In Touch Ministries

Dr. Charles Stanley: God knows exactly what he wants to happen in your life. What he wants is he wants you and me to want him, not just be always with a handout. Lord, give me this, give me that, show me this, show me that. I need this, I need that. Here are my needs.

So what does he do? He lets us pray and pray and pray till he has sifted us out, until he has us where he wants us to where we will just say, "All right, Lord. Whatever you want is what I want. It may not be my first choice, but if that is what you know is best, that is what I want."

Guest (Male): It's common to think of God's will as a special secret that we have to struggle to uncover. But today's edition of In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley, reveals why that's not the case. God intends for us to know him intimately and follow him well. Be encouraged as you listen to part two today of "Finding Clear Guidance."

Dr. Charles Stanley: How can I be sure I'm making the right decision? How can I be sure I have very clear guidance about this? How can I be sure I'm about to do the will of God? God has given to each one of his children the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. One of his primary responsibilities is to give us clear direction for our life. This is why he says he will guide you into the truth—the truth of what God wants us to do in our life.

We have that wonderful privilege. Now, the problem is that today, people choose all kinds of different ways of figuring out what they are going to do. For example, some say, "I'm going to find out clear direction. I'm going to throw out a fleece like Gideon did." A fleece was simply the wool covering of a lamb or a sheep. Here is what he said. He said, "Now, Lord, I want to be very sure I understand what you are saying."

The truth is, he knew what he was saying. He was afraid. All of us have probably been afraid at times in our life when it was something God required of us. So he said, "Here is what I'm going to do. I'm going to take this fleece and I'm going to lay it on the threshold floor here. If tomorrow morning when I get up, it's wet and the ground is dry, I'll know that I've heard you."

God in his patience said, "Okay." Next morning he wakes up, he wrings the water out of that fleece. Being natural and normal—this ought to be real encouraging to all of us—you would have thought he would have said, "Okay, God, I'm going after the Midianites." He came back and said, "Now, Lord, don't get mad. Don't get upset, Lord. It's not that I don't believe you. It's not that I don't trust you."

"Tonight, I'm laying it out again. Tonight, I'm asking that the fleece be dry and the ground be wet." Next morning he woke up. Fleece was dry as gunpowder. Earth around it was soaking wet. What did God do? He knew what Gideon needed, and he gave him very clear direction. You can go all the way through the scripture.

Somebody says, "That's what I like doing. I like throwing out a fleece." If I really want to get something my way, I can throw that fleece so it lands the way I want it to land, which is not a very reliable way to do it. That is not a principle of scripture for finding clear direction. That's what Gideon did, but nowhere else in the Bible do I find people doing that.

Of course, you remember that somebody else who wanted to play chance was Jonah. You know where that got him. It got him in the belly of a whale. So I suggest you not do that. Throwing out fleeces and doing all those kinds of things, that's not God's way of doing it. Somebody says, "Every once in a while, I just get in a tough spot and I flip a coin." Well, you know how reliable that is.

Some people say, "What I do is, if I want clear direction, I put down all the pros and all the cons. If the pros outweigh the cons, that's what I do." Well, you know what? The Bible says God's ways are not your ways, nor his thoughts your thoughts. You can put down all the pros and all the cons you want to, and that may not be what God is saying at all. Oftentimes what he wants may appear to us to be totally irrational when we think about it.

Then there are those folks who are so foolish as to spend money on psychics. As if somebody out there can read God's mind and give it to you when they don't even claim to be Christians. Even if they were, you can't trust that. None of that is scriptural. All of it is unreliable and untrustworthy. The tragedy is that sometimes Christians, who either don't know how to find clear guidance or have to have it now, find themselves being drawn into the world's ways. That's the route they go, only to find they've made a horrible mistake.

Is there a way? Yes, there is a way. What is the first one? As I said, they are very simple, but every single one of them is very important. Number one, persistence in prayer. I didn't say just pray, but persistence in prayer. Remember what Paul said in Thessalonians? He said, "Pray without ceasing." That doesn't mean you walk around all the time, "Heavenly Father, thank you in Jesus' name. Oh yes, how are you doing? Praise the Lord, glory to God." That's not what we are talking about.

He was simply talking about this. When you are praying about something, don't let go of it. Don't let go of whatever you are praying for that you are seeking. You are trying to find clear guidance on whether it's something you are going to buy, something you are going to wear, somewhere you are going, your job, your major in school, whatever it might be. He says, "Pray without ceasing."

Here is what happens. If you try to find clear guidance simply by running hither and yon, talking to this one and talking to the other one, and not getting on your knees before God seeking the one who has absolute infinite wisdom, more than likely most of the time you are going to make a wrong decision. In big, critical, crucial decisions, you cannot afford to make a wrong decision.

I think about young people growing up and getting ready to go to college. What are you going to major in? I don't know. I'm surprised over the years by folks who have said, "I'm supposed to go to college, so I'm going." You don't have any particular desire? Not really. Why are you going? Well, my parents said I ought to go to college, and I guess for me to make money in life, I ought to go to college.

Think about what a terrible state of mind that is. Here is a loving God who has chosen to show you and give you clear guidance for your life because he loves you unconditionally. He wants the best for your life. Then ask him. Ask the one who knows perfectly. When you come to these major decisions and you have five alternatives, or you have this strong desire and you're really wanting to know what is the right thing to do, you get on your face before God.

Listen to what he says. Sometimes we need to put the emphasis where it belongs. Ask, and it shall be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened unto you. For everyone who asks receives, and he that seeks finds, and to those who knock on the door, it's going to be opened to them. He desires, he wishes, he wants, and he has prepared to give you clear guidance in every single decision of your life.

But if you won't spend time praying, you can see what happens. We get down and we pray for a few days and then we quit. You say, "Well, why can't you just ask God and have him give it to you?" What you have to ask is, what's God's goal? Listen, God's goal in our life isn't just giving me everything I want. God's goal in our life is bringing us into the likeness of his Son.

When he gets us in this decision-making process and we have all these alternatives or desires, and we really want to know if this is of God or if it is not, he uses that to draw us closer to himself, remind us of our dependence upon him, and bring us into a more intimate relationship with him. That's what his goal is. He has all the information. Coming up with the right deal is no challenge with God. He's not trying to figure out what's the best thing to do for him or for her.

God knows exactly what he wants to happen in your life. What he wants is he wants you and me to want him. Not just be always with a handout. Lord, give me this, give me that, show me this, show me that. I need this, I need that. Here are my needs, my wants, my desires, my goals, my dreams. What about loving God? Isn't that really superior to all these other things? Yes.

So what does he do? He lets us pray and pray and pray till he has sifted us out, until he has us where he wants us to where we will just say, "All right, Lord. Whatever you want's what I want. It may not be my first choice, but if that is what you know is best, that is what I want." Prayer is the heart and the core. If you really want to find clear direction and you don't want to spend time on your knees, then do it yourself and get what you yourself doing will get you.

Another phrase I want you to jot down, and that is simply to rest in God's promises. Rest in God's promises. We've started off with the foundation of getting our heart cleaned out. we want to be patient. We want to check out the pressures that are coming our way. Absolutely for certain, we want to be alert to these pressures. We want to be prayerful, but when we say rest in the promises of God, think about this.

You and I, here is the most awesome resource there is. In fact, this book, which is the word of God, has the answer to every single time I need clear direction. You don't have to go to the public library or the private library or anybody else's library. You've got on your table by your bed, in your hand this morning, the ultimate, eternal, infallible, inerrant resource to know how God thinks, how he acts, how he works, his ways, his will, his plan, and his direction.

Somewhere in the word of God, you will be surprised how often you will find a situation in the life of one of God's children that will be similar. Now, the circumstances won't be the same, but it is similar. You'll say, "Well, how did God work in that situation? Well, Lord, how are you going to work in my situation?" That's the way we learn his ways.

If you don't know the ways of God, you don't know how God thinks, and you don't know his principles, then how in the world are you going to come to God? God is not going to cut off the top of your head, pour the truth in, seal it back up, and say you got it. That's not the way he operates. He operates gradually through prayer and gradually through reading the word.

This is why I keep talking about meditating upon God's word. What are you doing? You're just filling your mind with truth. For example, you may read a passage that may be sort of meaningless to you today. Three months from now, you will come up to some decision and the Spirit of God will bring that verse to your mind. You will wonder where that verse was. You go back and all of a sudden, it comes off the page.

This is God's resource where we can learn his ways. Here is what happens. When you and I begin to pray and we begin to search the scripture, what does God's word do? God's word filters our thinking. Think about all the stuff that you heard in the past week. If you listened to the radio, if you read the newspaper, the magazines, and watched the TV, you think about all the stuff that came into your mind that absolutely is meaningless.

You want to find the ways of God and the will of God? You want clear direction? You have to sift all that junk out of your mind. The best way to sift it is to fill your mind with truth. You get in the word of God and the word of God just goes right through and cuts out all that stuff. All of a sudden, you begin to think the way God thinks. You begin to sense God's ways. You begin to sense, "This is what God is saying to me."

If you allow yourself and your mind to be filled day after day, week after week, year after year, you will think the way the world thinks. You will respond the way the world responds. You will walk the way the world walks. You will end up the way the world ends up. How do you filter all that out? With God's word, praying to him, listening to him, asking for guidance, asking for direction.

We have a mind and we have a grid system. What you want to do is you want to build into that grid spiritual principles so that anything that comes your way that doesn't fit that spiritual principle, the Spirit of God sets off the alarm in your conscience that says, "That doesn't fit who I am. That is not what God wants. That is not his direction for my life."

When do you start building that grid system? A child begins to build that grid system and doesn't even know he or she is doing that at the very earliest stages of their life. What they hear their parents say—parents, you are responsible for teaching your children how to filter that junk out of their minds so they can think holy thoughts and godly thoughts. Think of all the peer pressure they have to deal with.

This is why you need to teach them. Every night before you go to bed, you get in the word of God. Let God filter out of your mind and out of your emotions all the stuff that you've heard from your friends, all the pressure they put on you, and all the things they think you should, ought to, must do. Get rid of all that, and that's a good way to get rid of it. If you want clear guidance, you have to keep your mind filtered. You have to get all the contamination and the dirt and the filth of the world out of your mind so you can think the way God thinks.

Now, let me just say this. Somebody says, "Wait a minute. Suppose I don't find that particular situation that best relates to me." Here is what you do. If you don't happen to find that, you just start looking for all the promises that God will give you direction. For example, he says, "I will teach you in the way which you should go. I will guide you with my eye." In Psalm 32:8, he says, "I will guide you."

So that is just one. In all your ways, he says, "Acknowledge him. He will direct your path." So there are lots and lots of verses that assure us that God will give us clear direction. I may not find a passage that really fits exactly what is going on, but there are so many promises of his clear direction for our life. What will happen is this. When you begin to meditate on some of those verses, it will just be like God has tailored that verse just to fit you.

That is the awesome miracle of this book. It will grab you. A verse will grab you and give you direction that you've read over and over and over again. You'll come back and think, "I never saw that before." You know why? You weren't where you are. Therefore, this is a different situation, different circumstance, same word, same God, who knew beforehand when you were going to get here and exactly when you were going to need it.

Well, let's just say there is one other phrase I want to give you, and that is this simple phrase: Wait for the peace. The word "peace" means to be bound together. Peace speaks of harmony and oneness, not disharmony, not disorder, not unrest, frustration, anxiety, or fear—all those things that do not meet what God is talking about here. To make peace means to weave together.

What are we talking about? We've come from getting our pathway cleaned out, backing off and waiting upon the Lord. Psalm 62:5: "My soul, wait in silence upon God only." It's one of the key verses in my own life. Psalm 62:5: "My soul, wait in silence," not murmuring and fretting and fuming and criticizing or blaming. "My soul, wait in silence for God only. My expectation is from him."

We wait. We avoid those pressures in life, no matter where they are coming from and who they are coming from. We absolutely refuse to accept those. we get on our face before him. We come to the resource of his promises and now, what can we expect? Wait for the peace. Bound together.

Here is what happens. Colossians chapter three, verse 15, is a wonderful verse. He says, "Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body, and be thankful." Then he says this: "Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you with all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God."

Look at verse 15. "Let the peace of Christ rule in your heart." What does that mean? God's peace is God's umpire in our life when we are seeking clear direction. Let it rule. That is, when I come to a decision, is there harmony between what God is thinking and what I'm thinking? Has my decision and his mind been woven together so that now we are thinking the same thing?

Let peace rule. The disturbance is over. The turmoil is over. The uncertainty is over. All of that is over and now peace is ruling and reigning. That is, it's now I have very clear direction and evidence of that clear direction is my circumstances may not have changed, people's attitudes may not have changed, pressures may still be there, but deep down inside, he's told me exactly what to do and that I am committed to, no matter what.

You know what can happen? You can walk through those difficult circumstances and trying times. You can face those alternative decisions and you can come up with the one that you are absolutely certain of because you have this inexpressible, inexplicable, undeniable, absolutely reliable, certain, sure promise from God. You got it from him. This is his direction for your life at this time, in this question, in this decision.

That is what a good God is like. He's just not going to leave it to us. He wants us to have peace. He wants us to have a sense of contentment. The final phrase is, "Look for the peace. Wait for the peace." In other words, you don't move until you have clear direction. This is why Paul said, "Don't be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving," a whole lot goes on in that phrase.

By prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God. And the peace of God, which is absolutely inexplicable, will garrison you about, protect you, give you harmony, sense of oneness. There is nothing in the world that exists to compare to this. That is an awesome sense of oneness with God that is undisturbed, that is absolutely certain, that creates such wonderful harmony in your heart that no matter if the whole world falls apart around you, nothing can shake that.

That is what God is after. He's after bringing us into such wonderful harmony and oneness with him. Our mind fits his mind, and they go together. You will be so certain that you have clear direction. It doesn't make any difference what you hear, what you see, or what you feel out there. The thing that matters is you have the mind of God.

That's the promise. He says we have the mind of Christ. How do we get it? We get our life cleaned out, we clean out the path, back off and wait. My soul, wait in silence upon God only, because my expectation is from him. I hear the pressure, I feel the pressure. I'm not giving in to the pressure. I'm just going to talk to the Father. I'm going to claim his promise and I'm going to wait for the peace. One thing for certain, there is no disappointment in Jesus Christ.

Guest (Male): You're listening to In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. Disobedience hinders our ability to hear God correctly. To find clear guidance, we must be willing to face and let go of anything that is not pleasing to the Lord. For help dealing with reoccurring habits and attitudes, stop by our website, intouch.org. There, you can go over this lesson by following the link to "Today on Radio."

If you go online to our bookstore, you can order a copy of Dr. Stanley's complete message, "Finding Clear Guidance." Again, you'll find these resources at intouch.org. Or call or text us at 1-800-INTOUCH. To write to us, address your letter to In Touch, Post Office Box 7900, Atlanta, Georgia 30357. Do you look for ways to provide for others? If so, you might have the spiritual gift of giving. Stay with us for today's "Moment with Charles Stanley." That is coming up.

Guest (Male): Does your prayer life need a jump start? With the In Touch "Praying with Purpose" cards, the time you spend talking with God will take on a whole new level of energy and intimacy. Beautifully designed and easy to use, or to share with a friend, there are prayers to lift up each day of the month, along with corresponding Bible verses and more. For your set of "Praying with Purpose" cards, call 1-800-INTOUCH or go to intouch.org/store.

Guest (Male): You love your In Touch daily devotional.

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Guest (Male): But you may have wondered if the print is getting smaller these days.

Guest (Female): Is the print smaller? It couldn't be my eyes.

Guest (Male): The In Touch daily devotional is now available in large print. While other print seems to be getting smaller, ours is getting larger.

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Guest (Male): The In Touch daily devotional is now available in easy-to-read large print. Order yours today at intouch.org/largeprint.

Guest (Male): You're listening to In Touch. Some people are always looking for opportunities to give to others. Find out how Christians with this spiritual gift operate in our "Moment with Charles Stanley."

Dr. Charles Stanley: Many of the people who have very little to give are the biggest givers. I've seen that oftentimes, people that you would not think they would have much to give, somehow when the time comes, they're always there. The person who has a gift of giving just has this sense of urgency to do something for you and to give you something.

People are more resourceful than they realize they are. When they really are motivated to give, they find something to give somewhere and somehow. The person with a real gift of giving isn't seeking credit. They're looking for people who have specific needs. They want to feel like they are a part of whatever they are supporting.

A person with the gift of giving is real sensitive about somebody putting pressure on them. So a person with the gift of giving is not going to be quick to give as a result of some fundraising situation. They'll back off. They want to be a part of it. They are going to evaluate very carefully if they are meeting a particular need.

Of course, they are blessed most when they realize that their giving met a specific need in somebody's life or in the church or whatever ministry that they are engaged with. So they are careful about where their money goes and how they send it out.

Guest (Male): Visit us at intouch.org to learn more about the spiritual gifts that God gives his followers. How are you encouraged by today's message? Let us know about it. Tomorrow on In Touch, does it feel like you're so busy that you don't have time for God? Well, hear how to orient yourself around life's number one priority when you join us Friday for more of In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley.

This program is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia, and remains on this station through the grace of God and your faithful prayers and gifts.