Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Monday, January 6th. Would you describe your faith as active? Be honest with yourself about where you are and where you need to be as you listen to part one of the series challenging you to move forward by faith. The Bible portrays the Christian life as a walk. It speaks of walking in the Spirit, walking in the flesh, walking in light, walking in love, walking in truth. All through the Scriptures we find the Christian life being portrayed as a walk. Not something that is stagnant, but something that is moving. Well, this is the beginning of a series entitled, Forward by Faith, and the title of this message is, Forward by Faith, Which Direction?
Everybody is not moving in the right direction, and the question is, how do we change gears? Well, in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, there is a passage that deals primarily here with the matter of our body here in this life and what's going to happen to it in the life hereafter. And in the midst of some wonderful promises about our life hereafter, the apostle Paul makes one statement, and I want you to notice that he makes this between two verses that speak of courage. And if you'll notice here, he's talking about our body disintegrating one of these days and we're going to be clothed with a new body. And he says, beginning in verse 6, therefore, being always of good courage and knowing that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord.
Look at this. For we walk by faith, not by sight. We are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body than to be at home with the Lord. His whole concept of the condition of this body and that it is going to be better to be absent from this body and present with the Lord is a matter of trusting God. For he says in verse 6, therefore, being always of good courage, knowing that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord. But we walk in by faith, not by sight, therefore, we have good courage, preferring to be absent from the body present with the Lord because we know where we're going to be. The apostle Paul is saying our understanding that it is better to be absent from the body and present with the Lord is a matter of trust of faith in God and not going by our feelings or our sight.
We've not seen what's on the other side, but we're trusting that what he says is true. Now, there are many people whose life is moving in reverse. They don't understand that the Christian life we said is a walk. The Christian life is just that. It is a life of faith.
Listen to what the Bible says. He says we're saved by faith. We live by faith. We walk by faith. We conquer by faith. We resist the devil by faith.
The Bible says that we are of the household of faith so that the entire Christian life is a matter of trusting God. Everything that you have is a result of that and you can't separate the two. But many people's lives are lived in reverse. For example, things just don't seem to work out for them. Instead of getting ahead, they're getting further and further behind. Their life is in reverse, and no matter what they seem to try to do, it just doesn't seem to work out for them.
They look at their life. It seems to be negative. It seems to be in a reverse mode. And I don't know whether you've thought about it or not, but you know it's real, real easy to walk forward. In fact, you can walk forward and never think about it.
But try walking backwards. You have to think about walking backwards. And oftentimes we don't realize that somewhere out there we change gears, and for some reason instead of getting ahead, things don't seem to be doing too well.
And we look around us and we see other people who seemingly have less abilities and less talents and less opportunities and less privilege, and yet somehow in spite of all the things that they're going through, difficulty, hardship, trials, suffering, they keep seemingly are able to walk ahead. Sometime it's a little itsy bitsy step here and a little step there. And yet you look at yourself and you think, how is it that I keep going backwards and they keep going forward? Maybe somewhere out there you need to change gears. And maybe somewhere out there you really think that you've got your life in forward gear.
And yet somehow it's not there. Because you see, listen, God cannot, listen, by his nature he cannot ignore genuine true faith. And if you are believing God, God must respond to your faith.
So if you find yourself in a reverse mode and for some reason in spite of your attempts and your desires to be moving forward in your life, in every area of your life, your spiritual life, your relationships, whatever it might be, that somewhere along the way you've thrown that thing in reverse and you're going backwards instead of forward, how do you get your life in the forward position? One of the primary reasons that many people are walking in the wrong direction is because they do not understand the true nature of faith. The Bible says we are to live by faith, we walk by faith, our whole life is a life of faith. If you should ask them, they'll say, well, I am trusting God, I am believing God, my life is a life of faith.
Well, genuinely they believe that their life is a life of faith, but it is not. Because you see, some people confuse strong desires, some people confuse prayers, some people confuse hope with faith. Strong desire and hope and praying is not faith. All of those are important, but they don't add up to faith. Well, what I hope to help you to see today is that you're not waiting on God.
God is waiting on you to get your life in forward motion so that you can move forward and become the person God wants you to be and achieve the things God wants you to achieve and accomplish those goals out there in life that you want to accomplish. One of the primary reasons is our confusion about faith. We think we believe in God when we're not. And you see, secondly, those people oftentimes have a very, very barren diet and their diet is composed of many things, one of which they leave out is the Word of God.
The one who's moving forward, most of those folks, if you'll check their life out, it's those people that they're genuinely moving forward in their spiritual life, their relationship to God and the other areas of their life, no matter how many difficulties they face, how many times they stumble and fall, how often they have to get up and keep on walking, those people are feasting on the Word of God. Another part of their confusion is the fact their idea is that faith is a gift that God gives to certain people and certain people don't have it. And so their excuse is, well, you know, he has the gift of faith and she has the gift of faith.
God didn't give it to me, so I guess I'm just going to sort of have to plod along in life and do the best I can. First of all, faith is indeed a gift. But remember this, that faith is neither secular nor spiritual. Faith is neither secular nor spiritual.
It is both natural and it is neutral. Everybody has faith. It doesn't make any difference whether a man is lost to save when he gets up in the morning and he walks into the bathroom and turns on the faucet. He turns it on, not standing there thinking, I wonder if any water's going to come out of there. I certainly hope it does.
I'm really going to try to get it out. No, he walks over and he turns the faucet in absolute confidence that when he does, water's coming out. God has given to every single one of us the gift of faith. And I mean by that that every single person who's alive has faith. Your whole life is a life of faith and so we're the ones who've separated secular faith and spiritual faith.
There's no such thing. The only distinction is who is the object of my faith? What is the object of my faith? That is the key issue about the whole idea of faith. Now, the question we want to deal with is this whole matter of how do we get our life moving forward by faith?
What I want to ask you to do is to ask yourself this question. Lord, let me be honest now and listen carefully and be honest about what I hear and evaluate my prayers. It's real easy to say, especially when you're having a tough time, well, I am believing God. I am trusting God.
Listen carefully. Many people who think that they're believing God are dominated by fear, dominated by doubts, dominated by anxiety, overwhelmed in their life by many things. If you ask them, do they believe God? They say, yes, I do. If you ask them, are you praying in faith?
Yes, I am. And yet things aren't working out. And what we want to do oftentimes is blame it on someone else or something else. Now listen to remind you of something. Remember that there are those folks over here who are facing almost, it seems, insurmountable barriers in life. Difficulties, hardships, they live with them, they face them day by day.
And what happens? They're moving forward, sometimes slowly, and sometimes they're taking great leaps forward. And here you are, and you're believing, you say, and you're trusting, and they're moving by, life's passing you by, years are going on, and you're saying, God, why am I not getting ahead in life?
What's going on? What I want to ask you to do is lay down your guard, drop your barriers, and be willing to listen carefully and ask the Holy Spirit. Spirit of God, speak to my heart, no matter what I'm thinking, if I am hearing the truth, witness to my heart. And if you will, God is about to do something in your life to throw your life in forward motion.
Which direction is your life moving in? Faith is the disposition of the mind that moves you forward in life. Faith is the disposition of the mind that moves you forward in life. It is the way I think. It is the way I think. It isn't a question of mind over matter.
It isn't a matter of a positive mental attitude. Faith in itself is a positive expression of the mind toward a very specific object, and that is God. And so as we examine what genuine true faith is, listen carefully, and I want to say this again now. It's not going to work unless you are honest enough to evaluate your own praying, your own request, your own relationship and your own conversations with God, and the words you use. Or your primary words, I hope so.
I'm really hoping that things are going to change. I want to tell you that hope and faith are not synonymous. And no matter how strongly you desire something, how intensely the need, how overwhelming this thing may appear in your life, that is not faith. Faith involves several things.
I want to give you seven single words. It's really that simple, and yet it's complex to some degree when it comes to living it out. But I want you to jot these down, and if you really want to see God make a reverse in your life, you'll be wise enough not just to sit and listen, but you will jot them down. When we think about faith, the first word I want to share with you is the word assurance. Because you see, faith, that is believing God, is expressing assurance. That is, there is no question in my mind that God will keep his word. And assurance says this. Assurance says I have confidence that what I have asked God to do, which I know is his will, he is going to bring about in my life. You see, confidence is not hope so.
Confidence is a sure thing. This is why the apostle Paul said, listen to this. He said, don't be anxious about anything. You say, yeah, I know that's what he said.
Well, why did he say it? Because Paul understood the nature of faith. Faith says I can rest now that I have made my petition to God. If I have genuine faith in him and I have the promises of God, and listen, assurance, faith, must be based on the promise of God.
The promise of God which is the will of the Father. And if I am willing to trust him, then I have confidence that he's going to bring it to pass. I don't have to keep begging him for something. I don't have to be worried and fretting and anxious about it. Listen to what Paul said.
He said, don't be anxious about anything. But what? In everything by prayer and supplication, make your request known to God. That is, we're to make it known to him in faith.
We're to believe him. And if I make my request known to him and I believe him, then I can expect God to do something. Here's what faith does. Faith quietens my spirit. You see, what happens is when I cease to believe and begin to put my emphasis on my works and what I'm going to do and my schedule and my thing, something begins to happen.
I lose my sense of contentment and joy. Faith involves assurance. I have assurance that whatever God said he's going to do, he's going to do it.
Assurance doesn't look around for a lot of evidence. Assurance says, God, if you said it, that settles it, period. That's what faith is all about.
Faith is assurance that God is going to keep his word. Not hope he will, not maybe he will, not intense desire, but strong, blessed confidence. And I think what you will discover in your own prayer life and your own thinking is this. You'll find yourself beginning to thank God for more, ask him for less. You see, as long as I'm pleading and crying out to God for something, either I don't know it's his will, either I don't have the assurance, or either the something in my life is short-circuiting my confidence. Listen, sin in any form will short-circuit your assurance, your confidence, your faith in God. But you see, when you can begin to thank him for it, you say, well, and somebody says, well, what are you thanking him for? I don't send evidence for it.
Well, listen, you don't have to have any evidence. The Word of God is better than anything you see because you and I can be deceived about a lot of things that we can see with our naked eye. God never deceives anyone. The first word is assurance. The second word is anticipation. Anticipation, that is, if I really and truly believe that God is going to do what I ask, then I am going to anticipate it. That is, I'm going to prepare for it. I'm going to make plans. Now, sometimes we think that we are really believing God and anticipating what he's going to do, and yet if we examined it, we wouldn't really believe that's what's happening.
For example, if you said to me, well, going to Europe tomorrow for a three-week vacation, wonderful. I want to ask you some questions. Do you really believe that? Why, sure, I believe that. Do you, have you packed your clothes? No. Well, have you bought your plane ticket? No.
Made a reservation? No. Have you got your money together? No. Have you told anybody you was going?
No. I'm here to tell you, my friend, you're not going. You may think you're going, but you're not going. If you don't have a ticket, you don't have any money, and you don't have a reservation, you're not packed.
You're not going. Now, here's what I want you to see. There are a lot of people who come to God and make requests, and they really believe that they're believing God, but they're making no preparation. You see, if I believe that God's going to do something, I'm getting ready. If you go to God and you ask him for something and you make no preparation for the answer, listen, more than likely, you don't really and truly anticipate God answering your request.
You may hope he will. You may be crying out to God that he'd do it, but are you making any plans? Anticipation is a vital part of our faith. We're looking forward to it.
Listen, we are living it ahead of time. You see, what faith does, it gives me the privilege to reach out in the future, bring it into the present, and enjoy it even now. Listen, it's hard to be down in the mouth and be negative, and listen, it's very difficult to be walking backwards when you're planning on God doing something. If you're planning on God doing something, what are you doing? You're moving toward the goal because you have trusted God.
You're not just hoping so. You're making preparations and plans for God to do something very vital in your life. Assurance is a part of that faith. Anticipation is a very, very vital part of that life.
The third word I want you to jot down is awareness. When you are believing God, you become aware of the presence of God. You begin to be sensitive. The Holy Spirit begins to enable you to see oftentimes little itsy-bitsy evidences that God is already up to something, that he's already working in this circumstance, in this situation about which you're concerned.
He's already concerned. You see, when you are aware of God, here's what happens. Faith, genuine faith, lives in the ever-present awareness of God. And sometimes I will share with people and talk to folks who are going through this, that and the other kind of problem, and they'll talk about this is what I'm doing and this is what I've done and this is what I want to do and this is what I think I ought to do and this is what I've asked God about.
And for the most part, it's I, I, I, I, I. Little about God, little about trusting him. You see, genuine faith lives in the ever-presence of the living God. He is the object of our faith. And so many times when we think we are expressing faith in God, we're really expressing faith in circumstances that we hope will change, people that will be able to do so and so, and this person who'll become involved over here, and what I'm going to be able to do. That's not faith in God. That's faith in myself, my plans, and what I want to achieve.
Faith in God. My faith is directed toward him. I am aware of him. I am aware of his involvement.
I am aware of his promise to be involved in every facet of my life. Thank you for listening to today's podcast titled, Which Direction? 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.
