In Touch Ministries

Dr. Charles Stanley: Would God not speak? Sure, He does. Remember this: He loved you enough to die for you. And if He loved you enough to die for you, He's going to knock at the door of your heart. He's going to speak. He wants to get in because He knows you desperately need Him. And secondly, you will rejoice once He's there. Life will change absolutely completely, and you will be grateful for all eternity that you let Him in.

Guest (Male): Religion is man's attempt to reach God. Christianity proclaims the joyful reality that God reaches out to us. Today's edition of In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley, reminds us that God does all the work of pursuing a relationship with us. Here is Dr. Stanley's message with an introduction to Jesus: The Seeking Savior.

Dr. Charles Stanley: The most beautiful and masterful piece of artwork ever to be found about Jesus is probably in this passage of scripture that I want to talk about today. Because it shows Jesus standing at this door with His hand raised to knock. And what it is, it is the message of the Lord Jesus to the seven churches in Asia Minor, and this particular verse is in that particular series of two chapters, Revelation chapter 2 and Revelation chapter 3, when Jesus is speaking to the seven churches.

I want you to listen to this message. It's a very, very important message. All of them are, but I want you to listen carefully because there's a picture of Jesus here that's not found anywhere else in the scripture. And it's so comprehensive because it's about our relationship to Him. So I want us to read these verses together, beginning in this third chapter of Revelation and read the 14th through the 20th verses. Revelation 3:14-20. This is just one of these seven churches.

He said to the angel, or the messenger, or the pastor of the church in Laodicea: Write, Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God says this—that is Jesus is saying this. And He said to them: I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. That's pretty strong language.

Because you say, "I am rich and have become wealthy and have need of nothing," and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, I advise you to buy from me gold refined by the fire so that you may become rich and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed, and eyesalve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline. Therefore be zealous and repent.

Now here's the verse. Look at this. Behold—this is Jesus—Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him and he with me. Here is a beautiful, beautiful, masterful picture of Jesus. And more than likely, you have seen this somewhere along the way because this particular scene was painted by Sallman, and you probably have seen that picture of Jesus standing at the door knocking in the light and so forth.

Well, He not only was knocking on the door of those churches, He knocks on the door of every single heart. And so what I want us to do, I want us to see Him in the five different perspectives that He's mentioned here. And the first one is this. Here's what He says. He says, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock." So we see Jesus first of all standing. What does that symbolize? His readiness. That is, He's ready to enter a life that's willing and ready for Him to do it.

He says, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock." Now I want you to notice something here. Who's taking the initiative? It is Jesus who takes the initiative in our salvation experience. And oftentimes we think it's a decision that we make. We are responding to His standing before us, waiting, ready. I want you to turn, if you will, to Romans chapter 3 to make it a little brief. And here is the human heart the way God sees it. We don't see it this way because we don't like to think of ourselves this way. But as a believer, you're not this way. But this is humanity the way God sees it.

Let's go to the third chapter and look at verse 10. "As it is written, there is none righteous, not even one." That is not a single person who's righteous apart from God. "There is none who understands. There is none who seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become useless. There is none who does good; there is not even one." Then he skips down and gives some other details, but he says, "There is no fear of God before their eyes." Now that's the way God sees mankind.

So ask yourself the question: if this is true, how could I have decided or you could have decided on your own that you were going to be saved and you were going to do better when He says there's none good, there's none righteous, you can't see, you're blinded by sin, and there is none who seeks for God? So when you come to this passage of scripture and you see Jesus standing at the door, listen, He stood at the door of your heart before you got saved. There was a time in your life when you trusted Him as your personal savior. You were responding.

You were a responder to the work of the Holy Spirit getting your attention, pointing out to you the sins in your life, and pointing out to you the fact that if you died without Christ, you'd be eternally separated from Him. This is Jesus taking the initiative. And for example, in John the 6th chapter, if you'll notice, for example, in the 44th verse, here's what He says: "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day," which is His way of saying you don't just decide on your own I'm going to get saved, or I'm not going to get saved now, I'll get saved later on one of these days, as if it's all I. No, the reason you are saved is you responded to the work of the Holy Spirit getting your attention, showing you your sinfulness, and bringing you to a saving relationship to Him.

When you come to this third chapter of Revelation, you come to these verses that describe, listen, He says, "I know your deeds, that you're neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you're lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth." Think about God saying that lukewarmness is so unacceptable it's like spitting something out of His mouth. In other words, and there are many Christians who are lukewarm. They're neither hot nor cold. In other words, you can't depend upon them. Leave me alone, just let me live my life the way I want to live it. Don't expect too much from me.

And you see, that's what causes nations to lose freedom and liberty: lukewarmness and indifference. It's what causes churches, for example, to become loveless, as we saw a few moments ago. Lukewarmness. Don't expect me to get too involved. Don't expect me to tithe. I'll give a little bit, but don't tithe. Don't expect me to give my testimony. Don't expect me to sing in the choir, preach or teach. Don't expect me to park cars. In other words, I'm saved, but don't mess with me. I'm saved, that's enough.

He came into this world and died on the cross and shed His blood to save us from ourselves and from sin. And then we want to live the kind of life that just ignores Him and just says, "Well, you know, I want to be a Christian life, but I've drawn this circle and I'm not stepping outside of it." Or "I've drawn this line, don't expect me to get this committed because this is as committed as I'm going to be." He says, "I hate that." Not that He hates the person, but He hates the idea that a person would remain to be lukewarm.

Let me ask a question. What kind of relationship would you have with your husband or your wife if you were just lukewarm? You never got excited; you were just sort of there. Nobody wants that kind of relationship. Well, God doesn't want that kind of relationship. He says it's a despicable relationship because He says it's so bad that from His perspective, knowing our capability, knowing who we are, and knowing what we can do and what we can accomplish and achieve, and knowing what He wants to do for us, He can't even get our attention.

Behold, He says, "I'm standing at the door and what am I doing?" He says, "I'm knocking." Notice He says, "I'm standing." Not sitting, not wandering around. "Behold, I stand at the door and I knock." Let me ask you a question. When is the last time in your life that you have heard God speaking to you? Remember when that was? You say, "Well, God doesn't speak to me." Oh, listen, if He's knocking on your door, He has something to say. "Behold, I stand at the door and knock."

And so you ask yourself the question: well, how does He knock? Well, sometimes He knocks through circumstances to get your attention. Difficulty, hardship, pain, disappointment, all kinds of things that go on in our life. Oftentimes, that is God knocking on the door of our heart to get our attention. And if you are an unbeliever, you've never trusted Jesus as your savior, I can tell you exactly what He's doing. He wants to get your attention because He knows what's coming. He knows where you are. He knows that you need Him desperately.

Now, many people are exactly like He described here. He says, for example, they have this sense of self-satisfaction and that is they will say, "You know, I am rich, I'm wealthy, I have need of nothing." And the truth is He says, "You don't realize that you're blind and wretched." And many people, He knocks on the door of their heart and they'll tell you they don't need God. But it's interesting when they go to bed at night, they roll and they toss and they tumble. What they don't realize is that's part of His way of knocking on the door of their heart. He won't let them go to sleep.

Why? Because listen to this: Jesus pursues us. That's who He is. He's not satisfied with our being lost. He's not satisfied with our living a carnal life, a fleshly life—that is, halfhearted, lukewarm. And so what does He do? He knocks on the door of our heart with difficulty, hardship, pain, the word of God, all the ways. For example, somebody says, "Well, you know, I don't like listening to preachers or I don't like watching preachers on the television, they bother me." I hope so. I hope so.

Because listen, it's through that pastor or through that speaker, whether it's a pastor or whoever it might be, what is God doing? Through them, He's knocking on your heart's door. And the worst thing you can do is what some people do, and that is you turn a deaf ear. He says, for example, in this passage, He said, "You don't know that you're wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked," that is spiritually naked, you don't have it. And when people refuse to listen to the gospel, what they're doing is they're turning a deaf ear to what He says. He says, "I'm knocking on your heart's door."

And what is He knocking for? He wants to get our attention. Now, here's the dangerous thing. I used to live about two blocks from a railroad track. And there were about 12 trains that came through there within every 24 hours. When I first moved there, I thought, "Oh, my, I'm going to have to put up with this," because as lovely a place as it was, I heard that train. And if I was home all day long, I'd hear it about every couple of hours or so, and so it bothered me for a while.

And then people would come to see me and they would say, "You hear that train all the time?" I'd say, "What train?" Because I'd heard it so long and turned a deaf ear to it, I didn't even hear it. I'm still knocking, but you don't hear it because you see, it's not making any contact with you. When God knocks on the door of your life, He is knocking on the door of your life to get your attention because there's something as a believer He wants to deal with. And listen, God just doesn't—that's not what He's up to. He's up to something very specific in your life.

Why can you not sleep? Why do you have to take something to make you sleep? Have you thought about the fact that it may be God knocking on the door of your heart? That He's troubling you about something that He knows is going to cause you a lot of trouble? He says, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock." You see, here's the way Satan blinds people. "Oh, that's what the preacher thinks," "Oh, that's what the teacher says," "That's one of those Christians." No.

When God wants to deal with you, He may use people that you would not expect to get your attention. And remember, He wants your attention for your good, to save you from yourself and to save you from a bad influence and to save you from making decisions that will ultimately destroy you. Because listen, He has things He wants to do in your life and for you and through your life. And if you die without Christ, here is a life He created—gifted, talented, skilled—had a will and a purpose and a plan. You live your whole life without Him and you die. It wasn't because He didn't care. It wasn't because He didn't try to get in. It wasn't because He didn't say anything. It's because you would not listen to the voice of love, awesome, eternal, unending, gracious love. You turned Him down and you pay the penalty.

He says, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock." And you see, if there are things in my life that I don't want to give up, finally, I don't have to listen. And I think I have escaped, only to have set a trap for my life that could absolute destroy it. He says, "Behold, I stand at the door and I knock." But He's not just knocking because listen to what He says. He says, "If anyone hear my voice"—watch this—"If anyone hear my voice and opens the door, here's what I'll do."

So I want to ask you again: when is the last time you know that God spoke to you personally, specifically about something in your life? It may be good or bad. And I've told you this before, but I use this illustration because it fits so perfectly. A man who really blessed us and gave us one of our buildings at In Touch, when he called me, here's what he said. He said, "Yesterday, I couldn't get you off my mind." He says—he's probably in his 70s at this point—"For the first time in my life, being a Christian since he was a teenager, for the first time in my life, I know that God spoke to me and told me to call you."

So he wanted to know what was going on because he knew God told him to call me. I'd never seen him before, didn't know anything in the world about him. He was so excited. He said, "For the first time in my life," he said it about three times. So he asked me if we had any need and I told him what the need was. I said, "I don't talk about it. We do have a need. We need a building. And I know that I found one that we can buy. They want $2,700,000, but I believe I can buy it for $2,000,000." He said, "You think you can do that?" I said, "Yes, I can." He said, "I can handle that," and sent us a check.

Now here's the important thing. And you know what I can promise you before God? The important thing about this is not the two million dollars. When this man said—and I can hardly believe this—that he lived all of those years and for the first time in his life, he knew God told him something. Now you may say, "Well, he listened to God and cost him two million dollars." I know that's what you were thinking, so I thought I'd get that out of the way. No, that's not the issue. The issue is when I went to see him and had lunch with him, three times he said, "You know, for the first time in my life, I knew God had spoken to me clearly."

So I'm asking you this: when is the last time in your life you could say, "On this occasion, I know that God spoke to me and told me exactly what to do"? Can you look back at a time? If you're walking in the spirit, you could say, "Yes, this morning or yesterday," or whatever it might be. He says, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock." He didn't say, "If you don't open this door, I'm coming in anyway," which He could have, He's omnipotent. But here's this awesome gentleness and love and respect of Jesus.

Listen, He loves us even in our sin. He respects us even when we disobey Him. What does He respect? He respects us to the point of respecting our freedom, which He gave us: the choice to choose Him or to disobey Him and reject Him. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hear my voice—somebody says, "Well, God's never spoken to me." And I say to you: yes, He has. You thought it was something else, but He has spoken. Would God not speak? Sure, He does.

Remember this: He loved you enough to die for you. And if He loved you enough to die for you, He's going to knock at the door of your heart. He's going to speak. He wants to get in because He knows you desperately need Him. And secondly, you will rejoice once He's there. Life will change absolutely completely, and you will be grateful for all eternity that you let Him in.

Guest (Male): You're listening to In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. God will use even pain and hardship to get our attention. So whenever Jesus knocks on the door of your life, it's always for your good. We'll continue learning about Jesus: The Seeking Savior next time. You can hear this message again by following the link to Today on Radio at intouch.org and look around to find scriptural insight that can help you see your circumstances in a new light.

And if you'd like to have a copy of today's complete message, you can order at the bookstore page. The title is Jesus: The Seeking Savior. Our web address again is intouch.org. Call or text to 1-800-INTOUCH. If you prefer, you can write to us at In Touch, Post Office Box 7900, Atlanta, Georgia 30357. When you pray, are you dropping off a wish list for God, or are you building a relationship with Him? Today's moment with Charles Stanley is coming up.

Dr. Charles Stanley: The peace of God is tranquility and quietness of the soul. It is the assurance that no matter what's going on around us, everything is secure. Peace is not determined by circumstances. Neither is it a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice.

Guest (Male): In a world filled with noise and uncertainty, you can discover peace that cannot be shaken. Get your new free booklet, Peaceful and Still: A Guide to Experiencing God's Rest in an Anxious Age. Visit intouch.org/peaceful.

In our spiritual journey, we often have questions. How do I know God's will for my life? Does God hear my prayers? Why do bad things happen? The answers are found in the word of God. But how do we know where to start? The free In Touch devotional can help point you in the right direction with biblically based content from Dr. Charles Stanley. You'll gain insight and wisdom through daily devotions, Bible studies, and more. The In Touch devotional, delivered monthly to your mailbox. Subscribe for free at intouch.org/daily.

Guest (Male): You're listening to In Touch. Praying isn't just about talking to God; it's also a time to listen. With a reminder for believers, here's a moment with Charles Stanley.

Dr. Charles Stanley: The most powerful privilege that you and I have, the most awesome privilege, is to be able to talk to a loving Heavenly Father who loves us unconditionally, who is omniscient—knows everything—omnipotent—has all power. To be able to talk to Him and know in our heart that we couldn't even begin to ask Him for anything that He couldn't do. And yet in spite of all that, we fret and we fume and we criticize. We live discouraged, negative attitude, when we have the power to tap into the most awesome power in existence, that's the power of God Most High.

Let me ask you a question. Why don't you pray more than you do? It's not a question of not having the time to pray. The question is: do I even think I need it? And do I love Him enough? You see, what we miss is this: we have the idea that talking to the Father, talking to God, praying to Him, we come to Him when we have some need. That's not the purpose of it all. How do you think God feels, who has saved you from all your sin, who meets all your needs, who desires the best for you? And the only time you want to talk to Him is when you have some need.

What about relationship? The Christian life is not about just getting my needs met. The Christian life's all about a relationship. It's a personal, intimate relationship with God the Father through His Son Jesus Christ. That's what this is all about. The Christian life is all about a growing intimate relationship with our Heavenly Father through His Son Jesus.

Guest (Male): Learn more about prayer and building a thriving relationship with God at intouch.org. Is there someone who needs the truth you heard today? Share it with them and then tell us what happened. On our next program, if you're saved, it's because you responded to the pursuit of Christ. But that's not all there is to being a Christian. Join us for part two of Jesus: The Seeking Savior, next time on 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.