In Touch Ministries

Dr. Charles Stanley: Sin short-circuits faith. Mark it down. So often we come to God, and our faith wavers, and we back away. Why? Because known, willful, deliberate sin is going on in our life. God, listen, the Spirit of God is going to convict us.

You cannot live in sin. You cannot live in deliberate, willful disobedience to God and come to Him with faith. You come to Him, and the first thing that's going to happen is the Spirit of the living God, if you're a believer, the Spirit of the living God is going to convict you of your sin.

Guest (Male): Have you been holding on to a promise from God's word, but nothing seems to be happening? Today on In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley, we'll learn about trusting God to always keep His promises, even when the answers look nothing like we imagined. Stay with us for a lesson in what to do when our faith wavers.

Dr. Charles Stanley: If we believe that God is who He says He is and that He will do the things that He promises to do, why is it that when you and I come to pray, we ask and then we doubt? We waver back and forth. Yes, He will; maybe He will; I'm not sure; I hope so. Oftentimes, that is more characteristic of the way we relate to Him than we realize.

The title of this message is "When Our Faith Wavers." I want you to turn, if you will, to James Chapter 1, because in this passage, he deals with this very idea and brings us to the realization of how very important it is that our faith be solid, steadfast, strong, and certain.

In James Chapter 1, he's writing to some people who have been scattered, and they're suffering persecution, difficulty, hardship, and hard times. He begins by saying, "James, a bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes who are dispersed abroad: Greetings. Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials."

That doesn't even make sense—that when you're in difficulty, hardship, and trial, you're supposed to be joyous about it. Only if you understand the truth. Only if you have faith to face it. "Knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing."

"But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven by the wind and tossed. For that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, being a double-minded man and unstable in all his ways."

With that in mind, let's ask the question: What does he mean when he talks about this idea of back and forth? That is, what do we mean by wavering faith? Simply what he said: faith that says, "I know He can; I think He will; maybe He will; yes, I believe He will. Well, I'm not sure. I certainly hope so. I think so. I know He's done it in the past, but I'm not sure."

How many times have you prayed and asked God for something, absolutely sure what you were asking for was the will of God, and you said, "Yes, Father, I just want to thank You for that. I want to thank You for the assurance that I'm going to receive that." Then, an hour later, you're thinking, "Well, I certainly hope God answers my prayer. I've prayed, and I'm reading the Word. I certainly hope He does."

We do not realize how often we waver in our relationship to God. We waver in our prayers. We waver in our faith. One moment we are saying, "Yes, I believe He will," and the next moment we're not quite so sure. Why is it? Back and forth, back and forth, and back and forth.

I want to talk about the causes. What causes us to waver in our faith? I want to encourage you to write it down. If you don't write it down, you're going to be sorry. I guarantee you, between now and next Sunday, you're going to find yourself asking God about something and thinking, "Well, I hope so. Well, maybe so. Well, I think so." God doesn't want us coming to Him like that.

One of the primary reasons that we waver in our faith is when trusting God is in conflict with human reason. There'll be times when God will require of you something that just doesn't connect with human reasoning. For example, the whole idea of tithing doesn't make sense to the unbelieving world. You mean to tell me that I'm to give God 10% of everything I make? Yes. Well, that doesn't leave me but 90%.

That's 90% plus God. 90% plus God is a whole lot better than 100%. For the simple reason, whenever you obey God, what does He do? He multiplies the blessing. I've never met a single person who said, "I tithed my income, and it got worse and worse and worse. Everything was just terrible. It was just bad."

Human reason says you need 100%, and 90% will never do what 100% will do. But faith says, "Watch God plus my 90%." One of the reasons we waver in our faith is because we look at human reason and say, "Human reason says this is not going to work."

A second reason we waver is when we allow our feelings to overcome our faith. That is feelings, for example, of unworthiness. "Why would God do that for me? I'm not worthy of that." We feel unworthy, and therefore we respond in that fashion.

Sometimes it's because we feel inadequate. "God, I know that You're asking me to do this, or to teach this class, or to take this job, or to head out in this direction, or go in this ministry." We feel so inadequate. We allow our feelings of inadequacy to overcome our faith. Instead of saying, "God, what would You have me to do? I'm going to trust You for that."

What we do is allow our feelings to overcome our faith, and as a result, we miss blessings. Think about going through life missing God's divine blessing stored up just for you, with your name on it. He equipped you, gave you your personality, and your spiritual gifts in order to bless you, in order to work through you to glorify Himself. Because you backed off, because you were fearful of somebody's criticism or fearful of failure, feeling unworthy and uncertain and lack of confidence and abilities, you refuse to be obedient to God.

A third reason that our faith wavers is when we fail to see God at work in our circumstances. When we pray and ask Him to do something for us, usually, when do we want to see some action? Immediately. Let's do it now. God doesn't work that way. In fact, I don't know of many things that you and I ask God for that He does immediately, as if He were the bellhop and He's jumping to our request.

That's not who God is. Remember that He's omniscient; we are not. He already knows past, present, future. He knows when we are ready for the answer. He knows how to get the answer ready. Remember this: often, God is working in other people's lives to answer your petition. Give Him time to get it done. You don't want God shoving you around in order to get an answer to somebody else's prayer, nor do we want Him to do that for someone else.

Oftentimes it's because we don't see the circumstances. A fourth reason is when we listen to negative counsel. The cheapest thing on earth is advice. Probably one of the most useless things in life is advice, unless you get Godly counsel. People are more than happy to tell you and more willing to say, "Listen, why do you think God's going to answer that kind of prayer for you? Don't you think you're asking too much of God? Why would you expect God to do that for you?"

Even your closest, dearest friends, who tell you that they love you and they're looking out best for you, will say to you, "I'd hate to see you get disappointed. I'd hate to see you fail and get criticized and feel disappointed and maybe lose some of your status." Do you know how much status is worth? Zero. Status is worth nothing.

When you're dealing with God, it isn't your status; it's His power we're dealing with. We don't have to worry when we come to Him and ask. Oftentimes, people will say, "I don't think you should really ask Him for that. I don't really think you should think that you can accomplish something like that or you can achieve that." Why not think so?

We're talking about a relationship to God who is absolutely omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. You know what the problem is? The problem is our friends or our enemies who want to give us advice about what we believe God is saying to us. What they're doing is projecting onto us their attitude about themselves and their relationship to God.

Because they don't have much of a relationship to God, they don't feel confident enough to ask God that. So they say, "Well, why should you?" Remember this: nobody knows your life like God. He knows you perfectly—past, present, future, all your capabilities, all your abilities and talents and skills. He knows exactly what He created you to do and to accomplish in life. He knows where He wants you and when He wants you.

Remember, He knows how to get you wherever He wants you, no matter what. Therefore, be careful who you listen to, or you'll find yourself backing off from something that you were rather convinced and persuaded of because your friend said, "Well, I just personally don't think that's a wise idea." Sometimes parents can do that to their children. Sometimes we can do it to each other.

What we ought to ask before we give advice is, "God, show me, give me some indication of Your will in this situation. Lord, help me keep my mouth shut. Don't let me get between You and somebody else and foul up their life because they listen to my erroneous advice." Oftentimes that's exactly what happens. There are a lot of people who are very free with their advice. The best idea when you see those folks coming is close your ears and walk away. They're not going to encourage you more than likely to trust the living God, walk holy before Him, and see what God will do in your life.

Another issue here is we find ourselves wavering when we focus on our circumstances, not on God. When God speaks to your heart about something and you're coming to Him about maybe some big issue or some problem that you're dealing with and you want to know exactly what to do—remember this: when you focus on your circumstances, the circumstances become more difficult, your faith diminishes, and your fears increase.

That's what happens. God doesn't want us focusing on our circumstances; He wants us focused upon Him: who He is, what He does, how He operates. Listen, God would never ask you to do anything that He will not be with you in the process and make you capable of accomplishing and achieving it.

Another reason we waver is simply when we are ignorant of God's ways. That is, we don't know how God operates. This is why the unbelieving world wonders why on earth we operate the way we operate. They don't understand how we think, and they don't understand how God operates. When we are ignorant of God's ways, we're going to be more prone to doubt and to waver in our faith.

We're going to say, "I know He can. I know He has." We want to say, "I know He will," but we say, "I know He..." It's possible. But somehow we just can't say, "I know He will." Now, I want you to think about this for a moment. What are the ways of God? The best way to find that out is to get in the Word of God and to see how He'd operated and what were His ways in the Old Testament and New Testament with those in whose lives He worked.

He hasn't changed His ways. He's still operating on the same principles. Listen, His principles were perfect in the Old Testament, perfect in the New Testament, and they're perfect today. Listen, there's not a single thing about God you and I can improve on. If it worked then, it works today. You say, "Well, but you know, things have really changed." Things have changed. Things changed from the Old Testament to the New Testament. Principles didn't change. God doesn't change. Jesus says the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Therefore, am I going to trust Him? Am I going to learn the ways of God and operate on the basis of what He says, or am I going to just remain ignorant? I think about how many people—and maybe you're one of them, and I don't mean to be critical, I'm just stating a fact—how many of you go to church, and you never carry a Bible? You never think about carrying a pad or pencil or pen. You never think about taking notes.

Now, I know some of you could say, "Well, I don't hear anything worth taking a note of." Listen carefully. If you go to church and you don't hear anything worth writing down and taking home, change churches. Change churches. Life is too short for you to sit and listen to somebody for 20 minutes or 30 minutes, or whatever it might be, and you don't hear anything worth writing down, applying to your life, taking it home, and asking God, "Show me how to work this out in my life."

Why in the world would you sit and listen to anybody for 20 or 30 or 45 minutes, or whatever it might be, and walk away and forget it until the next Sunday? You learn the ways of God by listening to scriptural truth, applying it to your life, checking it out to see if it works. Scriptural truth is going to work every time.

One of the ways, one of the reasons we find ourselves wavering is because of feelings of guilt over past sin or present sin. Sin short-circuits faith. You cannot live in sin. You cannot live in deliberate, willful disobedience to God and come to Him with faith. You come to Him, and the first thing that's going to happen is the Spirit of the living God—if you're a believer—the Spirit of the living God is going to convict you of your sin.

If you're a nonbeliever, you're going to have all kinds of doubts. Because listen, if you've never trusted Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, you don't even have access as we believers have access to the living God. Am I saying that God will never answer your prayer? You ask Him to forgive you of your sins, place your trust in Jesus Christ, and will He answer that prayer? Yes.

Is God good? Does He do things for people who pray for them who are unsaved? Not in answer to their prayer, but because He says, "Do you not know that the goodness of God is for the purpose of leading you to repentance?" God is good to some people in order to get them thinking about Him, in order to repent of their sins, that they may be saved.

Therefore, we come to Him and we make a request. Two things: Satan may say to you, "You don't think God's going to answer that?" And the Holy Spirit says to you, "Before you make a request of Holy God, get your life cleaned up." So often, the reason—many times, an overwhelming number of times—we come to God and our faith wavers, and often on the very brink of the blessing, our faith wavers and we back away. Why? Because known, willful, deliberate sin is going on in our life. God, listen, the Spirit of God is going to convict us.

What happens is we say, "Then you get those feelings of unworthiness and inadequacy and unfit." Therefore you walk away saying, "God, You know the need and I know what You promised, but I know I'm not fit, God." What happens is you're just in a state of confusion.

Let me say one other thing about that. That is, oftentimes the sin of unforgiveness on our part is the very sin in our life that keeps back the blessing. Here's what people do. "Lord, I want to be obedient to God, but I want to tell you what this person did to me. Here's what this person did to me years and years and years ago, and I've not forgotten. I forgive them, but I've not forgotten it." No, you haven't forgiven them either.

Something happened to you last week or yesterday. You categorize that as, "They're guilty. They mistreated you." Therefore, you have a legitimate right to still point your finger. Then you come to God and ask Him to answer your prayer. You know what? First thing He's going to do is bring that person's face up to you.

You can shut it down, shut it down, shut it down, cover it up, cover it up until finally it doesn't come very often. But you know what? God still sees it. You don't forgive them? Why would you expect God to answer your prayer and bless you when you won't forgive somebody who did a little something to you, or a big something to you, when He forgave you of your sins and my sins when we were absolutely, totally unworthy? But He did it anyway.

Something else: sometimes we can't forgive ourselves. God forgives us, but we don't forgive ourselves. We come to Him, and here's what happens: we come to Him, we don't feel like we've been forgiven, and this feeling of unworthiness just absolutely showers over us. Unworthy, unfit. How can God do this to me? What happens is we waver in our faith and we miss the blessings that God has for us because of present or past sin.

Then, listen to this one: our faith wavers when we listen to the lies of Satan. That's who he is. Jesus said he's the father of all lies. Remember, his objective is to destroy you. If you're not a believer, you have a target on your heart, and Satan wants to destroy you. If you are a believer, you still have a target. The only problem is he can't destroy you. He can cause you to lose your testimony, give you a hard time, cause you to miss a lot of blessings, but he can't destroy you.

He whispers to us oftentimes those lies. He will tell you why you can't do that. You can't do that. You're going to be an embarrassment to your family. You're going to lose your job. He whispers those lies. "Who do you think you are? You're just being prideful." Here's what he will say: "You're just being arrogant asking God for such a big promise as that. Why, you're just being arrogant. Why don't you back off and be yourself?"

You listen to his lies, you'll never achieve what God wants you to achieve, never become the person God wants you to become, and you will miss God's blessings over and over and over again. Now, let me ask you a question: Who is the most trustworthy? Almighty God or Satan? Who's the most trustworthy?

You don't sound very convinced to me. Who is the most trustworthy? Almighty God or Satan? [Chorus: Almighty God!] Now, let's act like it. How about that? You see, we think we believe Him. We say we do. But when it comes to those issues and those crises in life, we don't act like it. We listen to the whispers of Satan, and what happens is he cheats us out of God's best.

Guest (Male): Today on In Touch, we heard how essential it is to learn to distinguish God's instruction from all the noise around us. We can always trust Him even when things don't appear to make sense. Dr. Stanley's message, "When Our Faith Wavers," continues tomorrow.

Need to know more about holding on to faith when all you feel is disappointment and frustration? Take some time to visit our website, intouch.org, or listen to this lesson again by following the link to today on radio. Our website is also where you can order a copy of today's complete message, "When Our Faith Wavers." That's intouch.org. To call or text, it's 1-800-IN-TOUCH. You can write to us at In Touch, Post Office Box 7900, Atlanta, Georgia, 30357.

Is fear blocking your faith? Hear one reason why it's crucial to rely on God for boldness, coming up in today's "Moment with Charles Stanley." In Touch Plus is streaming on Local Now, featuring all the best of Dr. Charles Stanley. We need to have strong convictions based on the Word of God. He's working out things that you and I would never know about in our future. In Touch Plus: your streaming network for quality Christian programming 24/7. In Touch Plus: streaming free on Local Now.

"From the Pastor's Heart" is an in-depth teaching letter inspired by the teachings of Dr. Charles Stanley. To receive "In Touch's From the Pastor's Heart" letter, call 1-800-IN-TOUCH or visit intouch.org/pastorsheart.

You're listening to In Touch. Do you find that you're afraid to tell others what God has done for you? With a reminder for believers, here's a "Moment with Charles Stanley."

Dr. Charles Stanley: I think a lot of people are intimidated by people who come on strong. The truth is we have the answer, and what they're looking for, we already have. We should be very willing to express the very life that's in us, and that's the life of Jesus, and to say to people, "I have a peace in my heart and a joy in my life, and the reason is Christ is in my life."

When we don't do that, we deprive other people from what they really desire. They don't know that they desire it, but we're depriving them from what God wants them to have, and He's placed us in their presence in order to impact them, to influence them, and sometimes we forget that.

Father, how grateful we are for the wonderful, wonderful promise, but also the presence of peace and joy and contentment in our life that makes it possible for us to face all kinds of circumstances without fear. I pray for those today who are looking for it, who are reading, searching, watching—maybe even watching other Christians to see how real it is. We know that it's real.

Teach us how to express it in a way that's convincing and persuasive and has an impact in somebody else's life. I pray, Father, that those who are listening right now might understand what Jesus promised: He always delivers, and peace is one of His primary promises to all of His children. In Jesus' name, amen.

Guest (Male): Learn more about facing challenging circumstances without fear at intouch.org. And please share how this program has encouraged you to know Jesus better and live for Him. Next time on In Touch: when we doubt God, some consequences show up that we might not have considered. Hear about the effects of wavering faith when you join us again for 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.