In this eye-opening episode of the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley, we delve into the profound differences between wishful thinking and true faith. Explore the teachings from James chapter 1 on how to transform a simple wish list into an act of trust by specifically asking for God’s help in your life. Learn how the New Testament church practiced the power of specific prayer requests and how it can drastically change your spiritual journey.
Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Monday, October 13th. Have you ever wondered how ordinary people could express extraordinary faith? Today’s podcast continues the series on prayer, explaining a winning combination in time of need.
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When you bring your needs to the Lord, do you bring Him a wish list? Are you really and truly expressing faith in God that He’s going to hear and answer your specific request to Him? There’s a difference in wishing and trusting. There’s a difference in coming to God with a wish list and just talking to him about it than expressing genuine faith in Almighty God. I want you to turn, if you will, to James chapter 1. And the title of this message is, A Winning Combination When in Need. That is, all of us have needs, and God has given us a simple combination whereby you and I can have that need met. I want us to begin reading with verse 2, but it’s verse 5 through 8 that I want us to major on primarily in this message. He says in verse 2 of James 1, “…consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing that is in your spiritual life. But if any of you lacks,” lacks what? Anything. “…if any of you lacks wisdom,” Let him ask of God who gives to all men generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith without any doubting. For the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. But let not that man expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. Now James gives us two very simple instructions in this passage of scripture that I want you to note. And the first instruction is, if you’ll look in verse five, he says, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God. What he’s really saying here, if you’ll notice in the verse before, he’s talking about needs and he says, let endurance have its perfect result that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. Then he says, but if you lack wisdom, here’s what you do. If you lack anything, Here’s what you do, no matter what it is. If there’s a need in your life, he says, this is the way to approach that need. And his first word of instruction is to bring your need to God in prayer. That’s what he’s saying. Notice, if any of you lacks wisdom or lacks anything, let him ask of God who gives to all men generously. Now, I believe one of the specific primary problems in a lot of people’s praying is this. They never ask specifically. They ask in generalities. Lord, would you bless me today? Would you bless my business? Bless my family? Bless my friend? Bless my church? Bless my pastor? But when it comes to asking for specific requests, many people somehow in their praying never get around to it. Now that’s why I keep urging you to have a prayer list. A prayer list says that I’m going to put down exactly what I’m asking God to do. And I’m going to put a date down by it. So that’s when I started praying, started asking. And then I’ll put a date down when God answers that prayer and draw one line through it. Just one line because you want to be able to read it to remind you of what God did. And what you’re going to put on the prayer list is not bless this, bless that, and bless the other, but specific request. Now, if I should ask you, what have you asked God for in the past week that is a specific request that you’ve made that God has definitely answered, whereby you could say, last Tuesday, here’s what I asked God to do, and yesterday, here’s what God did. In the New Testament church, they’re making specific requests. They wanted Peter to be released from prison. And in the prayers of the Apostle Paul, for example, in Colossians, look in chapter 1 of Colossians, and look at this beautiful prayer. He said, in all spiritual wisdom and understanding. He said, my request is that you may walk in a manner worthy, listen, worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work, increasing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with all might. Specific request that the Apostle Paul had for the Colossian Christians. In these two words of instruction, his first is simply this. First of all, that you and I come to him with a specific request and address that need to God. Look, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives to all men liberally. And I want to say again, sometimes our praying is sort of conversation and all of us have had the experience of beginning to pray and our mind begin to want. And the next thing we’ve stopped praying and thinking about tomorrow. That’s one good thing about a list. If you’ve got a list, it keeps your mind on what you’re talking to God about. We’re to bring these requests to the Father. And you recall, again, Jesus began his prayer by saying, Our Father, which art in heaven. The 17th chapter of John, which is really the Lord’s Prayer, he’s talking to the Father. In the Garden of Gethsemane, he’s addressing the Father. Now, that doesn’t mean that you and I cannot address Jesus Christ in our prayer, but he says, here’s the pattern. We’re to come to the Father and to make our request. Now, I want you to turn to John chapter 9, verse 31 for a moment, because your friends will say to you, oh, I pray, God answers my prayer, and they’re lost. They do not know Jesus Christ as their personal Savior, and yet they tell you how they pray and They believe God and God answers their prayer. Verse 31 of chapter 9 of the Gospel of John says, We know that God does not hear sinners. But if anyone is God-fearing and does His will, He hears him. That doesn’t mean that God will not hear the prayer of mercy and the prayer of confession and repentance of a sinner. But God is not hearing the petitions of or thanksgiving, and the request made by a person who has rejected his son Jesus Christ, who has violated his will by turning his back upon him, who’s living in rebellion toward God, no matter how sophisticated and intellectual they may be, no person has ever come to the Father except through Jesus Christ, either for salvation or for answered prayer. So when he says we’re to come to the Father, we’re to come to the Father, we certainly are, but you’ll never get to Him in your prayer unless, first of all, you have been to the cross of Jesus Christ in the confession and repentance of your sin and trusting in His death as the all-sufficient payment for your sin debt paid in full. That’s the only way we have access to the Father. So James is saying we’re to come to Him, we’re to ask specifically, and we are to address it to God. You see, that depends upon what our view of God is as to how we’re going to do that. And if my idea of God is that he’s somebody up yonder somewhere sitting on some big throne and I have lots of questions and not too sure, then I’m not going to do much praying. You see, part of our motivation for praying is knowing the ways of God. And this is why I say to you week after week the same thing. Get in the Word. Stay in the Word of God. That’s the only way you’re going to discover who God is and what He’s like. We begin to see Him as interested in, concerned about, involved in whatever is working in our life and whatever may be causing us heartache and hurt. And we need His help so desperately. Listen to what James says. He says, come to him, ask of God who gives to all men generously and without reproach and it will be given to him. Now, a lot of people have the idea that first of all, God’s too busy or, well, you know, I don’t want to bother God with that because that’s so insignificant. You see, all of that says that is our prayerlessness, whatever our reason may be, says something about our concept of who God is and what he’s like and where his interests lie and what his power is. Is this God who he says he is or does the Bible just give us some ideas about God that are not all true? But he says in this passage, we’re to come to him. A God who gives to all men generously. He’s not chinchy. He’s not tight. You don’t have to worry about exhausting God’s resources. You don’t have to wonder about whether God is going to say you’re asking for too much. Do you realize what you may have missed in life because you’ve been too busy doing your own thing rather than asking God? He says, I’m willing to give. I’m willing, I’m willing, he says, I’m willing to give generously. It should be our lifestyle. We should come to him expecting, anticipating God to be joyful over answering our prayer. He says, ask if you have any need. And so what does he do? As you and I begin to pray, He turns our weakness to strength and our poverty to the prosperity He wants us to have. And from our ignorance, He turns it into wisdom and our impotence into His omnipotence. That is, God begins to change our life. And one of the things that you and I forget is this. While we’re in the process of beseeching God, asking Him for the things we know we need, and the things we desire, God is also adding to that like interest, as if it were. He’s adding to that those blessings, those things that we don’t know to ask for, answering needs that we’re not even sometimes aware of. If we were, we would ask. God always heaps more upon us than we oftentimes are aware of because He’s answering our specific prayers But he’s always adding the extra touch. He’s not stingy. He’s not tight. God is a generous God. That’s what James is saying. He says, if you have a need, it’s real simple. Here’s what you do. You bring it to God. You make a specific request. You realize that God is a generous God who is willing to give you what you ask. And he says, remember this, he does it without rebuff. That is, God isn’t going to say when you come to him, are you back again? No. Are you bringing me the same request? Haven’t I told you about that? Every single one of us has brought the same thing to God many times. Now, we shouldn’t bring sin to Him but one time and confess it and repent of it and get rid of it unless we commit it again. But there’s nothing wrong with bringing the same request to God because the whole message we preached on Matthew chapter 7, when he says, “…ask and it shall be given you, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you.” It is perseverance that God honors when we persevere making a petition in His will. So it’s right to bring it back. But here’s the reason I want to go back again to the Word of God. When you and I begin to search the Scriptures and we begin to see the way God operates in people’s lives, it will affect our request. It won’t simply be, God, you know my need, would you give me this? But what you will find yourself doing is intertwining either the words of Scripture or the events in the life of someone in the Bible whose need is similar to yours. You’ll find yourself intertwining that in your request before God. And what’s happening all the time is you are building faith in the process. Your request is becoming very clear. You’re becoming more confident in making that request. God loves for his children to come to him making requests because that request is an acknowledgement that I am dependent upon him. I need you, God. I’m depending upon you. I’m trusting you to meet this need in my life. God always welcomes that kind of request. But notice the second thing he says. First of all, he says, we are to make our requests to God. Secondly, here is a warning. Verse 6, he says, Now I wonder how many requests we make of God that we make in faith. Now listen, get this. Are we making the request in faith anticipating God specifically answering our prayer or are we simply just telling God about something we’re feeling? And much of what we think is an expression of faith is simply just telling God about it, but not backed up by anticipation, expectation that God is going to answer our prayer based, listen, not on how well I pray, how long I pray, how intense my prayers are, but based on what? Based on the very character of God, the faithfulness of God, the power of God to do what He said. That’s why you cannot separate the Word of God and praying and praying with faith. You cannot separate those two. The winning combination is that you and I come to God making our request specifically, listen, trusting and anticipating God to do what He said because what? Our anticipation is not based on our prayers but based on our faith in God and ultimately based on our understanding and knowledge of who God is. Now, one of our problems is our ignorance and then we wonder well now God why don’t you do this and so and what do these things happen why don’t you answer my prayer I see you answering his prayer I see you answering her prayer why don’t you answer my prayer Lord I’m just as good as they are that’s not the right kind of conversation to carry on with God by the way that won’t get you anything what you have to ask is Lord what are you trying to say to me that is why are my prayers not being answered and one of the primary reasons is they’re not specific and secondly You’re not looking for, anticipating, expecting God to specifically answer what you requested of Him. And so sometimes that faith gets muddled. We think that just talking to Him and walking away with no feeling. You see, the truth is, if I have a request to make to God, if I have a need, if I have a desire, I have a strong need in my life, when I make that request, there’s going to be feeling with it. I’m not going to say, now, Lord, you know, today I have this particular need, and I know you know all about it in Jesus’ name. I could go on verbose with God and tell him a lot of things, but the question is, do I have any feeling about that? Is there something inside of me that’s reaching out to God? You see, I’m not to have faith in my prayers, I’m to have faith in God. He is the one who answers prayer. If you put faith in your prayers, you can forget that. It is faith in God, not have faith in how long I pray, how intensely I pray. If I use the right words, none of that has anything to do with it. The object of our faith is God, not our petition. And when we bring our petition to Him, you can tell whether your prayer is petitioned, sent to God, sent it by… What are you thinking about the most? The God to whom you’re speaking or the petition that you’re bringing to Him. It is bringing that need to a God of holiness, a God of power, a God of love, a God of understanding. And when we come to Him with expectation and when our prayers become fruitful and our faith begins to pay off, what happens is you begin to realize that your praying is God-centered. That your language is more about God and about Christ and about the work of the Holy Spirit and His power and His love and His goodness and His mercy, not this particular need. Though the need is there, you’re bringing the need, that’s not the focus of your attention. God is the focus of your attention and you’re bringing the need to Him. Our prayers become self-centered. Lord, you know about me. He certainly does. He knows about us. He knows our needs. He knows our desires. But if the prayer is to be a prayer of faith, it’s to be God-centered. Back to the Word. If my prayers are going to be God-centered, I’ve got to know who He is. The only way for me to know who He is is to get in the book and find out how does God operate in the lives of people. Then my faith begins to skyrocket. Then I begin to understand what he means when he talks about coming to him, bringing these petitions to him, and expecting God to answer them. Now, let me tell you what we do sometimes. Sometimes we are deceived even in our praying. Not to be critical, but we get deceived. We come to God… We make a request, not sure that God is going to answer our prayer. And so what do we do? We set about to manipulate the circumstances to be sure we get it done. Sometimes our manipulation frustrates the will and plan of God. There’s some things that you and I are going to bring to God and His response is going to be step one for you. And so we go and do certain things. Sometimes we’re going to bring requests to God. We’re not going to know what to do. We’re absolutely helpless before Him. Sometimes we come to Him. We know that God’s will has been very clear to us. We know that. And nothing happens. Does that mean that God isn’t working just because He’s quiet? Does it mean He’s still because He’s silent? God is working. But you see, the better we understand Him, His delays won’t bother us. The more we understand the ways of God, God’s silence won’t confuse us. As you begin to search the scripture and you see how God operated in the past, it is the catalyst. It’s the motivation. It’s the something that stirs within us that God’s done it before. He’ll do it again. If that’s the way he worked in his life, will he work in my life the same? And the answer so many times is yes, he will. He’s just waiting to do it if we’ll allow him to do it. But if you look at the need and say, Lord, and you begin to spend most of your time talking about the need, here’s what will happen. Faith goes down. Doubt rises. When you begin to major on who God is in your praying, what happens? Faith rises. Doubt descends.
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Thank you for listening to A Winning Combination in Time of Need. For more inspirational messages like this one, visit our online 24-7 station. And if you’d like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
