In Touch Ministries

Dr. Charles Stanley: When you begin the day, do you begin it with a sense of confidence in yourself? Or do you begin the day with a sense of dependence upon God that he's going to show you each step of the way. And you see when you do that, what you've really done is this, you've said, Lord, I can't live this day apart from you. I want you in on what I believe you've led me to get up to today. And so I want us to walk through this day together. I want us to live it together. I want to fulfill my business responsibilities together.

I want my life to be an expression of your life today.

Guest (Male): Prayer is a privilege given to every believer. But have you ever wondered if your time alone with the Lord is all it could be? Today on Intouch, teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley, we'll learn some practical insights to deepening your connection to Christ. Stay with us to discover some easy ways for making prayer a priority.

Dr. Charles Stanley: Every morning when you get up, you have the privilege as soon as you become conscious and open your eyes, even before you open your eyes and you become conscious, you have the privilege of carrying on a conversation with the God who created everything that has ever been in existence. Now friend, that isn't a duty, that is a marvelous, incomparable privilege that belongs to every single one of us. To know that every morning we get up, somebody is waiting to carry on a conversation with us, who is omniscient, knows everything we're going to face during the day, who's omnipotent, who's sufficient in his power to take care of us all day long, who is omnipresent, which means we walk in his presence every single step of the way.

He is waiting to meet us every single morning. Now I don't know about you, but it's awfully difficult for me to get up and run out and not take time to at least say hi and carry on a conversation with God. And you see one of the reasons so many people have all kinds of troubles in life is because they never stop long enough to get their sense of direction and sense of balance in their life. Now when prayer becomes a priority in your life, there are two or three things that are required. Number one, you better put it in your schedule.

It'll never be a priority. Satan will work you over day and night to be sure. He doesn't care what else you do as long as you don't pray. He's not concerned about your other activities because he knows the place that prayer has in those activities and what those activities amount to when there is no prayer. Not only does it take some scheduling, it demands time, it demands discipline, and it demands a commitment on your part. If you just make a decision, I think I'm going to get up early and pray. I guarantee you it won't last.

A commitment says I make a decision and with that decision goes everything I have within me and by the power of God to execute it because Satan will keep you up late at night in order to keep you down to late in the morning. He will do everything in his power to make you groggy and hazy and sleepy and sort of out of it so when you wake up, you're not fresh with God. But you see until prayer becomes a priority in your life, other things, family and cleaning and vocation, all these things take precedence.

And so what happens in most people's lives, where does prayer come? Prayer comes at the end of the day. We're dragging, tired, and weary. And then we give God not the best of the day, but what's left over. And you see if you only give God what's left over, you are saying something about your attitude toward God. He's all no, wait a minute. I love God, but now wait a minute. If I really love him and he's really first and he's really the priority, then I'm going to give him the best time of the day for me.

It may not be early in the morning. If you the best time of the day for you may be later on in the evening or at nighttime. But sometime where you schedule that you and God have an appointment, that you will do everything in your power to keep from breaking because you have placed priority on your fellowship with almighty God. Now I'd like to give you a list of things that I want to suggest you take a pencil and piece of paper if you will because I want to talk about this matter of the place that prayer ought to have in our life and that is that it should be a priority.

And I simply want to give you some reasons why prayer should be a priority in our life. And I just want to give you this list and we'll move right along through them. And the first one is this, that prayer should be a priority. That is I mean by that now, time that you take alone between you and God where you and he are talking together in the word, listening to what he's saying to you in the word, sharing your heart with him, allowing God to impress your spirit. Prayer should be a priority first of all because prayer in itself is a recognition of our dependence upon God.

And I want all the key words to start with R so you can remember them and catch them rather quickly. A recognition of my dependence upon God. You recall in the 37th chapter of Isaiah when King Hezekiah had just received a message that the Assyrians were outside the gates and the king had already sent a message into the people, don't trust your king. Talking to God won't making a difference. We've wiped out some other nations and they supposedly believed in your God. And you recall all the pressure that suddenly King Hezekiah felt. What did he do?

He didn't call a big committee meeting and ask people what they thought, wring their hands and fretting over it. The Bible says that Hezekiah took that note. He went to the house of God and what did he do? He laid that message before almighty God. And as a result of doing so and opening his heart to almighty God, he pleaded for God to rescue the nation of Israel. He did what God is pleased when all of us do it. And that is when we come to him in utter dependence upon him and expressing God, I'm helpless.

I don't know what to do next. I don't know how to carry out this situation. I don't know the answer to this problem. I am absolutely and totally befuddled about it all. I really need your help. That pleases God. He is pleased when you and I come humbly before him in praise and adoration and in dependence upon him to express our need of him because you see he's our father. That's what he turned himself, our father. We are his children. Anytime we come to him to say, Lord, here's the plan. I don't know what to do about this.

And let me say this, I'm not talking about just in areas when you are serving the Lord, shall I say in church. I'm talking about in your business. What could please more than a business man laying out his plan before God and saying, Lord, I need you to give me direction here. Or, Lord, here's what I think is the right thing. Now we as you look this over with me, would you just give me a confirmation my spirit that this is what you want me to do? Suppose you're a salesman and you just make your list of all the people you're going to meet during the day and just give them to God.

Lord, here the folks I 'm going to meet today. There may be there may be some that you want to add. It may be that all of this isn't going to be able to be fulfilled today. But I 'm laying out before you the list of people I'm going to see today and so I'm just trusting you to give me direction and guidance that you'll show me what to say here, how to respond here. Here's the situation. Lord, you know I don't know exactly what to do, but I'm just laying it before you. You talking about God blessing somebody.

Friend, listen. He will bless you beyond your fondest dreams because what you're doing is you are humbling yourself in recognition that God is your father. You depend upon him. You're trusting him. You need him and you're acknowledging your dependence upon him in each area of your life that day. That pleases God. And when prayer is a priority, we will express our dependence upon him. We will bring our problems, our heartaches, our burdens, our challenges, our business, our joys, our delights before him and express our dependence upon him. When you begin the day, do you begin it with a sense of confidence in yourself?

Or do you begin the day with a sense of dependence upon God that he's going to show you each step of the way. And you see when you do that, what you've really done is this, you've said, Lord, I can't live this day apart from you. I want you in on what I believe you've led me to get you up to today. And so I want us to walk through this day together. I want us to live it together. I want to fulfill my business responsibilities together. I want my spiritual responsibility to be carried out with you.

I want my life to be an expression of your life today. You mean to tell me God won't answer that prayer? Listen. I believe he'll bless any man's business. He'll bless his life, his witness, his testimony or any woman. Whatever your your vocation may be, God will be delighted to get in on what you're doing as you follow him and as you begin the day telling him you are dependent upon him. Now let me show you why that's important. You and I can set goals for a day at a time or we can set long range goals.

But God knows the overall purpose for our life. And what God wants to do is as you and I begin the day, whether it's a day that seems to be filled or not so filled, he wants us to so live our lives that given day that not only are we accomplishing those specific goals, but that God's overall purpose for us is being fulfilled. And if we get up in the morning and run off doing our own thing, we're going to miss God's greater purpose in our life which is most important. So first of all, it ought to be a priority because it is a recognition of our dependence upon God which honors him.

Secondly, God's power is released through prayer as it is released in no other formal fashion. God's power is released through prayer as it is released in no other formal fashion. For example, in that New Testament church, the scripture says when they had prayed, the place where they had gathered together was shaken. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God with boldness. The congregation of those who believe were of one heart and soul. None of them claimed anything for themselves. All things were common property and with great power, the apostles witnessed the resurrection of Jesus Christ and abundant grace was upon them all.

There was not a needy one there. They began to distribute. Everybody's needs are being met and the spirit of God says that even the priests were being saved. The power of God was released through prayer. Now I'm sure I cannot explain this maybe to your satisfaction, but this I do know. When a man or woman gets on his or her knees and they begin to beseech God in the spirit of humility and submission to him, asking for God's wisdom and his knowledge and his understanding, asking for God power and energy in their life for a given task, there is something miraculously, mystical, incomprehensible that happens in that person's life.

It matters not whether it's in your business, the teacher's Sunday school class, the preacher's sermon, the singer's song. God's power is released in and through that person's life. And you see so many of God's people are walking in the flesh. They're walking in the flesh because they're convinced that God isn't going to do anything special for them. Listen. It shouldn't be special. It should be the norm that you and I walk in the power of the Holy Spirit every day. The Bible says, be ye filled with the spirit. And if we're filled with the spirit, we know what the fruits of that will be.

Love, joy, peace and so forth. But likewise, God's power will come in your life. That means that when you share your testimony, there's going to be punch to it. That is it's going to be able to dig in a little deeper. Something's going to happen to the person with whom you share your faith. Even in your business, your vocation. If you're asking God to empower you with the Holy Spirit, whether you're a salesman or clerk, whether you're a maid or whether whatever you may be, God will use you and make your life a vital, life-changing impression on someone else.

You see somewhere along the way we put our spiritual life over here, our vocational life over here. We get up and pray in the morning and ask God to bless us. Then we meet him again at nighttime. When the Christian life is a continuing fellowship all day long with one who has promised to empower us when every single moment of the day we have the privilege of what? Of receiving what God has intended for us to receive. We to walk in his energy, in his strength, in his power, in his wisdom, in his knowledge. He said, ye shall receive power that is authority after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you.

Listen. If a man in his business could understand that he has the right to claim the authority of almighty God as he is obeying scriptural principles and abiding by the truth of God's word, he has the right to claim God's authority in his business decisions as well as in areas that he considers just spiritual or religious, something would begin to happen to him, to his business, to his finances and everything else because you see you are a spiritual being. Christ Jesus living his life in and through you so that at no time of the day are you just secular and just vocational and then spiritual.

You are a living, vibrant, spiritual somebody who is indwelt by the Lord Jesus Christ and God wants his omnipotent power to flow through you. How do you get it flowing? Well I want to go back to something simple and you see God made it simple so that we would not overlook it and yet it is the very reason sometime we overlook it. I'm simply saying to you when you get on your face before almighty God or you kneel before God and you kneel in the spirit of humility and you tell Lord the Lord, Lord, I need you today.

I thank you for the wisdom you've given me. I thank you for what I understand, but God I need you. I need your power in my life. I need your authority. I need to walk in your energy. I need to walk in your strength. I need to know what I cannot know apart from you. I need to be wise in my decisions. I need father to make decisions about things when I don't know the future outcome of them. My business is such that I need to be able to make decisions and calculate those decisions when there's no way for me to know what's around the corner.

God, I need you to help me. The truth is we all need him every moment of the day. Think about the fact that God is willing to do what? He is willing to empower you with wisdom and knowledge and understanding to make those right decisions when there is no human way in the world for you to know what to do. You see he hasn't limited his power to a certain group. I'll tell you who his power is limited to, to those who willing to acknowledge their utter dependence upon him and listen, the power is the overflow of spending time with God.

And listen, no amount of listening to sermons and going to church, you can go to church 7 days a week and listen to a sermon every day, do everything you want to. There is no substitute under God's heaven for spending time on your face before him in his word, listening, praying, talking to him, listening to him, meditating upon his word, bringing it back to him, asking him for his direction and wisdom, laying out your schedule for the day, laying out the projects you've got in mind or the problems, the heartaches, the burdens. Lay them out and give them to him one by one.

It is absolutely amazing how God will empower you to deal with those successfully and not to go through the day worried and fretting and straining over what may happen. That's the power of God. And he has made that available to all who are willing to take the time. But now listen, it's the overflow. The power of God is the overflow of spending time with him. And I want to tell you you can spend time with somebody else or a whole bunch of Christians. There is no substitute for your being alone with almighty God by yourself.

All right, the third thing I want you to notice, Paul says, unceasingly pray here. What is he saying? And that is that through prayer prayer is the resource that is it is the channel of God's resources. It is through prayer our resources come, but it is the channel through which our resources come. So if you can think about prayer and resource and channel, that is when you and I get along with God, what happens? Something happens within us. So you ask the question when he says unceasingly pray, what does he mean when he when we talk about the fact that it is the channel through which God sends his blessing?

Well think about what he said. And he said the most important thing so simply he said, now watch this. He said, you ask and it shall be given you. You seek and you shall find. You knock and it shall be open to you. Now that's real simple. What is he saying? He's saying, you and I have a channel between us and God. And we're to look to him as our resource. We're not to look to others, our boss, employer. We look to him as our resource. Now whomever God chooses to use through whom these blessings are going to flow, that's his business.

That's always his business. But what you and I must do is to come to him in prayer, looking to him as the resource and seeing that prayer is the channel through which God sends his blessing. He says, ask and it should be given you. Seek and you shall find. Now somebody saying, well look, I've been looking up that channel a long time. I don't see a thing coming. In fact I've got all kinds of needs and I don't see anything coming down the channel. Well if you don't see anything coming down the channel, here's the reason.

Number one, there must be something in your life that's clogging it up because I want to tell you God is waiting to bless you. Number two, it may be that there's something going on in your life that you're not in a position to be able to handle all the blessing God wants to send you. Number three, it may be that God's in the process of working out the circumstances so that it will begin to flow your way. And you see often times what we have to remember is while you and I are praying and talking to God about our needs, God's over here talking to someone else and dealing with them about their involvement in our needs.

Now listen, God wants to trust us with greater blessings. Wherever you are today, God wants to increase the blessing. Whether it's a spiritual blessing, something he's doing in your life or material or relational, whatever it might be. Wherever you are, God doesn't want you to stay there. Now listen to this. If he doesn't want you to stay where you are, does he want you to go backwards? No. Does he want you to go onward and upwards? Yes, he does. So if you're not moving onward and upward, then what is the reason? More than likely God is trying to get your attention about something because as I come to the Lord, he's able to show me the areas of my life that are areas of disobedience or things that I've considered unimportant that God considers very important, things I've overlooked that are very significant to God and I begin to deal with them.

Then what I do is I get in I get in position for God to begin to let the flow come through the channel. There's something about he says you have not because you ask not. You say, now wait a minute. If God knows I have a need, why doesn't he go ahead and bless me? Well have you asked him? Well I have asked him. Did you ask him in faith? Well you see it's real simple, but you can't just sort of generally and nonchalantly go about it. He is an he is the he is a prayer answering God.

You see he has arranged his economy so that he is a responder to our petition. That doesn't mean we only get what we ask for. Most all of us would agree that he blesses us far beyond what we expect and many things we don't even ask for. But we are to ask. We are to beseech him. You know what a big part of our problem is? We don't pray enough to keep our faith at a level where God can operate. Friend, listen. Don't chalk off anybody as a possible part of God's work. He can take the most unexpected and unsuspecting situation and turn it into a resource.

But ultimately God is the resource. And when we see him as that and we begin to pray and seek his face and look to him as the resource, God is going to open a channel of blessing like most of us have never expected. And I want to tell you he'll do it in your business, your home, your personal life. God's waiting on you. You're not waiting on him. God's waiting on you.

Guest (Male): You're listening to Intouch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. God wants us to be dependent on him. When we go to him in prayer and acknowledge him as our provider, he opens the best of his blessings to us. If you'd like to listen to today's message again, click today on radio at intouch.org. And if you'd like to have a copy of this complete message, you can order online at the store. The title is making prayer a priority. Our web address again is intouch.org. Call or text to 1-800 Intouch. If you prefer, you can write to us at Intouch, Post Office Box 7900 Atlanta, Georgia 30357.

Do you have a morning routine? There's something important to add if it's not already there. That's coming up in today's moment with Charles Stanley.

Guest (Male): Jesus told us in Matthew 28:19, go therefore and make disciples of all the nations. As we obey this command, Intouch Ministries is using innovative technology to take the gospel to as many people as possible. One example of this effort are the Intouch messenger lab devices, a family of solar powered audio players containing the Bible and Dr. Stanley's messages distributed for free to missionaries around the world. To learn more about the Intouch messenger lab, go to intouch.org/global.

Guest (Female): 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 Intouch 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 Intouch devotional delivered monthly to your mailbox. Subscribe for free at intouch.org/daily.

Guest (Male): You're listening to Intouch. Start your day off with God. Here's a moment with Charles Stanley.

Dr. Charles Stanley: Wonderful to pray with your husband or wife. Wonderful to pray with someone else. But God wants you by himself at times where he can love just you, where he has your undivided attention and where he can bring about his work in your life and his will and his way and his great purpose. And he wants to be able to do that all alone with you. Listen, why should you walk in weakness when you don't have to walk in weakness? Why should you have to worry and fret and fumble about things that God almighty is interested in and willing to get involved with your life?

He wants you to succeed because he wants to express himself through you and to express himself through you, to express his faithfulness and his wisdom and his grace and his generosity through you.

Guest (Male): You can learn more about hearing and responding to the Lord when you visit us at intouch.org. Next time on Intouch, we continue our look at prayer with some biblical direction on how to find guidance, intimacy, and spiritual power in our time alone with the Lord. Join us again for Intouch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. This program is a presentation of Intouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia and remains on this station through the grace of God and your faithful prayers and gifts.