In Touch Ministries

Guest (Male): He learned the ways of God by reading how God operates, how He does, and why He works. There are some things that you and I know that God would never lead us to. If you stay in step with Him, you never go in there. You stay in step with Him, you're never going with them. You stay in step with Him, you're not going to want that thing. Will there be suffering and heartbreak and pain? Yes. And you know what? In step with Him, you learn something from every single one of those experiences that'll profit you the rest of your life.

Guest (Male): Did you make New Year's resolutions for 2026 back in January? Well, if you're like most people, you had good intentions but often slipped up in your commitment as the year progressed. Today on In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley, we'll get a mid-year reboot with some solid principles for consistently walking in step with God. Let's listen in to Dr. Stanley's message.

Dr. Charles Stanley: All of us need to learn how to walk in step with the Son of God who is our Savior, our Lord, and our Master. There are a lot of verses in the Bible about walking. For example, the first time you find anybody walking in the Bible is God walking in that third chapter of Genesis when the Bible says, "And the Lord came walking in the cool of the day." The next time, just in the fifth chapter, the Bible says that Enoch walked with God and he was not, for God took him.

So we could go through lots of other verses, and of course in the 23rd Psalm, he says, "Yea, though I walk through the shadow of death." Some folks say I'd like to have that run rather than walk because we don't like those kind of times. The 30th chapter of Isaiah, he talks about as we walk, we hear a voice behind us saying, "This is the way, walk ye in it." In the 40th chapter of Isaiah, in that verse, it says, for example, if we wait upon the Lord, we'll run and not be weary, we'll walk and not faint.

Then you go to the New Testament, and there are lots of verses, especially with the Apostle Paul. He says in the sixth chapter of Romans, he said once you and I trust Jesus as our Savior, we begin to walk in newness of life, not like we used to walk. We're not walking in step with the ones we used to walk in step with. It's a new kind of life. Somewhere along the way, I think a lot of believers have forgotten the fact that it's a new kind of life.

What makes it so new is this: that now it's not God up yonder and me down here doing the best I can. It's Jesus living on the inside of us through the Holy Spirit. He's the one who's living it out through us. You say, "Well, if he's going to do it, I don't have any responsibility." Oh yes, I do. I have the responsibility to believe what He says, trust what He says, His promises, and to obey Him.

The big question is, and this is what I want to spend the rest of the time on, what do I have to do to walk in step with the Lord? Now, I could give you a lot of sentences and explain this, that, and the other and so forth. I'm only going to give you six words. If you and I will practice these six words, we will walk in harmony, in concert with, in a way that you and I can say, "Sure, I'm in step with God." I'm not arguing with Him. I don't have things in my life that shouldn't be there.

But I want to just lay these out for you to think about, if you will. The first word is surrender. Now, this is where for most people it all begins and stops because they don't want to surrender themselves to God. But this is the first step. That is, if I'm going to walk in step with the Lord Jesus Christ, I must surrender my life to Him. That settles the issue that now I acknowledge that He's the one who's giving the direction about which way we're going. When He says to the left, we go to the left. When He says to the right, we go to the right. In step with Him means I'm following Him.

The second word is sensitivity. Why do we say sensitivity? Very important. How are we going to walk in step with Him if we don't listen to Him? So that means that I have to keep my antennas out. Ask a question. When you wake up in the morning, what's the first thoughts that come to your mind? Do you say to Him, "Lord Jesus, I want you to guide me today. I surrender my life to You today. I'm going to walk in Your ways, in Your steps. I want You to guide me through Your Holy Spirit wherever You want me to go, whoever You want me to meet, whatever You want me to do, whatever You want me to give, whatever"? When you begin the day, you can begin the day in step with Jesus Christ every single day you choose to do so. But it begins with that surrender and your willingness to listen.

The third word is scripture. Now, I put them all in an 'S' so you can't miss them. That is, you'll never learn how to walk in step with Him until you learn how He walks. You say, "How do I learn that?" One of the simplest ways to learn it is to read the Gospels. How did Jesus walk? What were His ways? How did He operate? Of course, also, you could add Paul's epistles and that's what he did. He sort of explained to us, really, the life that Jesus has given us.

When I think about the importance of learning the scripture at this point, this is the important thing. Only when I get in the word of God and see how Jesus walked and see what He warned us about, will I be able to identify not only that I'm hearing the right voice, but it will help me identify those deceptive, alluring things out here that are going to pull me out of step with Him and into step with something else. How do you learn the ways of God? You learn the ways of God by reading how God operates, how He does, why He works.

What are the ways of God? How does He think? How does He work? How does He operate? There are some things that you and I know that God would never lead us to. If you stay in step with Him, you never go in there. You stay in step with Him, you're never going with them. You stay in step with Him, you're not going to want that thing. You stay in step with Him, things are going to be fantastic.

Will there be suffering and heartbreak and pain? Yes. And you know what? In step with Him, you learn something from every single one of those experiences that'll profit you the rest of your life. So walking in step with Him does not mean ease, comfort, and pleasure. It means that you and I are learning, that we're developing, that we're growing in Christ-likeness, that something fantastic is going on on the inside of us.

What you have to do is decide in your own heart what's the most important thing in your life. What you have, where you've been, who you're with, or who you are in Him, what you have in Him, and where He's leading you. You have to decide what's the most important. Once you understand that you can walk in step with the Son of God, you can rise every morning knowing, "Lord, I'm surrendering my life to You at this point. I want to do what You want me to do."

Is He going to say, "Forget it"? No. And He's not going to say, "Look what you did yesterday." No. But you see, it requires time to read the word of God and to dwell upon the truth. This is why I always say bring your Bible. Bring your Bible to church and bring your notepad, bring you something that you can write. If you only remember this whole message six words, everything else you may forget, if you remember those six words and tomorrow morning you get up and you say, "Okay, today, surrender my life to you, Lord."

Not only that, I want to be sure that I want to listen to You all day long today. I want to be in Your word, whether it's in the morning. It's always a good time to open God's word in the morning and say, "All right, Lord, is there something You want to say to me? Is there something You need to say to me?"

When I think about what Paul said, for example, in this 17th verse, listen to what he says. You see, if you're not in the word, you can get out of step. 17th verse of the fourth chapter: "So this I say and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer as the Gentiles or as the unbelievers also walk." And how do they walk? In the futility, the emptiness of their mind, that is, they don't have anything that satisfies. Being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that's in them, because of the hardness of their hearts. They, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. You did not learn Christ in this way.

That is, you and I walk in step with Him, some things won't do, places won't go, people we won't deal with because here's the reason. Because listen, he says, that's the way of darkness. That's the way that's very dissatisfying. When a person walks out of step with the Lord, in step with the world, you're going to get disappointed. You're going to get disillusioned and listen, you're going to lose.

Every day a person lives outside of the Lord Jesus Christ, they're losing. Every day that you live in Him and you walk in step with Him, God is doing something in your life. Just because you and I can't see the results today and because, for example, that we can't measure it and because it doesn't fit exactly how we'd like to picture things, it's what's going on on the inside. Scripture's a very important part of it.

The next word is just a big word for prayer, supplication. The reason I put it up there is because it starts with an 'S'. The second thing is because we're talking about not just, "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep." We're talking about strong praying, diligent, strong praying, crying out to God. If you and I are going to walk in step with Him, we have to learn how to pray. That must be key.

For example, when you wake up in the morning as we said, if you tell Him that you want to surrender your life afresh and new this morning for this day, you've been talking to Him, you're praying. I don't know where prayer is in your life. For most people, it's an emergency cord. When things look bad, pull it fast. Oftentimes nothing happens, and they wonder why nothing happens. It's because if you only pull it when you're in trouble, that sends a bad message to the Master.

What He's up to is making us as much like Him as He has the power to do so and at the same time not override our will. That's what He's up to. That means that you and I develop a relationship with Him. The whole idea here is walking in oneness with Him in step with Him because that's how you and I develop this intimate, personal, unbelievable, indescribable, awesome relationship personally with Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Jesus was an awesome man of prayer. It's interesting that in these occasions that I mentioned, and there are not very many of them, but the fact that He's up early and that He's praying in decisions that He made. You think about what was He doing the night before they took Him and beat Him and crucified Him the next day? He's in Gethsemane praying. What's He doing? Getting direction and help. Listen, you talking about praying, that was not "Now I lay me down to sleep." That's supplication, crying out to God because of the deep, deep, deep feelings of concern that He had.

Going to walk in step with the Lord, you've got to be a praying person because if not, listen, if you're not praying, you're not listening. If you're not listening, you're going to get out of step. If you're going to walk in step with Him, then there's got to be supplication.

Then of course, when you think about it, you think about walking with Him and what does all that mean. Next word is self-denial. What does that mean? Does that mean deny myself of this new car and this new house and these new clothes? No. Self-denial means I'm willing to say to the Father, "I do not want to run my life because we all have a self. I do not want to run my life. I do not want to be in control of my life. I want You to control my life."

Now, if I walk in step with Him, there'll be some things, watch this carefully, that are not sinful, not wicked, not vile. But if I walk in step with Him, I'll never have them. They'd be good things. I'll never have them. Why? Because it's not His direction for my life. The same thing is true of all of us. People say, "I'd like to do this." Well, if it's the Father's will and if He leads you there, then that means it's good for you.

Whenever you're walking in step with Him and He's got you going this way and you think, "Well, for sure I thought that's where I was going and that's what I was going to have," remember this: that He who is all-wise, the Bible says we're to walk wisely. If I'm walking wisely, I'm going to walk in step with Him. If He avoids and detours around something that's blaring at us, that means that He knows that's not good for us. So I'd ask you a question: do you really and truly want something that God doesn't want you to have? Now I wouldn't dare ask you to raise your hand because it'd be embarrassing.

Some people would say, "Well, to be honest, yes, I do." The truth is if you would just stop and think, whatever the Lord Jesus denies us of is perfectly for our good. All of us would have to admit more than likely, "Yeah, I have prayed for some things and after time went by, I realized I thank God, thank God, thank God He didn't answer my prayer. Amen." You see, if we're walking in step with Him, it doesn't mean we'll never make a mistake. But if we make a mistake, we'll correct it quickly and say, "Thank you, Father. Thank you, thank you, thank you, I wasn't listening, got diverted, got my attention over here somewhere."

Self-denial means that there are some things in life that just do not fit who we are. If I think about it, walking in step with Him, there is peace, there is tranquility, there is contentment, there is joy, there is satisfaction. Troubles, heartaches, trials, burdens? Yes, but beneath all that I'm learning, I'm learning how to trust Him, I'm getting insight, seeing things I've never seen before, know a different way to help somebody. In other words, when you're walking in step with Him, listen carefully, you cannot lose. You cannot lose walking in step with Him.

Listen, out of step, you cannot win. You may get something temporarily, but it won't last. It'll turn to ashes in your hand. You cannot beat walking in step with Him. Self-denial.

Well, there's one last word and that's service. Look at that one. Now, if you look at the life of Jesus, what was He doing? When I think about what a simple life He lived in some ways and how complex in others, He said, "The Father sent me not to be served, but to serve and to give my life for others." Lay it down, crucifixion.

When you walk in step with Jesus Christ, you will serve God. Now the reason I know that is this: if He didn't intend for you to serve Him, He wouldn't have given you a spiritual gift which Peter says, and says it so very clearly in this fourth chapter, when he says, "As each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God."

There is no excuse for a believer not serving God in some fashion. Now we're not talking about getting on a stage or preaching or leading music or singing in a choir or orchestra. All these are important. It's where you work. It's where you live. Every single one of us has the privilege of serving God in some fashion every day.

Walking in step with Him and serving Him doesn't mean the same thing as just being busy. There are a lot of people who are just busy. When you're serving Him, you are carrying out that action on the basis of who you are and the fact that you're being obedient to God and you are available for Him to work His life in and through you to speak to somebody else's life, deal with them in such a fashion that it helps them.

Now you've got six words. I want to challenge you to write them in your Bible. And then, tomorrow morning when you get up—now you know when I give you suggestions, it's only for your good and I know it works. There are some things that I have on my desk that I read every day. Sometime things I put on the mirror in the bathroom, I read every day. I want to get it in my mind so that that's just the way I think.

So if you will put it in your Bible, wake up tomorrow, or tonight before you go to bed, you can just say to Him, "Now Lord, tomorrow morning." It's better than wake up in the morning to say, "Lord, today here I am to walk in step with You today." Just go through those words and just end it by saying, "However you want me to serve You, with whom and to whom, here I am, Lord. I'm listening and I'm trusting You, and I'm believing You, and I'm thanking You ahead of time that before this day is over, I will have walked in step with You and I will have discovered something fantastic."

Because He's who He is, your life will never be boring walking in step with Him. Amen. Father, how grateful we are this morning for the wonders of Your word. I pray the Holy Spirit will sink this truth deep into every single person's heart.

I pray for someone today who is not saved, not a Christian, never trusted You as their Savior. Help them to understand what they're missing, that no matter how much money they have, or position, or prominence, prestige, and all the rest, all of that together wouldn't equal what it means to walk in step with Jesus Christ. Create within their heart such a hunger for truth and light and life. They'll turn their back on everything in order to receive Jesus Christ as their personal Savior. In this we ask in His wonderful name. Amen.

Guest (Male): Thanks for joining us on In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. Are you giving yourself away in service to others? Are you praying strong prayers that have weight to them? Consider these questions as you evaluate your commitment to living in step with God. And if you need help with developing consistency, look up some of the resources available at our website, intouch.org. To go back through this message, follow the link to our homepage, to Today on Radio. And you can order a copy of today's complete message at the bookstore page. The title is Walking in Step with God, or order Dr. Stanley's teaching set titled In Step with God. Again, log on to intouch.org or call or text us at the number 1-800-IN-TOUCH. To write to us, address your letter to In Touch, Post Office Box 7900, Atlanta, Georgia 30357. Again, our number, 1-800-IN-TOUCH.

Dr. Charles Stanley: Let your time and your schedule and everything about you revolve around this: that you and I are to develop and continue to develop this ongoing, intimate, wonderful, exciting, satisfying, indescribable, wonderful, incomparable relationship with a personal God.

Guest (Female): Dr. Stanley devoted his entire life to helping us get closer to Jesus, as we all want to do. You can learn how at charlesstanleyinstitute.org.

Guest (Female): From the Pastor's Heart is an in-depth teaching letter designed to draw readers closer to God. This monthly resource, inspired by the teachings of Dr. Charles Stanley, is free to you by print or email subscription. These encouraging messages will help you go stronger in your walk with Christ. To receive In Touch's From the Pastor's Heart letter, call 1-800-IN-TOUCH or visit intouch.org/pastorsheart.

Guest (Male): Have you ever forgotten something God taught you when you were reading the Bible? When we take note of what God reveals to us, it helps us to apply it to our lives. With the Charles F. Stanley Life Principles Journal, you can keep track of your spiritual journey and be transformed by God's truth. This journal features artwork of Dr. Stanley's 30 life principles, lined pages for writing, a prayer journaling section, and more. To order, call 1-800-IN-TOUCH or go to intouch.org/journal.

Guest (Male): You're listening to In Touch. Believers who walk in step with God are committed to obeying Him. Here's a moment with Charles Stanley.

Dr. Charles Stanley: Once you begin to walk in step with Him, you're going to see things in your life that you thought, "Well, I never saw that before." Some good, maybe some not so good. Likewise, you're going to begin to make an impact on other people. You think, "Well, how can I make an impact in someone else's life?" When you begin to walk in step with Him, the power of the Spirit of God begins to work in you and through you.

People are going to see you from a different perspective. They're going to feel something about you. And as oftentimes people say, your very countenance would be changed. You cannot be the same walking in step with Him. Likewise, you're going to begin to experience an inner peace and contentment you have never known before in your entire life. Why? There is this awesome sense of security in your life that comes as a result of walking in step with Him.

Likewise, you're going to have a greater sense of confidence and courage to face those difficult times of life that before have been extremely hard for you to deal with. Walking in step with God is always the best way, the most satisfying way to walk, and it's my prayer that you'll do just that.

Now let me just say this. Before you can walk in step with Him, you must receive the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior. What that does is open the door for you to have a relationship with Him. You can't live in rebellion and walk in step with God. Receiving Christ as your Savior by faith is the first step to walking in step with God.

Guest (Male): You can learn more about trusting Jesus Christ as your Savior from the penalty of sin when you visit us at intouch.org. The Bible says to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus. Well, has this program helped you with that? We'd like to know. Upcoming on In Touch, why is it a struggle for so many Christians to build a close relationship with Jesus? Join us for encouragement as Dr. Stanley's message continues leading us in step with God. That's when we return on In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. This program is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia, and remains on the station through the grace of God and your faithful prayers and gifts.