reason is people ignore God's will. Instead of stopping and praying, now God, what do you want? They just ignore God's will, move right on and think this is what I'm going to do. And then I'm going to ask God to bless me as I travel a path which I myself have planned. I tell you, if you plan the path, you look around, friend, He's not there. In other words, you better let God plan the pathway.
And you better let Him set the clock and the calendar on when He wants to exalt you and bless you, whatever it might be. Oftentimes, it's a matter of imitating. People want to imitate somebody else. They see what he has, what she has, and where they are and where they go and what they do and where they eat and who they fellowship with. They want to do the same thing. They want to imitate somebody else. And so what, since they don't do that, can't do that, they're willing to do whatever is necessary.
They think somehow that if they can get this position, they can join this club or they get this position, then they can. All of that is flesh, pure flesh. And I mean by that, pure, ungodly, humanistic, and humanness, that naturalness within the inside of us.
That's the way the world thinks. God says humble yourself under His right of hand. He'll promote you. He'll get you where He wants you to be.
He'll do in your life what He wants to do. Then the whole issue of being impulsive. Here's an opportunity that comes along and a person jumps. They don't stop to ask God.
They just jump. Don't be too impulsive to jump at something because it looks like an immediate increase or elevation or status or approval or praise from someone else. It may be that God wants you to do that. But be sure your motive is not just money and the accolades, the aspirations that you might have and the praise of the world. Another issue is impure motives. Sometimes people get ahead of God, want to exalt themselves because of greed, because of jealousy, because of covetousness.
I will show them I knew one of these days I'd be your boss. Now you had it. Do you think God will honor that?
No. You see, none of these things fit into God's perfect plan. And I'll tell you one last reason why we'll talk about and that's the whole issue of ingratitude. I'm so ungrateful for where I am, what I have, I'm going to manipulate myself to get more and get elevated and a greater rank and greater status and greater recognition and greater authority.
None of that fits who we are. So that when He says humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God and God Almighty will exalt you, elevate you in whatever form and fashion He sees that you and I are able to handle, He will do that. And what's going to happen is this. If you'll notice what He said later on that verse, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God that He may exalt you at the proper time. Listen to this.
This is the same sentence, casting all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you. You know what happens? When you and I humble ourselves before Him and say, Lord, not my will but Your will. Not my timing but Your timing.
Not my way but Your way. You know what happens? You have to hunt for something to be anxious about. Then you get to be, here's what happens to people.
This is true. They worry because they're not worried anymore. Well, something must be wrong because things are just too good. I mean, you know, as long as I was troubled, I felt that was sort of natural. Now, you know, I can't find any trouble. Something must be wrong.
No. We're so used to living in our own makeup and mess. When God comes along with peace and gentleness and quietness of spirit, we don't even know how to operate. Humbled yourselves under the mighty hand of God, He will exalt you at the proper time. And then you can cast all your cares, all your anxieties, all your fretting and all your worry into the lap of a heavenly Father who is more than sufficient to take care of you. Father, how grateful we are for Your great love of which You've loved us. I pray the Holy Spirit will take this simple truth, drive it so deep within us that it takes root and we become a people of spirit of humility, submission, yielding to You in every aspect of our lives so that all that You desire for us will be positioned to receive in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you for listening to part two of The Promise. 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 In Touch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
