Developing an Intimate Relationship with God

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Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Tuesday, September 16th. Daily time reading and thinking about God’s Word is the training ground that develops strong faith. Stay with us and learn about the power of biblical meditation.

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The most important thing in your life and my life is our intimate, personal relationship with Jesus Christ. And the most important activity in our life is the time we spend alone with Him. Now, When you and I think about meditation, let’s think about it the way I believe God thinks about it. Meditation isn’t Bible study. Meditation is reading the scriptures, listening to God, thinking, concentrating, asking the Lord to speak to our heart, asking the Lord to apply it to our heart, being quiet, being alone is the best way, and just allowing God to grab our attention, to absorb, and to become absolutely obsessed with Him in His presence. Very important in meditation is consistency notice what he said he says you to meditate upon this word when day and night don’t turn to the right don’t turn to the left don’t deviate one bit you do exactly what i’ve told you to do through my servant moses he says because i’m going to be with you just like i was with moses all the days of your life he says i’ll never forsake you The crucial thing here is what he said to him. In this time of Joshua’s life, when it was the greatest challenge of his life, what was God’s command to him? Joshua, if you want to be a success, here’s what you do. You learn to meditate upon the word of God, my word to Moses, my servant, and you will succeed in what you do. And so last time we spent a lot of time describing what was involved in all that and meditation. But what I’d like to do this evening is talk about what you and I can expect to happen in our lives when we learn to meditate. That is to take time to be alone with God. Listening to him, talking to him, in his word, being quiet, not looking for something to give someone else, but asking the Lord, Father, I want you to search my heart. I want you to speak to me. I want to be able to absorb and to apply and to understand what I need to hear from you now. That takes time. It takes silence. It takes quietness. The three things that most of us don’t feel like we have probably experienced. any time to give God. We’re so busy hurrying here and yonder doing this and that. He said to Joshua, if you want to succeed, here’s how you do it. It’s real simple. You meditate upon the word. Now, what can you and I expect? So I want you to jot these things down. Then you can decide how important meditation could be in your life. Because when he said to him day and night, It meant whatever he was going through, it was very important that he was continually listening to the Father. So I’d just like to give you a list of things here, and I won’t do a lot of explaining because any one of these would be a sermon, and certainly all 10 of them would be a long one. So what I want you to do is to think about spending time alone with him. I’m not talking about in a Bible study group. I’m not talking about in an accountability group. I’m talking about God having you all by yourself. What can you expect to happen? Here’s the first thing that’ll happen. you will learn to develop a quiet spirit. No matter how stormy your surroundings are, no matter how difficult your situation may look, What you’ll develop as you begin to spend time listening to him, talking to him, meditating upon him, you’ll begin to develop a quiet spirit so that no matter what is happening on the inside, everything is quiet and peaceful. The second thing I want you to jot down is this. When you and I learn to meditate upon his word, the second thing that will happen, not in this order necessarily, but there will be a purifying of our heart. Because you see, you and I will become like what we dwell upon. We become what we think. That’s just the way life is. It’s not going to be any other way. You can’t focus on something you don’t want to be like continuously and become something other than that. You focus on what you want to be like. And what happens is you and I begin to focus on the Lord. In his word, what happens? God begins to surface in our heart those things that do not fit who we are as the followers of Jesus. And what happens is there is a purifying of the heart. And as we’ve said so often, as the pages of your Bible get more and more dirty, your heart becomes purer and purer. The second thing is purity of heart. The third? is that there will be a deepening of our hunger for God. And sometimes somebody will say, well, you know, I wish I loved God more. I can tell you how to do that. If you will set aside time to meditate, to be quiet. I don’t mean busy doing anything else but just you and God alone. God will create this hunger in your heart. How does that happen? Not busy, busy, busy, listening, doing, doing, doing, but doing what? Simply being quiet, focused on Him, and asking ourselves the question, how did Jesus operate? And what was he doing? Slipping out early in the morning, away from his disciples. He said to them, come apart for a while, because if you don’t come apart for a while, you just come apart, period. And that’s exactly what happens to many believers. They get all burned out. It can happen to pastors. It can happen to anybody. But if you and I spend time alone with him, not hurriedly in the morning, right before you get dressed, right before you get in your automobile, Quiet, unhurried, unrushed time because that is the most precious time. And what happens? Your hunger for God will be such nobody will ever have to ask you again to spend time alone with Him. Why? Because, listen, when you fall in love with someone, you want to be with them. And so it is with God. Number four. The fourth thing is this, and that is it will enlarge your view of God. Because if I gave you a sheet of paper tonight and said, write down everything that you know that you could prove scripturally that you know about God, I wonder how many people could fill up one side, two sides of a page. It will enlarge your view of God. And here’s what happens. You will bring to the Lord in your time of meditation some things that will be troublesome and burdensome and they look so large and overwhelming. And you know what happens? As you begin to meditate upon the Word and God begins to speak to your heart, here’s what happens. That big thing, no matter how big it looks and how large it looks, all of a sudden, you know what happens? You have to get down here and look for it because what has God done? He has absolutely brought it to almost nothing. Why? Here’s the reason.

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Why?

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When you and I learn to meditate upon Him, we begin to see the size of things from God’s viewpoint. Let me ask you, what is there in all the world that God looks at and says, wow, that’s big? Not a thing. What is it that God looks at and says, I don’t know whether I can handle that or not? Not anything. Everything is pinpoint size to God. I didn’t say pinpoint size and importance, but pinpoint size, there’s nothing God cannot handle. Number five, it sharpens our discernment. That is, when you and I begin to spend time listening and being quiet and reading and memorizing some verses, if that’s what God tells you to do in a particular passage, and here’s what’ll happen. Instead of you having to sit down and memorize a verse, He’ll bring you back oftentimes to the same passage so often, you’ll just know it. You never chose to memorize it. It becomes so familiar to you. And what will happen is you’ll flip open your Bible. I could flip open my Bible tonight in some places that I could just about tell you some places it’s going to open. Why? Because I’ve turned there so often. God, while we may read through the Bible in the whole year, you can read through the Bible in the whole year and miss God. Because he may want to get you in two or three verses and just hang you in there. Because he wants to say something that’s very important to you and your life at this particular time. And so what happens? Sharpens our discernment. We begin to think the way God thinks. We begin to see things the way God sees them. And what happens is a lot of the fluffy stuff soon passes away and we go straight to the core of it. What is God saying? So very important to be seeking his will for our life. Number six. It is a good way to learn to clarify direction for our life. Well, I could say to you, this is where you find God’s will, but it’s not necessarily true. There’s some other things involved. But if I want to discover the Lord’s will, what’s the best way for me to do that? Get on my knees in his word, being quiet and listening to him and saying, Father, I just want to know what you want, whatever you say, that’s what I’m willing to do. And there’s some things that God has to bring us through. God is not going to necessarily instantaneously say, do the following three things. What does he do? He takes us where we are. He takes us with our thinking processes. He takes us where we are spiritually. And what he does, he gently leads us. How does he lead us? He’ll take a verse of scripture here or passage there. and He’ll work these into our life. And before long, we begin to see things from a different perspective. And what happens is He will clarify a sense of direction in our life. Next thing you jot down, and that is to confirm counsel. Because all of us have people we may talk to and say, what do you think about this? Or here’s what I’m thinking. And so oftentimes we will seek counsel from others. But my friend, be sure that your counsel from others is affirmed and confirmed by Almighty God. There are lots of people who will give you counsel. Some of them will tell you what they think you want to hear. Some of them will tell you what they would do if they were in your position, your shoes, which they are not. So therefore, you have to be careful about those. And so it will either clarify my position and confirm it or being quiet and listening to him will send me a caution. That that’s not of God. This is not the right time. It’s my will, but it’s not the right time. This is not the sense of direction. This is not the way to go about this. God is willing to clarify, confirm, and send cautions in our life. He’s willing to speak so personally and intimately to us if we’ll have time. Now, one of the things I think about early in the morning and late in the evening is this. Or in those early morning hours. And if you recall, David said he looked forward to meditating in the early hours with the father. Why? Because think about this. You go to sleep and you’re unconscious. And in this unconscious mode, what’s happening? The spirit of God’s working in our subconscious. And that’s why we can wake up from a dead sleep and something is there. Why? Because it was there all the time. And the spirit of God has surfaced that and awakened us to get it. God knows where to put us in order to say to us what He wants to say. And I’m saying to you that early in those mornings when you’re just trying to be sure you get eight hours sleep, maybe God wants to wake you up in order to enlighten your heart about something in your life that you’d love to know. What I want to know is, and you have to ask yourself, are you interested enough in hearing from God? That when you awaken, don’t say, what’s wrong with me? But say, God, are you trying to say something to me? If you put a pad and a pencil by your bed, you may be absolutely amazed at what God would be willing to say to you if you’d let him. Meditation is the key to my walk with God. Next thing. And that is confidence. God will give you a sense of confidence as a result of spending time with him. Listen, let me give you this quote. I wrote this in my Bible. The man who gets his orders from heaven will never need to fear to face mortal man because he teams up with omnipotence and he will absolutely be unassailable. Where do you and I team up with omnipotence? When we get on our face before God and we humble ourselves before him and we say, Father, I want you to have your way in my life today. I want you to guide me. I want you to direct me. Whatever you say, the answer is yes, Father. What have you done? You’ve teamed up with omnipotence. You’ve teamed up with a holy God who wants to have fellowship with you and love you and guide you and strengthen you and use you and bless you. How do we do it? We choose to spend time with Him or we choose to do our own thing. And there isn’t anybody in the world as important as God. And there’s nobody I want to hear from like I want to hear from the Father. And when I think about how absolutely willing He is to personally speak to my heart, I would be foolish as you would be foolish not to listen. There’s a sense of confidence that begins to develop. About everything. Why? Because you know what your source of confidence is. It is God. Why? Because your view of him is enlarged. Your faith is growing. And you know that you’re getting counsel from him. He’s the one who’s giving guidance and direction and giving you caution and confirmation. God is at work in your life. If you want to see God work in your life, you give him time to work. when it’s not interrupted. And some of God’s greatest saints that I’ve ever read about were men who set aside time early in the morning, two or three o’clock in the morning, set their alarm clock for a period of time until they learned to get up at that time where there was absolutely no interruptions in their life. And if you’ll think of that around your house, probably about four o’clock in the morning, three o’clock, whatever it might be, there’s not a whole lot going on. How many of you get telephone calls at three o’clock in the morning? Television, nothing. You and God. The next thing I want you to jot down is this, and that is the power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God will enable you and empower you to achieve and to accomplish and to make you effective in ways that you’ve never been effective before. Why? Because here’s what’s happening. You’re growing in this intimacy. The Spirit of God, listen, the Spirit of God has taken such absolute control of your life. He has absolute availability. And somebody says, well, I want to be used of God and just sit around meditating. That’s not it. Let me ask you a question. Was Jesus used of the Father? Absolutely. He only had three years. You see, if it had been us and somebody said, well, you only have a three-year ministry, you know what we’d have done? We’d have been working day and night, 18 hours a day. We’d have been striving. We’d have got to preach the gospel. Whenever we brought it to Jesus, we can. Do you know what? I never see a single verse about Jesus hurrying up to Bethany and rushing over to Nazareth. It’s not in the Bible. You know what he did when he got in the big crowd? Oftentimes he just left everybody, hid himself away with the Father. The awesome power of the Holy Spirit in the life of men and women who are willing to spend time alone with God. A lot of things, but let me just close with this one. And that is, I don’t know of anything that will make you more sensitive to the presence of God. The sensitivity to the presence of God. Now listen, I don’t mean just sensitive to his presence when you’re by yourself with him. But here’s what happens. As you spend time alone with him, here’s what happens. You can walk in a crowd. I mean with hundreds of thousands of people. And there’s this awesome sense of the presence of God. And I can remember a few very specific instances where I was surrounded by thousands of people. And thinking in my heart as I stood there, Father, how wonderful it is to stand in the midst of thousands of people and you and I can carry on a very private conversation. Because you see, what happens is we become aware of him. Now you and I never walk out of his presence. He says, I’ll never leave you nor forsake you. He’s always there. but it’s our awareness of it. Now, I’ve given you 10 things and just briefly mentioned them quickly. Let me ask you a question. If you knew tonight that all 10 of those things would be true in your life, is it worth giving him time privately in his word on your knees or see the have? Do you think it’s worth those 10 things in your life? I can tell you my personal opinion. You can’t stack up enough money. You couldn’t stack up enough of anything of on this side because there’s not enough of anything in the whole world that I would give in exchange for those 10 things I just mentioned to you. Nothing. Because you see, that’s what life’s all about. All this other stuff is not what life’s about. Here’s what life’s about. There isn’t anything in all the world as valuable as those ten things together. That’s your relationship to God. And when that’s growing and moving, what else is there in life? That warm, intimate, personal relationship with Him, and listen, that is ever-growing, continuously, and will never cease for all eternity. Father, we love you for loving us and being willing to be so intimate and so personal, knowing our innermost being, having graced us with your salvation, and being willing to say to us, I will never leave you nor forsake you. Father, what a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful spirit you have toward us. And Father, I pray for every young person here, every college student, looking at life and trying to figure out where they’re headed, would you help them understand tonight that here’s the compass. It’s an unfailing compass that cannot be in any manner, in any form, pulled off of the right course. It’s your compass for us. Pray for those who are struggling with situations and circumstances in their life and they don’t know what to do. I pray, Father, for somebody who is unsaved this evening, that you speak to their heart. Would you help them to see what they have forfeited in exchange for sin? And to be able to have you, that there’s nothing in all the world to compare with that. I pray, Father, for all of us this evening, if there needs to be some evaluation of our priorities, and an examination of our desires and our hungers and our thirst, that you’d bring us all to the same conclusion, that if this is the gift of meditation, we choose meditation above everything else. But we ask it in Jesus’ name and for his sake. Amen.

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Thank you for listening to The Power of Biblical Meditation. If you’d like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.