Dr Charles Stanley - When It Is Wise to Wait - Part 1B

0:00I would like to manipulate the circumstances so I can say, God, I've got this thing all figured out. Now, what about blessedness? Which is a real temptation sometimes, and things don't work out to suit us, and we have to wait. And so sometimes we wait angrily, frustrated, nervous, impatiently. You name it, complaining, groaning, moaning about God. What's going on? Aren't you doing something? And what we have to remember is this. Just because I can't see what God's doing, does it mean that God isn't doing something? Are you about to make an important decision? What direction have you received from God? Today, on In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley, you'll be challenged to pay close attention to the Lord's counsel and obey him thoroughly. Before you ignore God's directives, consider the ramifications carefully and avoid the unpleasant consequences. Our series, When It Is Wise to Wait, continues.

1:00MUSIC Wait for the Lord. Be strong and let your heart take courage. Yes, wait for the Lord. Now, to some people, that may be a strange idea. What do you mean, wait for the Lord? Why should you have to wait on God? Is God ever late? Indeed, He's not. Then what in the world do you mean by waiting upon the Lord? Well, what we mean is simply this. To wait means to pause and wait for further instructions. When a person is waiting upon the Lord, what they're doing is remaining in their present circumstance, remaining in their present position, and waiting for further instruction from God. Lord, what do I do next? What is the next move? This does not mean that you do nothing. It does not mean that you're just sort of passively sitting around doing nothing, waiting for the Lord. Because waiting for the Lord is not passive, but it is an activity. That is, it is active.

2:01It is quiet activity. We wait by remaining where we are, doing what God says do, to the best of our ability, until God intervenes in that situation and changes it. Or, intervenes and says, now here's what I want you to do now. People who say, well, you know, I don't like my job. I'm just going to quit, wait on God. Well, I want to tell you, I'm not going to say that God would never tell anybody to quit and wait upon him, but most of the time, waiting in bobs, doing what I'm doing to the best of my ability, write where I am, with all of my heart until God says, move here, move there, move over Yanda. Usually he's going to move you from what you're doing to something else he wants you to do, that is actively waiting upon God and waiting for his direction. So we talk about activity, we're talking about that. That is, he's not going to say, just shut it all down and do nothing. So what is the attitude? What's the right attitude about waiting upon God?

3:02Well, I can tell you what mine has been sometimes, very impatient with God. I have been frustrated when God did not write on my schedule. There were a few times I'll have to admit I've been angry. And sometimes, I would like to manipulate the circumstances so I could say, now God, I've got this thing, I'll figure it out now. What about blessedness? Which is a real temptation sometime and things don't work out to suit us and we have to wait. And so sometimes we wait angrily, frustrated, nervous, impatiently, you name it, complaining, groaning, moaning about God, what's going on, why aren't you doing something? And what we have to remember is this, just because I can't see what God's doing, does it mean that God isn't doing something? So I have to learn to wait, so we are impatient now. What should our method be? So I want you to get your Bible out and if you got it out, and let's go through some scriptures. Because he tells us how we have to wait. First of all, I want you to turn to Psalm 37.

4:04Psalm 37, verse seven. Two things here. First of all, he says, rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him. So I am to wait patiently. That is, I must be willing to endure whatever is necessary until God intervenes. And notice what he says, I don't want to wait upon him patiently, but I'm to wait upon him in faith. He says, rest in the Lord, trust him. I am to wait upon him, trusting him. I am to wait upon him patiently waiting for God to do what he has promised to do. And then I want you to turn to Psalm 62. Psalm 62 is one of my favorite ones. The Lord keeps bringing me back to oftentimes when I'm in the process of waiting and trying to find out of what he's up to in my life. My soul, wait there only upon God from my expectation is from him. And in the New American standard, he says, my soul waits in silence for God only.

5:06That is, sometimes we are to wait quietly silently before him. And you see, it's real difficult for us to do that because we're also active. And I hold generation, this whole society is active. You remember when the Apostle Paul got saved on the Damascus road? And he had this tremendous Damascus road experience and fell down blind, couldn't see anything. They took him away and finally his sight was restored. And you remember what God said to the man there? He said, analyze, he's my chosen vessel. Now, the natural normal thing for Saul of Tarsus to have done was having been saved so graciously by the Lord Jesus Christ, having heard the voice of the Lord, having had his eyesight restored so he was listening. He went, there's two miracles. The miracle of his own new birth, the miracle of his blindness, having his sight restored, the natural normal thing for Saul of Tarsus to do

6:07was to head to Jerusalem, get in the city square and say, this is Saul of Tarsus. And they already knew about him. I mean, he had a terrible reputation as a persecutor, but he could have stood up on the city square in Jerusalem and he could have said, I was saved on the Damascus road and the size that I was made blind. I heard the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ, the resurrected Lord. Now I can see and he sent me to evangelize and I want you to come to Christ. He could have thrown his evangelistic campaign and whole missionary endeavor. You know what God told him to do? I want you to go to Arabia and the desert and I want you to be there all by yourself. I don't want you to talk to anybody, but me, God said. Sometimes waiting upon the Lord is the way silently. Just be quiet and listen, God, what are you saying to me? And I could never say this to you enough. Quiet meditation with the word of God, at least a little bit every day.

7:09If you skip a day, don't get discouraged. Just next day, get back to it. This is God's instruction book. This is God's answer. This is God's compass. This is everything you and I need to know what to do next. And he says we're to wait upon him patiently, trusting him and we're to wait also silently. Now, I want you to turn to back to the 27th Psalm where we started in the very beginning. He says wait for the Lord, verse 14, wait for the Lord. Yes, he says again, wait for the Lord. Now, how are we to wait? We say we're not to wait passively, but expectantly. That is when you and I are waiting upon God, here's what happens. We learn to sharpen our discernment. When you're waiting upon the Lord and you're spending time in his word and you're listening, here's what you begin to do. You began to look for the evidences of God at work in your life

8:09and ways that you never saw it before. And you will see how God's putting pieces together in the most exciting sort of way. Listen, if you miss that in life, you miss one of the greatest principles of the Christian life learning to wait upon God. And if I wait expectantly, my discernment begins to be very sensitive. I begin to see the evidence of God putting things together in my life and will know when the right time comes. So he says in this passage, wait upon the Lord, again, he says wait. And when he says twice, wait upon the Lord, he's saying to us, do it steadfastly. Wait upon the Lord, be strong and let your heart take courage. Wait upon the Lord, steadfastly. Don't move off. That is you just wait till you get direction from God. Hang in there, focus your attention upon him and just wait. Not only that he says we are to wait courageously. He knew that you and I would become fearful.

9:09He says wait for the Lord, be strong and let your heart take courage. Be strong, steadfast, courageously. And you see courage is in the absence of fear. Most folks think that if you have courage, you don't have any fear, no. Listen, courage is calmness and stability in the midst of fear. All of us have been in the midst of things that caused us fear. But there's an innocence of calmness and quietness and steadfastness no matter what may happen. And you see, waiting upon the Lord, if I wait upon him, I'm to wait upon him fearlessly, courageously, steadfastly, patiently trusting him silently. But I am also to wait standing upon the Word of God. Now, what you turn to Psalm 130, standing upon the Word of God, Psalm 130. Listen to what he says. In the 130th Psalm, the Psalmist says, verse five, I wait for the Lord, my soul does wait, and in his word do I hope.

10:11And what he's saying is this. I know what God has said, and I am waiting for him, I'm taking my stand upon the Word of God. Now, one last thing that I want to talk about, and that's what's the consequences of not waiting. Well, I want you to jot down these five things, so you'll think about them for your own life. Number one, when we fail to wait, we get out of God's will. It's just that simple. When God says, don't do anything till I tell you, we say, Lord, I know what you said, I think I know what to do. Did you know, listen carefully, did you know that even when you do the right thing at a God's timing, it's disobedience? Even when you do the right thing, at a God's timing is disobedience. And what that's going to do, even though it's the right thing, it's going to bring frustration and confusion to what could have been a blessing. And so first of all, one of the consequences is we get out of God's will. Now here's the danger of getting out of God's will.

11:12When you and I step out of God's will, we immediately position ourselves to vulnerability to Satan. When we are out of God's will, we are more vulnerable to Satan's attacks, to lead us astray and to destroy our life than any other time. So there's always a consequence, not to listen to it up on the Lord. The second is, we delay God's planned blessings for our life. Their times when God has exactly what we want, what we want God to do, he's preparing to do it, when we refuse to wait, what we do is he just has to delay it. That is if God knows that I'm going to need greater faith out here, but there's greater position that he wants to put you in. If he knows you're going to need greater faith and greater experience, what the very thing that you want in life, God wants you to have because it's his will, but if you are not willing to wait,

12:12what you're going to do is delay the blessing. You get out here and mess it up. Then God has to just let you wait that much longer until you learn the lesson. We're the ones who delay the blessings, not God. And we delay them by getting ahead of them. The third thing I want you to notice is, we bring upon ourselves pain and suffering by not waiting upon the Lord. I've seen this happen. I've seen men walk down this church aisle and who've said to me, my wife divorced me three months ago and last week, I got saved and God's radically changed my life. He said, well, it took the divorce to get him saved. No, it didn't. God would never tell a woman to divorce her husband, to get her husband saved. God never tells me to disobey over here in order to bring obedience over here. That's not the way God operates. He meant, listen, that'd be so confusing. We will never know what God's up to in our life. But you see, if she had just waited three months,

13:14you said, well, but it took that, no, listen, God may have used something else. And sometimes the person says, I don't have to put up with this on my job, I'm leaving. Not realizing that if you stayed in a tough situation, and I can give you some examples, it's some men have given me, if you stayed in a tough situation, where it was hard and difficult, just hung in there and demonstrated the wonderful spirit, that a spirit-filled Christian can demonstrate, you may end up being the president. But because it wasn't going your way, and it wasn't on your time schedule, you weren't willing to wait for God, you just said, listen, I'll do my own thing, you sure can, and blow it. Well, I'm gonna get married, I gotta get married. Why you wanna get married? I'm married, listen, I'm 30 years old, I gotta get married. What's 30 years old having to do with marriage? That folks who are 40 who are not married,

14:16and you may say, pull them and they're saying, poor you, you married the wrong person. You see, I have seen people sit in my study and weep, and weep and weep, because they did not wait for God. And we bring upon ourselves heartache and suffering and trials, difficult, this hardship and sorrow, we bring a lot of that junk upon ourselves, because we won't wait. Look what happened to Moses. He wanted to get Israel freed from Egyptian bondage, but he wouldn't wait for God to show him how to do it. He's gonna do it himself. You know what it cost him? 40 years on the back side of the desert. Now, another thing I wanna say about this is, when you and I refuse to wait upon the Lord to do our own thing, we always hurt somebody else.

15:19Because we're not islands and we live in relationships. Husbands, wives, children, friends, people you work with, we live in relationships. And what happens is we disobey, we get ahead of God, we get ahead behind him, don't get in concert with his will, we always heard of the folks. There's no such thing as a husband, wife, or children, getting out of God's will, living in jail, that everybody in that family hurting. And the body of Christ hurts when somebody in the body is hurting, out of God's will, living in sin. And how many times have men said to me, if I had just waved it? I wanna plead with you in Jesus' name. Don't make financial decisions without the wisdom and the direction of the great financier. Nobody knows finances like God. Why did he say so much about it in the Bible?

16:21Because he knew it was gonna be a big problem in so many people's lives. He is willing to give you direction if you are willing to wait. Whether it is a purchase of a house or an automobile or a dress or something else, it makes no difference to you. You said, well, you don't mean to tell me we ought to ask God about things like, what about toothpaste? No, don't worry about toothpaste. But there are a lot of things we need to ask Him about. And you're smart enough to know what to ask Him about. You see, we get in trouble financially because we jump. We do it now, instead of waiting for God's timing. And then the last thing I wanna say is that one of the consequences of not waiting upon the Lord is the confusion it brings into our life. There's so many people walking around the day in confusion. Think about this. They just live from Monday to Friday to get their paycheck, have the free weekend,

17:23go back to the grill and the grind of next Monday, do it again, no sense of direction, no sense of purpose, no sense of achievement, no sense of accomplishment, just living, working, making money, spending it. You see, they're living in confusion. They've never stopped to ask, God, what do you wanna do with my life? How do you want me to invest my life? Which belongs to you? And if you and I would wait and seek His direction, here's what would happen. Every day of our life could be profitable, meaningful, and bear rich rewards and fruit for the kingdom of God and fruit in the life of your family and in your own life. There'll be more joy and more peace and more contentment and a greater sense of satisfaction. If we have a sense of direction, I think about so many pastors, they get in the church and things don't go right and people don't like them, they don't like the folks, they have a big stew about it all and they just up and leave without asking God, I don't have to put up with this.

18:23So what happens? They move to some of the church, without asking God is that what you want. So the next church that calls Him, this man who is out of God's will, even being willing to consider that, has now gotten that church out of God's will. This past over here goes to this church, who's out of God's will now, because their past is gone. He says, does that mean everybody gets out of God's will? God straightens up all messes where men and women are willing to be obedient to God. But if I always run because things don't suit me, I'll always be on the run out of the will of God, out of step with His timing, because I fail to wait. Now I say one last thing, listen carefully. There are those times in our life when we come to some critical crucial decision, we can go right or we can go left.

19:24And if we come barreling up to this intersection in our life where it's marriage, finances, job, whatever it is, and not stop to be sure we have God's mind, we just go our way. There are some decisions that are evocable, can't have a change in them, because there are some opportunities that only come once. That's why it is so very, very important that we wait until we know that God has said, now this is good, this is right, and now is the time. You're listening to InTouch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. God has promised to meet all our needs, and He meets them in His way and in His time. He has a reason for requiring our patience, though we won't always understand, we never lose when we wait on the Lord.

20:25To listen again, click on today on radio at InTouch.org and look around at the resources on our website that can encourage your trust in God to grow. If you'd like to order Dr. Stanley's complete two-part teaching set, when it is wise to wait, visit our online bookstore. Again, you'll find these resources at intouch.org or call or text 1-800-INTouch. To write to us, address your letter to InTouch, post office box 7900, Atlanta, Georgia, 303-57. Are you facing a very long to-do list? A personal story teaches us the key to endurance. Coming up in today's moment with Charles Stanley. Who is the Holy Spirit, and how does He operate in your life? Dr. Stanley struggled over this divine mystery as well, and found that life in the Spirit has less to do with striving and everything to do with abiding. Explore this life-changing biblical perspective

21:26in the Spirit-filled life available in paperback and use the think about it questions inside for personal reflection or group discussion. Order the book, The Spirit-filled Life at intouch.org, or by calling 1-800-INTouch. You don't need to be perfect for your children. Can you get over this one? That's it. But with just a little encouragement. We're a pro at this, aren't you? A lot of laughter. Some time and attention, and a bit of patience, you'll pass along confidence and affirm connection with God that lasts a lifetime. In his book, Man of God, Dr. Charles Stanley helps us understand what it takes to grow into a man after God's own heart. Order your copy today at intouch.org slash store. You're listening to InTouch. How do you keep going when you're tired, worn out, and see no end in sight? With encouragement for believers, here's a moment with Charles Stanley.

22:27And I can think of so often what's happened in my own life. And I remember one occasion, I had to preach seven times in a row. I had about 10 minutes between each time. After the third time, I thought, oh, God, there's no way. I took off my overcome. I laid it down on a concrete floor, and I laid down, put my Bible under my head, and I began to quote, Isaiah chapter 40, Lord, here's what you said, they their way to ponder, Lord, shall renew their string. Man of the wings, his eagles, running, not be weary, walking, not feint, and Lord, I don't have a five minutes to wait. So I'm waiting, and I'm trusting, and I'm expecting and anticipating you to do for me what I need. You know that I preached seven times in a row. I had about 10 minutes between each time, but time the service was over, and I had to shake a few hands. I had about 10 minutes to myself. When you and I are still before Him, and we just say, Lord, I'm trusting you to release the power and the energy of the Holy Spirit within me, which you promise to do. And I'm just going to trust you. You don't have to wait an hour.

23:28Listen, five minutes. Sometimes it's worth a good two hour nap. If you do it in the right perspective, God, I'm trusting you to do for me what I absolutely cannot do for myself. God's strength is available to all of His followers. Learn more about tapping into His inexhaustible power at ntouch.org. And if you were encouraged and equipped today to boldly live out your faith in Christ, we'd like to know. Tomorrow on ntouch, it's always wise to wait for God's perfect timing. And tomorrow, we'll hear about the rewards of waiting for our Heavenly Father. I hope you'll join us Friday for ntouch the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. This program is a presentation of ntouch ministries, Atlanta, Georgia, and remains on this station through the grace of God and your faithful prayers and gifts.