Are you trusting in the Father in every aspect of your life? Do you have confidence that God—the Sovereign Lord of the universe—will do exactly what He says and fulfill every promise He’s made? Your answers to these questions will greatly affect your life. In fact, if you refuse to trust God, you will undoubtedly miss important blessings He has for you. From the moment you become a Christian, God enrolls you in His classroom of faith because He desires to develop your relationship with Him and show you life at its very best. Dr. Stanley teaches you the five indispensable requirements of living in full reliance and submission to the Father.
male announcer: “In Touch”
with Dr. Charles Stanley,
celebrating 45 years
of God’s faithfulness.
Next on “In Touch,”
“Walking in Faith.”
Dr. Charles Stanley: When you
became a Christian, you entered
the school of faith,
a life of faith.
The scripture says, in Ephesians
chapter two, eight, and nine,
“For by grace are you saved
through faith; that not of
yourselves: it is a gift of God:
Not of works, lest any person
should boast.”
He says, therefore being
justified by faith, we have
peace with God.
He says we’re
sanctified by faith.
That is, we walk by faith.
We live by faith.
The Christian life is
a life of faith.
That is, it is a life in which
we have confidence in the fact
that God, who is the sovereign
of this universe, will do
exactly what He says He’ll do;
and that He’ll fulfill every
single promise He’s made.
Now how we walk, for example, we
will stumble sometimes and we
will move ahead positively.
We will study and we’ll fumble
and fall around and think, God,
why isn’t this, why isn’t this
coming out exactly right?
Why is it, I’m trusting You here
and next thing I know I’ve
disobeyed you over here.
So, let me just say right up
front, as a word of
encouragement.
It isn’t a straight line upward.
The development of a
person’s faith is up and
then we stumble at times.
And up, and then we
falter at times.
And up, and then we fail
to trust Him at times.
And that’s the way life
is in the beginning
of the Christian life.
And for many people, it seems
to be that way all the time;
but that’s not
what God intended.
He intended, listen, even though
we have those ups and downs,
that’s okay as long as we’re
still making progress
in our faith.
And one of the characters of the
scripture that best describes,
listen, the positive walk; the
times when everything is right
and trusting God, and oftentimes
those failures, is the person
of Abraham.
And he’s called the
father of faith.
So I want you to turn to
the twelfth chapter of
the book of Genesis.
And I want you to notice
how he begins this.
And what I want you to see
is he lives in a totally
pagan culture.
He doesn’t know anything in the
world about the God that you
and I know about.
And listen to what happens.
Chapter twelve, verse one, “Now
the Lord said to Abram,” as was
his first name they called him,
“‘Go forth from your country,
and from your relatives and from
your father’s house, to the land
which I will show you; And I
will make you a great nation,
I will bless you, and make your
name great; and so you shall be
a blessing; And I will bless
those who bless you, and the one
who curses you I will curse.
And in you all the families of
the earth will be blessed.'”
Because through Isaac and then
Judah, tribe of Judah, came the
Messiah, “So Abram went forth as
the Lord had spoken to him; and
Lot went with him.
Now Abram was seventy-five years
old when he departed from Haran.
Abram took Sarai his wife and
Lot his nephew, and all their
possessions which they had
accumulated, and the persons
which they had acquired in
Haran, they set out for the land
of Canaan; thus they came
to the land of Canaan.
Abram passed through the land as
far as the site of Shechem,
to the oak of Moreh.
Now the Canaanite was
there in the land.
The Lord appeared
to Abram and said,
‘To your descendants
I will give this land.’
So he built
an altar there
to the Lord who had
appeared to him.”
Now, I want you to go back
to the first verse.
Listen how many times
God said, “I will.”
Now remember what
we said faith is.
Faith is confidence that God
will do what He says He will do
and fulfill His promise.
Look what He says.
He says, “I will show you,”
the land I want you to go to.
“I will make you a great nation,
I will bless you.”
“I will bless those who bless
you, and I will curse,”
those who curse you.
“And in all the families of
the earth will be blessed.”
God spoke to Abraham out of,
in a total pagan society.
He knew nothing about Jehovah.
He knew nothing about Yahweh,
the other names for God.
He knew nothing about that God
at all, and God spoke to him.
Listen carefully.
When somebody says to you,
Has God ever spoken to you?
Well, you need to answer
that honestly.
The truth is, Yes, He has.
Because, listen, it is His will
and purpose and plan to speak to
every single one of His children
no matter where they are.
That’s why Jesus gave the Great
Commission to His disciples.
Into all the earth, and preach
the gospel to every person.
And so, God is still in
the process of speaking.
And so when you look at the life
of Abraham and how God dealt
with him, listen, it is
a walk of faith.
The moment you trusted
Jesus Christ as your Savior,
you took the first step
into a life of faith.
Now listen.
And when you did that,
God enrolled you in
the school of faith.
Because from that time on, you
and I, from the moment we were
saved, I was twelve; you may
have been twelve, ten, fifty,
whatever it might be.
From that time on you and I are
enrolled in the school of faith,
because that’s God’s
purpose for us.
His purpose is to speak to us,
guide us, lead us, show us His
way, work through us, use us
in whatever way He chooses
to see fit.
In order for that to happen, you
and I must be followers and
we must be trusting Him in
every aspect of our life.
What I want us to talk about
in this message are those
requirements; those requirements
for walking in faith
with Almighty God.
Now, the first basic essential
requirement for walking
in faith, bottom line, is I
must learn to listen to God.
If you do not know how to listen
to Him, then how do you
know where to go?
If you don’t know how to listen
to Him, you’ve never developed
that, then you’ll never know
whether God’s talking
to you or not.
And so then you just sort of
have to guess that maybe God
said this and maybe
He said that.
Listen carefully.
God is still speaking
to people individually.
Now listen carefully.
Because somebody says,
God told me, doesn’t mean
that’s necessarily true.
Because oftentimes people will
say, Well, God told me to do it,
when it’s something that’s a
total contradiction to the very
nature and attributes of God.
He speaks.
He speaks clearly.
And He speaks consistently with
what He has spoken and what
the Bible is all about.
It is the written revelation
of God and His work among men.
This is what it’s all about.
So when you come to Abraham and
God said to him, I want you
to leave your country and go
into a land that I’ll show you.
He spoke to him, and I want
you to see in this passage
of scripture how God
worked in his life.
But he began with this basic
simple principle, you must learn
to hear His voice.
You must learn to listen to Him.
You say, Well, now
how does He work?
Well, I’ll give you an example.
The most recent example,
yesterday I was reading a book
that I’ve had for fifty years.
And it’s about Christ
and how He works.
And the longer I read it, I’d
read about two-thirds of that
chapter, the longer I read it,
the longer–the more I knew
I couldn’t read long; because
God was saying something
very specific to me that
I needed to hear.
And so I kept reading along,
it’s like God said, Close the
book and get on your knees.
I knew He was saying
something very specific.
Now watch this.
He is just as willing, just as
committed to speaking to you and
giving you direction as to
myself or Abraham, anybody else.
How can God expect you to obey
Him if He doesn’t tell you
what to do?
And how can God guide you
and lead you if you’re
not listening?
Those two things are absolutely
inseparable: obedience to God
and listening to God, you can’t,
listening to God, obeying God,
you can’t separate those two.
You don’t listen,
you won’t obey.
You don’t obey,
what does it say?
You’re not listening.
If you’re going to live the life
of faith, you have to learn
to listen to him.
The second thing you must learn
is this; and that is, you must
learn to obey Him.
Now we learn to walk by faith
by trial and error.
You have to learn to listen
and you learn to obey.
And how do we learn to obey?
By disobeying, by failing,
by error.
And then, in the process of
disobeying Him, God shows us
what the consequences are so
we think twice before we
disobey Him again.
It doesn’t mean that life is
going to always be easy
and straight forward.
But He is going to make
it clear what He wants us to do.
And when we obey Him, we’re
going to be blessed because
here’s what He said.
He said, I’m going to make
you a great nation.
All the nations of the earth
are going to be blessed.
I’m going to give you this land
and I’ll show you what
this land is.
And so what happens?
When he obeyed, God blessed him.
But there’s a third lesson
we must learn.
We must learn to
depend upon Him.
If I’ve really trusted Him,
I’m going to listen.
If I really trust Him,
I’m going to obey Him.
Let me talk about
obedience for a moment.
I want you to look at this.
Watch, look this way.
I ask you this question.
When you think about how Jesus
spoke to His disciples, how many
times did He tell them
to obey Him?
How many?
Right, He never
said that to them.
You would think surely
Jesus said, You must obey me.
He never said that.
He is so wise, listen, you know
what He tells them?
Trust Me.
Have faith in God.
Trust Me, trust Me, trust Me,
trust Me.
You know why He didn’t talk
about obedience?
Because He knew that if they
obeyed Him, that if they trusted
Him, they would obey Him.
And He could say obey, obey,
obey all day long, but the
bottom line is trust and
obedience go together.
And so His emphasis to them
was always, “Trust Me.”
Trust the Father.
Have faith in God.
When you pray, believe.
It was always trust.
And so, when we don’t trust Him
we don’t depend upon Him.
We want to make things
work to suit us.
And so when you look to see how,
Abraham responded to all that,
and God made the
promises He made.
Now remember, He said,
I’ll show you where to go.
He had no compass,
no iPhone, no GPS.
He didn’t have anything; in
other words, he didn’t even have
a paper map.
All he had was the voice of God,
the direction of God.
And how many times God
must have said, I want you
to go thus and so.
Or take this route
and take that route.
And God was guiding him and
leading him, and you know,
listen, the reason God didn’t
give him any further
instructions because he
had to depend upon Him.
And sometimes we want God to
give us a lot of money for this
or that or the other.
You know one of the reasons God
isn’t going to give some folks
in fact most people
a lot of money?
Because they don’t
depend on Him anymore.
When somebody says, What do
you mean depending upon God?
Simply that.
Oftentimes a person who has
little, and they just get
a little bit more, they
think they did it.
You know what?
If God took His hand off your
life, you wouldn’t even have
enough clothes to wear.
It is the grace of God that you
have, that you can breathe
two times in a row,
that you can work.
That’s all the grace and
goodness and love,
we’re all dependent upon Him.
Tell me anything that is
absolute in your life
apart from God.
Nothing.
Are you going to get
home this afternoon?
Not necessarily.
And so you say, Well, you mean
to tell me that I’m to have this
sense that I’m dependent
upon Him at all times?
Absolutely.
Because, listen, that is
the position of safety.
Lord, I’m trusting You;
I’m depending upon You.
What you’re acknowledging,
you’re acknowledging your
dependence upon Him and your
trust in Him, that He’s going
to take care of you,
provide for you.
When you get so well off,
whether it’s financially,
emotionally or whatever it
might be, that you don’t feel
like that you need to depend
upon Him, you are heading
in the wrong direction.
And I can tell you
this for sure.
This whole Bible bears
witness to this.
You’re headed for some
painful consequences.
You forget God, you’re headed
into great trouble,
painful suffering, and trouble.
Now, so, but we must not only
learn to um, trust Him and
listen to Him and follow Him,
whatever He says.
We must also learn
something else.
We must learn to wait upon God.
If I’m going to walk the walk
of faith, I must learn
to wait on Him.
And He says one of the most
wonderful promises in Isaiah
sixty-four, for what
He says, watch this.
God acts in behalf of
those who wait for Him.
So what happens?
You’re trusting God, you’re
walking the walk of faith
and God leads you
to do something.
Watch this.
You don’t ever have to think
about the fact that God is
asking you or telling you to do
something, and He’s turning it
over to you to do it.
That’s not the way He operates.
He says, God acts, goes to work,
in behalf of those who
wait for Him.
If God tells you to do
something that says,
This is the direction.
Mm-mm-mm, don’t move yet,
trust Me.
Don’t take things in your
own hands, trust Me.
Wait upon Me.
God acts in my behalf.
Watch this.
If you want somebody acting in
your behalf, whether it’s your
health or your finances or
whatever it might be, you want
somebody who knows
all the facts.
You know, you want somebody who
has all the power, all the
wisdom to make it work.
There’s only person–one person
who has all of that.
That’s Almighty God.
And He says, I’m willing
to act in your behalf.
I’m willing to go to work
to get you a job.
I’m willing to go to work
to show you how to do this.
I’m willing to go to work to
help you get a house to live in.
He says, I will act in behalf
of those who wait for me.
And the only way you’re
going to wait is trust Him.
Because oftentimes we are ready
to move ahead and see this
opportunity and think,
This is it!
The only times in my life I’ve
ever moved ahead to get it done
my way on my time’s been
absolutely wrong every
single time.
Because, listen, He wants us
to learn to depend upon Him,
to trust Him, and
to wait for Him.
You see, because
here, watch this.
Here’s what’s happening.
When you wait upon His
direction, you are acknowledging
His Lordship in your life.
If I should say to you, Do you
believe that Jesus Christ is
the Lord of your life?
You’d say, Yes.
Well, let’s see if that’s true.
When He challenges you to wait
upon something that you really
want to do, is He really
Lord if you step ahead?
You’re playing God.
If you wait for Him, then you’re
acknowledging that He’s the Lord
of your life and what you’re
doing, it’s an act of worship.
I acknowledge You as
the Lord of my life.
I’m going to wait,
whatever You say.
And this is why people get
married too early in life
or they marry
the wrong person.
They think that’s the last one
available and all the kind of
things that people think.
And what happens?
They up and do something
when God says, Wait.
I can think of some times, and
we don’t have time for me
to give you much
illustrations about that.
I can think of how many times in
my life has God said, Mm-mm-mm,
don’t do that, wait.
And I can tell you this, and
I won’t give you any personal
illustrations because they’re so
good, you’ll be hard for you to
believe them, I can
tell you that.
I can think of times
when He said, Wait.
And the result was
I got so blessed.
I’m still being blessed today
for waiting more than over
ten years ago.
Every day I’m blessed.
Because He said, Mm, mm, mm,
trust Me.
Don’t do that.
And the, God’ll do the
same thing in your life.
Because what you’re doing, you
are acknowledging the Lordship
of Jesus Christ when you
don’t budge till He
tells you to budge.
It’s just a matter of
following the principles.
You learn to listen to Him.
You learn to obey Him.
And you learn to
depend upon Him.
And you learn to wait on Him.
Those four simple principles,
God will bless anybody,
anywhere, who’s willing to
follow those simple principles.
And so when it comes to waiting,
how well did Abraham do?
Not too well; because he made
one of his biggest mistakes.
And so, let’s look at it for a
moment because, and this is one
reason I love these passages,
because they’re so real.
You remember what God said in
this sixteenth chapter,
“Now Sarai, Abram’s wife had
borne him no children, and she
had an Egyptian maid
whose name was Hagar.
So Sarai said to Abram, ‘Now
behold, the Lord has prevented
me from bearing children.'”
And remember, in
those days it was
a horrible disgrace for a
woman not to be able to bear her
husband a child, “So Sarai said
to Abram, ‘Now behold, the Lord
has prevented me
from bearing children.
Please go in to my maid;
perhaps I will obtain children
through her.’
And Abram listened to
the voice of Sarai.”
Big time mistake.
What did God tell him?
He said–He says, I’m going
to do this through you.
And He had a way of doing it.
He was going to give him a son
because He said to him, he said,
Now Lord, he said, what about me
having a son and the only person
who’s going to inherit all this
is my assistant, this man who’s
worked for me all these years.
God said, No.
So what did he do?
He listened to the voice
of Sarai and what happened?
You know what happened.
Hagar, Ishmael.
Abraham should have said, Sorry,
we’re going to wait on God
and see what He does.
But he didn’t do that.
Now he knew what he should do;
but he listened to Sarai.
Watch this carefully.
Be careful who you listen to.
And when they say, whatever
they’re saying to you,
ask yourself this question, Does
this suggestion match what God
is saying to me in my life?
And if it doesn’t match,
don’t do it.
Listen to this.
God acts in behalf of those
who wait for Him, not those
who get ahead of Him.
What I want you to see is
there are consequences
to disobeying God.
And disobedience is a
result of not trusting Him.
He was unwilling to wait for
God’s timing, though God
had told him what He
was going to do.
So, if you don’t wait upon the
Lord, it’s because you’re not
listening and you’re willing
to be disobedient to Him,
and there are consequences.
Every single time
there are consequences.
One last thing.
Because we’re all going to mess
up at times, and we’re all going
to fail, the next principle
is simply this:
We, listen, it’s on the board.
We must learn to acknowledge our
faith failures, repent of it,
listen, repent of it
and profit from it.
We should acknowledge it,
repent of it and profit from it.
You say, Well, is
that what he did?
Let me tell you why I know
that’s what he did.
Because all through these years
now he’s had his ups and downs
and faith, but
he’s been growing
and he’s an
awesome man of faith.
Twenty-second chapter
of Genesis, turn there
for a moment.
Scripture says, “it came about
after these things, that God
tested Abraham, and
said to him, ‘Abraham!’
And he said, ‘Here I am.’
He said, ‘Take now your son,
your only son, whom you love,
Isaac, go to the land of Moriah,
and offer him there as a burnt
offering on one of the mountains
of which I will tell you.’
So Abraham rose up
early in the morning,
saddled his donkey,
took two of his young
men with him, Isaac his son;
split wood for the burnt
offering, rose and went to the
place of which God had told him.
On the third day Abraham raised
his eyes and saw the place
from a distance.
Abraham said to his young men,
‘Stay here with the donkey,
and I and the lad will go over
there; and we will worship
and we will return.'”
You say, Well, that
doesn’t say we will return
in the Hebrew, we will worship
and the tense is we
not only will worship
but we will return.
Now here is the ultimate
test of his faith.
Where had he come from back
there struggling with what God
was telling him to do and he was
making his mistakes,
but he was growing.
And now God said, Here’s
what I want you to do.
I want you to take this son,
your only son, he was probably
just a lad, the
one that you love.
So He put that in there.
And I want you to offer him
as a sacrifice.
In other words, I want you to
kill this boy as an act of
obedience to Me.
And the Bible doesn’t say that
Abraham, though there may have
been some of this.
Bible doesn’t say he wrestled
all night trying to decide
whether he was going
to do it or not.
Why was he so willing to do it?
Because his faith had reached
the peak in his life, he was
willing to obey God even at the
cost of the most priceless thing
he could imagine.
Watch this.
It not only would be
the death of his son.
What about all those promises
that God had made, about all
the nations of the earth
are going to be blessed.
He knew it was not
through Ishmael.
How could that happen, if God
wanted him to kill his son?
But he trusted Him.
And he knew that if the dagger
that got close to his son’s
heart and God stopped him; if he
had killed him, God would have
raised him from the dead.
That’s why he was so obedient.
Now God didn’t tell him to do
that so God would find out
whether he would or not.
He did it because He wanted
Abraham to find out how
obedient are you.
God knew.
Are you willing to trust Me when
everything you love the most
in life, you’re willing
to give it up?
Life at its best is a life of
faith, there’s no substitute.
And learning to listen to God
and to obey Him; learning to
depend upon Him day by day for
whatever the needs in life
may be; learning to wait
for His timing.
And then when we falter and
fail, we ask Him to forgive us
and we keep moving on and
we keep trusting Him.
That’s life at its
very, very best.
And it’s a life you can have
once you trust Jesus Christ
as your Savior.
It’s the best life.
There’s no way to lose
trusting God no matter what
you’re facing in life.
And it is my prayer for you,
you’ll be wise enough to listen
and to obey.
Trust Him; watch Him
work in your life.
Amen?
Father, how grateful we are that
You’re patient; that You’re
quickly willing to forgive,
because You love us and
because You want
the best for us.
And because You know in our
heart we really want to do
what’s right.
We do want to trust You.
We want to grow in our faith to
the point that we depend upon
You for everything.
We want to be the persons that
you want us to be and we know
the principles, they’re all
there beautifully demonstrated
in the lives of the characters
of the Old Testament and
the New Testament.
And I pray today in the name
of the Son of God, Jesus,
that every person who hears this
message will recognize it is
the simple truth of the Bible.
It is the simple truth
of the Word of God.
It’s the ways God
works among humanity.
And no matter where we come
from, the principles are
the same.
The consequences are there,
both good and bad.
And I pray for those, Father
who’ve never trusted Jesus
as their Savior.
Help them to understand
there is only one God.
His name is Jehovah.
There is only one Savior.
His name is Jesus the Christ.
There is only one way and that
is the way of salvation by faith
in Jesus Christ who went to the
cross and laid down His life;
shed His blood in order that we
might be saved; forgiven of our
sin; justified, declared
righteous; sanctified,
set apart; and glorified that is
forever and ever the gift of
eternal life indwells us.
That is my prayer, Father.
I believe that You’re answering
it; and that You will answer it
over and over and over again.
And, Father, those who have not
been trusting You, would put
a stake down; put it in the
Bible; build that altar.
That from this point on I want
to listen to God and I want
to obey Him.
I want to depend upon Him.
I want to wait upon Him.
I want to be the person
God wants me to be.
That’s my prayer, Father.
In Jesus’s name, amen.