Real Life Radio

Jack Hibbs: For some reason we think that it's so gigantic, the answer that we need to get from the Lord is so impossibly gigantic that it's never going to come our way. And yet, our God is a big God. Oh, and He's ever faithful. The great thing is to submit to Him.

David J.: Welcome to Real Life Radio with Pastor Jack Hibbs. I’m David J. Thanking you for joining us today as we listen, learn, and are challenged by God’s word, the Bible.

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Guest (Male): On today's edition of Real Life Radio, Pastor Jack now continues his series called Disciplines of Life with a message titled Disciplines of Decision. God's guidance in life guarantees certain comforts, one being that if we're in step with Him, then we don't have to make mistakes in our decision making.

You see, we have to recognize our own limitations and ask God for His guidance. We can only understand so much, and we need to let God's word guide us. So today, Pastor Jack teaches that wise choices require discipline, a reliance on God, and a willingness to wait for His guidance.

Our feelings, getting advice from others, or leaning on our own understanding will almost always lead us to the wrong direction. Now with his message called Disciplines of Decision, here's pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs.

David J.: So most of the stress, Pastor Jack, that people carry around comes down to decisions that they're trying to make. Decisions can weigh you down, right? So do you think, I think I know the answer to this, do you think asking God for guidance is often a step that we skip, especially in the big decisions?

Jack Hibbs: I think people have a tendency, I think we as humans have a tendency in our nature to skip God even in the small decisions. In fact, it might even be more so where we skip Him in the small ones than in the big ones. The answer is we shouldn't skip Him at all.

The Bible tells us that in everything that we do, we should do to the glory of God. The Bible tells us that we are not only to bring every thought under the captivity of Jesus Christ, but that we are to be those who do not lean upon our own understanding, but in all our ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct our paths.

So the more the Word of God dwells within us, the more we begin to realize that making a decision, I mean this might be almost hyperbole, but maybe not if it's happened to somebody, to make the decision, "Lord, the family's going to go out tonight. Where should we go to have a great time? You know the weather, you know what's going to happen, you know each of us. We just want to invite You, Jesus, into all that's going on."

And then lo and behold, you wind up realizing that later that night that one restaurant that you were going to go to and you changed your mind about turned out to be a place that was somehow, a bus hit it or something crazy. And you go, "Oh my goodness, wow, we were going to go there." Those are not coincidences. There is no Hebrew word in the Bible for coincidence. The word doesn't exist because our God is not a God of chances.

David J.: Why do you think it's hard for we as human beings to wait on God?

Jack Hibbs: Because we think we know the answer. We actually think we know the answer to stuff. And if we don't, why pray when we can ask AI? Who knows? But with the advent of AI, I wonder if Christians have given up praying to ask Siri or Alexa or Grok or something like this. "What's the answer to this or that?" or "I need to know, should I go there tomorrow?"

It's almost gotten down to shaking that Magic 8-Ball to see what pops up on the bottom. That's like Christian voodoo, if any such thing would ever exist.

David J.: I find myself most of the day and the night for that matter talking to God about decisions. Is that legit?

Jack Hibbs: What do you think?

David J.: I think it is, but—

Jack Hibbs: Of course it's legit. Davey right now's trying to be an entertaining radio host. He knows exactly. It's so legit, my friends. Listen, Davey and I and you, I trust, we just, you know what? As I've gotten older, I don't make prayer such a big deal because I've realized I'm praying all the time. It's an ongoing conversation.

It's not like, "Can you guys stop for a moment? I've got to go over there and pray." It's like I've been talking to Him all day and all night, like you said. All night I talk, I just talk to Him. Let that be your prayer life. He will prompt your heart. He'll remind you of things to pray for 24 hours a day.

David J.: So Pastor Jack, I mean, I consider you and our listeners consider you somebody who is seasoned in waiting on God. Is there something recent that you can give an example of that you waited on purpose?

Jack Hibbs: Let me first of all say I wait every day on purpose. That's one of the intentions that I want to live daily about. But yeah, I mean, there are going to be those in ministry who are going to say, "I wish I had that problem." But here's the problem. Yes, Davey, there is.

And that problem has been an overwhelming flood of being requested to be involved in really, really good things. And a lot of those good things happen to be on the same day at the same time in five different states or on two other continents. And it's all great stuff. It's a pro-life thing, for example. And I might have 17 invitations to speak at a pro-life event on a certain day. Which one's from God?

Now, after almost 50 years of being a believer, it's easier now to not get into a panic about who I have to answer. I'll go to bed, I'll sleep on it. "Well, what if they have to have the answer tonight?" I don't let that bother me. If they have to have the answer tonight and if I don't have the answer, then I'm going to tell them, "I don't have the answer yet. If you're willing to wait for the answer, I'll let you know as soon as I can. But I'm taking it to prayer, I'm waiting upon God."

And I have to be honest with you, if someone or an organization says, "Well, we need the answer now. We're not interested in you waiting upon God and getting the answer," I just got my answer. I don't know about you guys over there, but I just got mine.

David J.: So to the person that says, "Hey, he's been doing this for 50 years. I've been a Christian for three months."

Jack Hibbs: Same God. Same deal. Nothing changes. The thing is this: learn quickly. You don't have to wait 50 years. Learn quickly to train your ear to hear the Lord. How? Read your Bible. No other option. Read your Bible, period. And you'll begin to hear Him.

In fact, I'm convinced now He's talking more than I ever, ever think He is because when I slow down, I hear Him. I don't have to wait around forever for Him to speak. I think He's speaking because I think the time is short. I think we're going to go to heaven soon the way this world's going. Let's get into it.

Open them to Matthew chapter 28. You know that that's our theme verse for this series. And as always, Matthew chapter 28, but we're going to send you after that over to Jeremiah 42. Matthew chapter 28. It's all about discipleship and disciple making. That's what this series is about. And discipleship is having a disciplined life.

So in this discipline of life series, Matthew chapter 28 verse 18: "And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, 'All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things'—that's what we're doing on these nights together—'that I have commanded you; and behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the world.'"

And now tonight, Jeremiah 42 verse 6. Just turn a whole lot to your left to the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah chapter 42 verse 6, there the Scripture says, "Whether it is pleasing or displeasing, we will obey the voice of the Lord our God." And he goes on to say, "that it may be well with us when we obey the voice of the Lord our God."

Christian tonight, listen up carefully. God's guidance in our lives guarantees for us certain comforts that is available to the believer, the Bible-reading Christian. And we need to revel in that fact. Over and over again, we talk about God's Word and the need or the necessity to have it at work in our lives. And yet God's Word not only speaks about our future, speaks about our current, speaks about the past, but it is a book that is alive.

The book of Hebrews tells us that it's sharper than any two-edged sword. It is the Word of God that lives and breathes, and it causes us to experience a victorious Christian life. And so when we talk about the disciplines of life and the disciplines tonight of decision, it is absolutely imperative that we understand something from the get-go, and that is our God is perfect. God is holy. God makes no mistakes ever.

I'm not saying that because I want that to be true; I'm saying it because it is true. That's one of the reasons why He's my God. If He was a God that made mistakes or was capricious, changed His mind, was unstable, I'd have nothing to do with Him. You can trust Him. And if we are Christians, and we are, and if this is the Word of God, and it is, then why can't we make better decisions in our lives?

This is a very critical issue, and it plagues the church today. I think if we decided to follow the Word of God and make godly decisions, I think that we would spare ourselves a lot of grief. Not only that, we would, in making the right decisions, bring to our lives a lot of great blessings. Look, you guys know me by now. I am not a positive confession Word of Faith movement person. I believe that's heresy. But I will tell you this: God blesses obedience.

There's no doubt about it. Ask Abraham. Ask Isaac. Ask Jacob. Ask Daniel. Ask Jeremiah. Ask God's people throughout the Word. Ask God's people throughout the world. God blesses obedience. So we should have some fun tonight. And I noticed that when we were worshiping tonight, a lot of young people were coming in. That's good because let me tell you something, if us old folk can teach you youngins some wisdom from the Word of God and it spares you some grief, then hallelujah, then praise the Lord.

The disciplines of decision, number one, jot it down in your note-taking. It's this, and that is, be willing to ask for His guidance. Number one thing that you want to write down about making godly decisions is be willing to ask Him for His guidance. The Lord is desiring. Psalm 32:8 says this—and this is a great promise—"I will instruct you and teach you in the way that you should go." That's God speaking.

"I will counsel you and I will watch over you. Do not be like the horse or like the mule, who have no understanding but must be controlled with a bit and a bridle, or they will not come to you. Many are the woes of the wicked, but the Lord's unfailing love surrounds the man who trusts in Him." Boy, I tell you, that's a great promise. You want to be blessed in life? Listen, you want to be blessed in life? Seek God and find out what He wants by asking Him for guidance.

What's that old song? Help me out. It goes something like this: "Oh, what needless pain we bear, when we fail to take it to God in prayer," or something like that. I'm close. Asking God. Listen to this. God, where should I go to school? My goodness, in our culture, in our society, should you go to school? You've got to get a bulletproof vest and everything else. Who should I marry? Should I take that job? What church should I be going to? Where should I be serving? What should I be doing with my life?

Did you know that God's got the answer for every one of those questions? Every one of them. Be willing to ask Him for His guidance. Jot this down. Be willing to ask this way: recognize your limitation. We need to recognize real quick that we are limited. Can we all admit to that? I don't need to bend your arm, right? I mean, you're the Wednesday night group. You guys are smart. We are limited in what we can see and what we can know.

Listen, I've shared this with you guys in the past, but it's happened to me time and time again, so listen, I'm going to share it again. Whenever I'm coming home and I've got to get back home to my house or to the church quickly, and when I say coming back home, I'll be flying in either into LAX or John Wayne Airport, coming in to land. I'm always looking out the window to check out the freeway conditions. I'm serious because I know I've got to either get from LAX to this church or from John Wayne Airport to my home here or whatever.

And I'm looking, looking, looking. Why? Because from that vantage point, you can see everything. I don't need some traffic report when I can see it on my own. From that vantage point where God is at, He sees it all. You need to believe Him regarding that. You need to trust Him regarding that. He knows everything. He knows exactly what you're going to be going through next week, next month, next year.

There's nothing that surprises Him. So in that, recognize that you and I are limited in how far we can see. We're limited in how much we can understand. You and I, we don't know everything. And so we need to humbly ask God for help. I truly believe, listen, if you today began to discipline your life to start asking the Lord 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes a day before your day happens, "Lord, lead me and guide me."

Didn't I share with you last week, I think it was, where your daily Bible reading, take your daily Bible reading and convert that into your prayer topic? It's very powerful. And if you look at this last week's daily Bible reading and if you'd have used that time for prayer like many of you have and many of you do, you're never at a loss for prayer. The topics are more than enough and how they apply to your life. And as I challenged you guys, you begin to see God answering.

He wants to answer our prayers, and especially when you and I are limited because we can't see everything. The Bible tells us in the book of James chapter 4 verse 2, he says, "You lust and you do not have." He says that "You murder"—that is, you hate someone—"and you covet and you cannot obtain. You fight and you war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask." My goodness, look at that verse. All of these things that are going on in your life that's a negative, James says, is present because you don't ask God for help.

Lord, help. Lord, I'm limited. Lord, I'm weak. God, I need Your guidance. And He's faithful. The Lord is our well, as it were, to draw water from. In Psalm 145 verse 3, the Bible says, "Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; and His greatness is unsearchable." Church, that word unsearchable means you cannot find the bottom of His wisdom and knowledge.

So look, you guys, if He's our God, is He not? If He's our God and we are His people, then we have unlimited resources to tap into, though we ourselves are limited. It's okay for us to be weak because He's strong. It's okay for us to not know everything. First of all, we don't have the capacity to know everything. Study all you want—I mean, you should—but you ain't going to know it all. But He does.

He can give you the wisdom to all that you're requiring in this world regarding knowledge. Wow. Understand the limitations. Jesus said in Matthew chapter 7, "Ask and it will be given to you." He's almost begging us to ask Him. "Lord, I need Your guidance." Tonight, as a church, we should be praying, "O Lord, I need Your guidance in my life." Man, don't we all need that? I mean, how many times in a day do we need His guidance?

"Ask," He said, "and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened." And "everyone who asks receives." That's a tremendous promise right there. Jesus is saying, "Come on, ask. Ask. Will you ask? Ask Me." He says, "Seek, you're going to find. Knock, I'll open it up for you." Isn't that a great promise?

So listen, you say, "Jack, you know, what are you getting so excited about?" Because if I'm limited and He's not and I need to make the right decisions in life, don't you? Then why don't we talk to Him and get His answer on the matter?

Listen, I'm going to say something that's going to kind of shock you: you and I do not have to make mistakes. We don't have to make them. Why do we make them? Can we all agree that when we make them, it's because we either we don't listen to God or—we'll talk more in one of the things in a moment—we thought it was God, or we talked ourselves into thinking it was God. That's a big one.

We try to answer for God. It's almost like we're in a different world where we say, "Oh man, I need an answer for this thing." And many times we have this thing on our minds where we ask the question of God or we ask for His guidance, but we really don't want His input because we already know how we want it to turn out. So we pray like this and then we get on the other side and we answer like a lunatic, like someone who's talking to himself.

Pretty amazing. Well, how do we, in asking for God's guidance, overcome the limitations, tap into His unlimited knowledge? If we don't do that, we're going to have a problem being submitted to God. And that's the next thing I want you to jot down. How do I make a good decision? Yes, ask God for His guidance, and in that we're recognizing our own limitations. But also under this, we're responding, or we respond in submission to Him.

If He knows everything, it's smart for us to come under His leadership. Submission to the Lord, it's kind of a mind place. It's a mindset of great power. I want tonight to be a little bit personal, and it should be because of these topics. And this one right here, when I say that it's a mind place, I wrote down in my notes that submission under the Lord, it's a mind place of great power for me personally.

It causes me to ask for the "God thing" to get done in my life. I'm big in my private prayer life of asking the Lord for the "God thing" to get done in my life. "Lord, I want You to do the God thing." And here's the fun part. Somebody asked me, "What's the God thing?" I have no idea. That's the cool part. I want to come to the Lord and I want to pray and ask Him, "Lord, do Your God thing in my life."

I'll be honest with you, in my home, I will pray over my family, even though now they're married and moved away. I'll still pray, "Lord, cause this home, this family, this church to be an object of Your affection. And Lord, according to Your wisdom, spoil us as Your people." You say, "What does that mean?" I don't know. I don't care. He knows exactly how to answer that prayer. That's the God thing in my life. God, You do it. You do Your thing.

His thing is better than any plan you and I could ever concoct and master and put together and draw. The more we plan things out, the less faith we have. Oh my gosh. It's huge after all. We give up. We're simply to respond in submission to His will. In Luke chapter 11 verse 1, it says, "Now Jesus was praying in a certain place." This is how you make godly decisions: pray.

"And when He had ceased from praying, one of His disciples said to Him, 'Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.' And so Jesus said to them, 'When you pray, say: Our Father in heaven, hallowed'—or holy—'be Your name. Your kingdom come,'" here it is, "'Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.'" Bring heaven down to your situation. Do you have a situation, my friend, right now? What is it? Is it—what is it? It's your thing. You know what it is. You got it. Is it an issue? Is it a problem?

How big is it? "It's so big, Pastor Jack, it's huge." Good thing it's gigantic and massive and it's bigger than you. You get to call in reinforcements from heaven. For some reason we think that it's so gigantic, the answer that we need to get from the Lord is so impossibly gigantic that it's never going to come our way. And yet, our God is a big God. He's awesome. Oh, and He's ever faithful. The great thing is to submit to Him.

Guest (Male): Pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs here on Real Life Radio and his message called Disciplines of Decision. So glad you could spend some time with us today. You know, this message is part of Pastor Jack's series called The Disciplines of Life. It's a series highlighting the disciplines of a Christ-follower and the high cost of sharing our faith with others in a lost and broken world. And we'll continue on the next edition of Real Life Radio.

David J.: US strikes. Israel on alert. Iran escalating. Does anyone else feel like today's headlines sound straight out of Bible prophecy? Jesus told us these days would come, not so we'd panic, but so we'd be prepared. That's why we created the Prophecy Pack: Understanding God's Plan for the Future, a practical guide to help you live ready.

Don't just watch the news, understand it through God's Word. Get your Prophecy Pack now for a gift of any amount at jackhibbs.com. That's jackhibbs.com.

Did you know that along with the radio program, Pastor Jack also has a TV show with more of the Pastor Jack Hibbs content that you like? It's called Real Life TV. If you enjoy Pastor Jack on the radio, you're going to love him on TV. So check out your local listings or visit jackhibbs.com and catch the latest episodes. That's jackhibbs.com.

Hey, thank you again so much for listening. And if you'd like to hear or see more of what we do here, you can always go to jackhibbs.com for all the latest on what's going on with this ministry. And please, if you're ever in the Southern California area, come see us at Calvary Chapel Chino Hills. We'd love to see you there in person. It has been so good to be with you today, and I pray you find yourself in the grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. See you on the next episode.

This program is made possible by the generous contributions of you, our listeners. Visit us at jackhibbs.com. That's jackhibbs.com. Until next time, Pastor Jack Hibbs and all of us here at Real Life Radio wish for you solid and steady growth in Christ and in His Word. We'll see you next time here on Real Life Radio.