Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Tuesday, December 17th. Do you have a desire to know God? If so, you'll be encouraged to set aside distractions and common hindrances so you can develop a keen awareness of the Lord's presence.
Let's listen to today's podcast. True wealth is more than an abundance of things. And a lot of people who think that they are wealthy because they have property and gold and silver, and all kinds of physical things, and in their minds, they're very, very wealthy. But is that what real, true wealth is all about?
Think about it. You can be very wealthy in material things all day and lose it before the night's there. For the simple reason, that's not really true, genuine wealth. Because true, genuine wealth is beyond all that. In fact, think about it this way.
If you can touch it, you can weigh it. If you can see it, and somehow you can count it, you can lose it. But true, genuine wealth is spiritual and you can't lose it. And so many people give so many years of their life to accumulating and accumulating and accumulating, and often times, right before they start enjoying it, they're gone. And sometimes, right before they begin to enjoy it, they lose it. What do you have if all you have is an accumulation of material things that you've gathered over the years? Is that God's purpose for your life?
When you work for years and years and years and years and years, and you lose it, or you're no longer able to enjoy it, and you look back over those years and think, what a waste. Well, it doesn't have to be that way. And if you get your thinking right, and you begin to look at it from God's perspective, then everything begins to change. Because you see, on the one hand, you can be physically very wealthy and spiritually in poverty. But if you are spiritually wealthy, the other things sort of work out according to God's perfect will for your life. So, I want us to think about one of the most precious gifts that you have.
You didn't work for it, you didn't buy it, you don't deserve it. One of the most precious gifts that you have as a follower of Jesus Christ. One that most people never give any thought to, but one that is so powerful. One that affects every single aspect of your life.
In fact, you wouldn't give it up for anything. And yet, most people do not even realize that it's there. They see the things that are happening, but somehow they've never put together what is this all about. So, the awareness of God's presence. Now, you say, well, what's that got to do with my life?
Everything, everything. It is the most powerful, the most awesome gift anyone has is to live and be aware that they're living in the presence of Almighty God. Now, this was so very important to Jesus before He was crucified that those last days, especially the last night before He was going to the cross the next day, had His disciples all together. And the one thing He wanted to get across to them above all the many things that He said in these four chapters of John was the thing that I want us to talk about. Something every single believer needs to understand, to apply to your life.
If you're going to have a life that has peace and happiness and joy and provision and all the rest, and satisfaction and fulfillment, without this, you're not going to have it. So, listen very carefully and turn in your Bible to John chapter fourteen. And I want us to read these few verses here that Jesus emphasized because the thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen chapters of John are some of the most important chapters in all the gospels. And so, He comes to, most people know this verse, Do not let your heart be troubled, Believe in God, believe also in Me. The beginning of the fourteenth chapter. Then He comes on down to the sixteenth verse, and this is His goal. His goal, His objective, and His primary purpose for these verses is to assure them of something that is absolutely essential for the fact that He's getting ready to leave them. So, listen to what He says beginning in verse sixteen. He says, I will ask the Father, and He will give you, listen carefully, another Helper that He may be with you forever. Well, who is this another Helper? The Greek word another is a little four-letter word, A-L-L-O-S, A-L-L-O-S, five-letter word, which means this, another, just like this one. So, here's what He's saying, I will ask the Father, He will give you another Helper, just like Himself, just like Me, Jesus says, that He may be with you forever.
Who is that? Look in verse seventeen, that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you. That is, watch this. When you trust the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, the Holy Spirit of God comes into your life to dwell in your spirit, and He is there to seal you, as Paul says in Ephesians, to seal you as a child of God forever. It's God doing the sealing, not man. And once God seals you as one of His children, you are forever one of the sealed children of God. And nobody can break the seal that God places on you. Forever you have that assurance.
And so, that should affect the way you and I live. And so, what He's saying to them is, listen, I'm leaving, but I want to be sure you understand this, that even though I'm leaving, He says in verse eighteen, I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you. He has one thing in mind, assurance of His presence. So He says, after a little while, the world will no longer see Me, but you will see Me because I live, you will live also. In that day, you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.
What is He saying? He says, when Christ comes into our life, we have a new relationship. And this relationship is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, and us. And God seals us as His children when we are saved, and dwelling within us is the Holy Spirit who will enable us to become the person God wants us to be and to be able to achieve the things that God wants us to achieve.
So when you trust Jesus as your personal Savior, the Holy Spirit comes into your life to dwell, which means that you and I have a presence with, a relationship with Almighty God, so that you and I could live, watch this, not only in the presence of God, but even in the awareness of that presence. Now when you think about it for a moment, you are aware of lots of things. You're aware that you're sitting here, you're aware that you have a Bible, or people sitting beside you.
You're aware of those things. There are a lot of things going on that you're unconscious of. But today, right now, you are aware of where you are. What about in your mind, where is God? Are you aware of His presence? Are you aware that when you awakened, that you were awakened in the presence of God? Will you be aware that you're driving in the presence of God, that you'll be laboring all day in the presence of God, and that you'll be laboring among your fellow laborers in the presence of God, that you'll come home in the presence of God, that you'll be with your family in the presence of God in the evening, and whatever you do throughout the night, you're going to do it in the presence of God.
Why? Because He so arranged our relationship that there is no separation between us and Him. And He is indwelling us by His Holy Spirit.
That's what separates us from the rest of the world. We're indwelt by the presence of God. That's the source of our peace, source of our joy, source of our security, source of everything, the awareness of His presence. That's true, but the question is, are you aware of that? And probably most Christians will live most of their lives thinking, God's in heaven and I call upon Him when I need Him, I call upon Him when I'm afraid, I call upon Him when I'm lonely, I call upon Him in difficulty and hardship and disappointments in life.
And that's the way they live. He wants us to live this way, that every single moment of our life, we are living in His presence. And watch this, and He, listen, He is relating to us throughout the rest of our life, the moment you trust Him is saved you so. God isn't interested in just providing your need and answering your prayer. That's relationship, relationship, relationship, relationship, relationship.
So here's what He did. He sent the Holy Spirit to indwell your Spirit and my Spirit so that He could operate in our lives and express His will, His purpose and plan for us every single day. And so, when we think about this relationship, let's think about it in this light. And let's clarify the meaning of awareness. First of all, if I say that I am aware of something, we say I'm conscious of it, I'm mindful of it.
I'm awake to that, in other words, I know that exists. You have a conscious mind that God created. You have a subconscious mind that He created that's also inhabits this body of yours. That subconscious mind works twenty-four hours a day. Conscious mind, we say we go to sleep at night. While we're asleep, our subconscious mind and the Holy Spirit of God within these bodies of ours is working all the time. For example, there are times when I may be working on a message and I'll go to bed and I'll think, well, I just don't have that third point right or I don't, I haven't, Lord, I'm just going to trust You. Lord, while I'm sleeping, I'm going to trust You to work. And how many times I've awakened in the middle of the night and the only thing I see is that point which I was missing.
Here's what happens. This is powerful and dangerous because what you feed your mind, watch this, what you feed your mind before you go to sleep is what your subconscious is going to work on all night long. So you feed it junky stuff, that becomes a part of you. When you feed it things that are good and righteous and holy, God is working in your life, building you up on the inside without you even realizing it. So the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit indwells our spirit, which includes our conscience and our subconscious.
So why? Because His desire for us is a relationship. God didn't just save us and say, okay, you all do your best and I'll provide everything you need. No, He wants to have a personal, intimate relationship with us.
Therefore, He wants us and desires that you and I live in awareness of this relationship and awareness of His presence. So many people, for example, they miss it. They spend their lives and we'd be surprised probably how many people don't give God a thought all day, all night. They go to bed at night. They never thank God for what He's done for them during the day.
They wake up in the morning and get up and get going, never give God a thought. Let me ask you a question. How long would your marriage last if you got up, got out of the bed and took off and never said goodbye, hello, I love you, thanks for, in other words, and suppose you came home at night, walked right by him or her, never said a word, and you got in the bed at night, never said a word. How long would that marriage last? Look, wait a minute now, you both have a fine automobile, you're living in a fine home, you've got lots of money, you've got lots of everything, but the one thing. If you don't have a relationship, you don't have anything. Listen, if you're saved with the grace of God and you're not aware, listen, you're not aware that you have an awesome relationship in reality, that He's living within you. Why didn't Jesus just say, well, just trust me as your Savior and I'll write you a name in the Lamb's Book of Life, and that's it? Because He wants a relationship. He wants that relationship because He wants to live in and through every single one of us His life, so that each one of us is an expression of the life of Christ. So, the awareness of His presence is one of the most important things in your life.
It's one of God's greatest gifts in your life. And so, how many times in a given day do you think about Him? Let's say, for example, let's say you have children and they're, you have a little boy and a little girl and they're both in the first grade.
You send them off the first day to school. Do you just go about your work and forget it till you see them? You're thinking about them all day long.
In your conscious mind, you're doing your work, you're subconscious right below that. You know what? This is why a mother goes to sleep and can hear in her sleep a child's cry or whatever it might be.
You know why? She's gone to sleep in her conscious mind, but the subconscious is still there aware. She is aware of the child when she is absolutely asleep. And so, how many times in your life do you think God has provided for us to be aware of His presence, no matter what's going on in our life, that is His will and purpose and plan for us. And this is what Jesus said.
He said, look, I'm not going to leave you as orphans, I'm coming to you. Now, that being true, why is it that we don't live in the awareness of His presence? In other words, we'll talk about what it does for us, but let's, why don't we? We get up and we start our work or whatever it might be and we're busy doing this and busy doing that. And somebody says, well, I can't do my job and be aware of God.
Yes, you can. You can, listen, you can do whatever you need to do and still be aware that you're doing it in the presence of Almighty God. Then, of course, one of the primary reasons is we neglect the Word of God. The Word of God isn't just a book, it is a guidebook. It isn't, watch this, it's an expression, it is a written expression of the living God, of His love and grace and mercy and chastisement, discipline, judgment, heaven, hell, and all the rest. So, the more aware I am of what He teaches in His Word, the more I am going to be aware of Him in my daily life. But many people don't read the Word of God and they say, well, I don't have to read the Bible.
No, you don't. There are things you don't have to have, but how foolish to live your life and not have a relationship with a God who created you, with a God who has your whole future in His hands and a God who can, He can rescue you from any and everything. He can give to you everything you could possibly dream of or take it all away. Where is God in your life? Living in the awareness of His presence and He was saying to His disciples, I'm going to be with you and I will never leave you.
I will always be there. Every single one of us lives every day in the presence of God. But do we live in the awareness of His presence within our life? He just wants you to be aware of Him because He knows that in that awareness, everything develops in our life.
If I'm aware of His presence, it's going to affect me in every single area of my life and it's going to affect me for good. But for example, if we get busy and don't read the Word of God or we let sin become a part of our life, let me ask you a question. How many of you just love to pray when you're living in sin? How many of you just love to talk about God when you're disobeying Him? How many of you just really and truly just rejoice and go in the church and sing and praise in God, knowing you're living a very immoral life?
No, you don't. Because the Spirit of God within you convicts us of sin because He wants out of us anything and everything that hinders that relationship. Listen, it's hard for us to conceive of the fact that Almighty God, who's the Creator of everything, loves you enough to want, to desire, to plan, to make it possible to have prepared you to live in a living, intimate, awesome, aware relationship with Him. And that's what we're going to do every single day of our life as long as we live.
And of course, if we don't pray as we should, we're going to lack that awareness. I'll tell you a habit I've had many, many, many, many, many years, I don't know how long, but as long as I can remember. Before I go to bed at night, I get on my knees and talk to God. You say, well, you, can't you lie down? Sure you can.
Why don't you charter me? All I want to know is what I've been waiting for, is I've been eating knowledge in simple ways I know how, that He's holy, He's God, He deserves my absolute allegiance and obedience no matter what. And the least I can do is to end the day and lay my heart before Him, examine my heart, When you go to bed at nighttime and one of the last things you have done is to spend time talking to the Heavenly Father who loves you and who has your next day all planned out. When you spend time with Him, what are you doing?
You're strengthening that awareness of your relationship to Him. Thank you for listening to Developing Our Awareness. 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.
