Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Friday, August 8th. Today’s episode helps you cultivate a close friendship with the Lord and live each day walking with God.
SPEAKER 01 :
If you could take a long walk with someone of your choice, ask them anything you’d like to ask them, and share your heart with them, and just open your heart to that person and tell them anything you wanted to tell them, who would you choose? Would it be somebody who is very close to you? Would it be someone that you have admired at a distance? Maybe somebody in the field of music or maybe science or the arts or maybe an education or maybe your vocation. Maybe someone who’s helped you a great deal spiritually. Who would it be? Well, what about God? What about taking a walk with him and tell him anything you want to tell him? Ask him anything you want to ask him. And you may be surprised of how very clearly he may answer your questions. What better person to take a walk with than God? Well, what I want to talk about in this message is just that, walking with God. And I want you to turn, if you will, to a passage that’s familiar to most of us, and that is Genesis chapter 6. And I would simply ask in the very beginning, if somebody should ask you today, are you a believer who is walking with God, what would you say? Well, more than likely you’d say, well, I’m saved, so yes, I am. But it takes more than that, and what I want to talk about is what is involved in really and truly walking with God. Beginning in verse 5, “…then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of his thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth and was grieved in his heart.” And the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and the birds of the sky, for I’m sorry that I have made them. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. These are the records of the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time. Noah walked with God. Now, let’s talk about something right up front so you won’t be misled. Somebody says, well, no, wait a minute. Talking about walking with God, isn’t the emphasis of the New Testament God walking with us? Did not Jesus… make a big emphasis to his disciples when he said, I’m leaving you, but I’m not going to leave you as orphans. I’ll come to you. The Holy Spirit will be in you, with you, and upon you. Did he not say over and over again that he would be with us? He says, I’ll never leave you nor forsake you, and I’ll go with you to the ends of the earth. All those promises about Jesus being with us, that’s true. And all that’s very important now thinking that we always understand that he’s with us because he’s living on the inside of us. But I want you to think about something now. Is it not true that most of us, if we’re just real honest, most of us really think, in fact, of God going with us? And, Lord, here’s what I’ve got to do today. Lord, I want you to be with me. I want you to help me. Most of our thinking is self-thinking, self-centered. God, I want you to be with me. I want you to go with me, and I want you to help me. The real emphasis in our thinking as we get up in the morning is where’s the Lord leading me today? He wants us to walk with him. Instead of being so self-centered and I said, I’m going, you know, see, God, I need you to help me and go with me. That is the emphasis of the New Testament. We turn the thing around. Did Jesus say to his disciples, where do y’all want to go? I’m going to follow you all. He said, follow me. They were walking with Jesus. The Bible talks about them walking with him. Our thought patterns need to change. Well, Noah is a good example of a man who followed God and not only followed him, but walked with him. And listen to what he says in this ninth verse. These are the records of the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time. Noah walked with God. Now, I want to give you about five things I want you to jot down because I want to talk about what is involved in walking with God. When you and I walk with God, we must walk by faith. That is the only way to walk with God. Now, how did Noah learn to walk with God? Not just watching his own parents. But this man learned to walk with God and that is to do what God told him to do and to follow the Lord’s leadership. Now, listen carefully. In the simple, mundane, uneventful, uninspiring, normal, sort of boring kind of days when nothing was going on. You see, people say, well, now, you know, I’m willing to walk with God. What does God want me to do? He wants you to get up tomorrow morning, go to work and do a good job and come home and eat supper and help your wife or whatever. And he wants you to be what you ought to be. You see, walking with God doesn’t mean that I have to have some huge response or some tremendous responsibility in life. We learn to walk with God. We learn to be ready for the big issues in life when we learn to walk with God when nothing really important is going on in our thinking as far as some big event in life. And people who are just waiting around for God to give them some big task in life and then they’re going to start walking with God, you’ll never walk. He takes us in the simple mundane things, the ordinary of life. You see, what we’re really made out of is what we do in the ordinary times when there’s nothing big to motivate us, nothing big to inspire us, nothing big to shove us on. Noah had walked with God. He had learned to walk by faith. So when the big task came along, God said, this is what it’s going to be like. Sure, he had lots of questions, probably had some doubts, and I’m sure he had to wrestle through, and I want to be sure that I’m hearing from God. And when he settled that issue, he settled that issue once and for all, and he began to walk with that in mind, that he was going to build an ark. Walking with God is not always easy and requires faith in all of us. As we said before, sometimes when we walk with him, he will lead us where we feel very inadequate to go. He will lead us sometimes where we feel very fearful to go. He will lead us oftentimes in what looks like to us is very dark, but to Him it’s always light. Sometimes He leads us in the valley. Sometimes He leads us in the mountaintop. Sometimes He leads us to suffering. Sometimes He leads us to great joy, hilarious joy, wonderful prosperity, great blessings. Walking with God doesn’t always mean we walk in the valley. You walk with God sometimes, you walk in the highest point of the mountain with great joy and happiness and peace and serenity and contentment in your life. Walking with the Lord doesn’t mean always trials and tribulations and heartaches. Enough of us have enough of them that if we’re not careful, we’ll think that’s the only way he leads. That’s not the only way he walks. And so it is always a challenge to walk with him. So what we have to ask is this, where is my faith? What is the measure of my faith today in my life? That is, if I’m walking with God, I’ve got to walk by faith. And if I’m going to walk with Him, here’s what that means. I have to yield to Him. You see, if my mindset is He’s with me, then what I’m saying is, God, as I do what I want to do, you adjust to me. Friend, God is not in the process of adjusting to my plans. His idea is I walk with him and I adjust to his plans. If I’m going to walk with someone, if I’m going to walk with them, I have to keep pace with them. I have to yield to them. I have to follow them. And so I have to depend upon them for direction. When you and I are walking with God, our focus has to be on Him. What we’re doing is we’re yielding to Him. We’re surrendering to Him. We’re walking with Him. It’s His plan. It’s His project. It is His sense of direction. It’s not mine. We’re not getting Him in on what we’re up to. We have decided we’re going to be in on what God is up to today. We’re going to walk with Him. We’re going to follow Him wherever that leads us. And that requires faith. And here is a man who understood what it meant to walk by faith. So if we’re going to walk with God, first of all, what’s the first requirement? Faith. We walk by faith. Secondly, to walk with God also involves, listen, it means to walk fearlessly in the face of difficulty. If you walk with God, you’ll have to walk fearlessly in the face of difficulty. Now think about this. Noah collided. Listen, he had a head-on collision with his society. God says they were so depraved. They were absolutely so sinful and wicked. He says violence. Violence was the best word that described the day in which he lived. Imagine what he had to put up with. The jeering, the mockery when they said to him, well, who told you to do that, God? God, who is this God? Show me your God. Why would you do something so stupid? Why do you want to spend your time? Why do you want to have your family out there working on this thing, climbing up on this thing? Why don’t you put your sons to work doing something else? And so Noah, walking with God, realized that he had to learn to walk, what? Fearlessly in his day, courageously and boldly. Why? What did he have to deal with? All the ridicule, the misunderstanding, probably first of all, even of his family. But he’d learned something, and what he learned was the secret. And that is, if you walk with God, you’ll have to keep your eyes on God. You’d have to keep your focus on him. And one of my favorite pastors, and probably one of yours also, and I’m sure that God must have told Noah this in a different way. He probably didn’t say it in these same words. But if you’ll turn to Isaiah 41, and you recall in this 41st chapter of Isaiah, if you’ve never underlined this one, mark it in red. Put a date down by it. Ask God to show you what it means for you. Listen to what he says in Isaiah chapter 41, verse 10. God must have said something like this to Noah in his day. He said, verse 10, do not fear for I am with you. Do not anxiously look about you for I am your God. I will strengthen you. Surely I will help you. Surely I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. Behold, all those who are angered at you will be shamed and dishonored. Those who contend with you will be as nothing and will perish. You’ll seek those who quarrel with you but will not find them. And those who war with you will be as nothing and nonexistent. I am the Lord your God who upholds your right hand, who says to you, do not fear, I will help you. I don’t know how he said it to Noah, but he must have said that to him many times. Noah understood what it meant to face difficulty and hardship and misunderstanding and criticism and ridicule and all the rest. But what happened? God sustained him all the way until he finished the work that God called him to do. If a man or woman is walking with God, first of all, they walk by what? Secondly, they’ll walk what? Fearlessly. And thirdly, they’ll walk faithfully. You say, well, now what do you mean by faithfully? I simply mean this, that a person who is faithful is a person who can be trusted with performing the duty God called them to perform. A trustworthy steward, he says, it is required of us that we be faithful. That is as stewards. And that is as believers, we’re to be faithful to our Lord. When you and I learn to walk with God, we’ll learn to listen to God. We’ll learn to hear the voice of God. And once you and I know that we’ve learned to listen to God, it will not make any difference what anybody says if you know you’ve heard God. But you check that out by saying, what does the Word of God say? Because He never says anything to us personally that is a contradiction to the Word, as you and I have it written here. And so in spite of everything, he heard everything that happened. He was faithfully carrying out what God had told him to do. Now, all of us know the Bible says that God is going to teach us to persevere. That is to hang in there in the difficult times of life. The difference between the men and women God uses and the men and women who get on the shelf out there somewhere are those who are willing to hang in there faithfully before God and not look at the circumstances and not listen to the negative voices and be obedient to God. And oftentimes, people are not willing to do that. And so what happens? They fail. Quitters never accomplish anything in life. You don’t quit because the goings get rough. You just hang in there to do what? And to be faithful to God? This man faced all kinds of difficulty and hardship, but he was faithful to God. The Scripture says, he, according to all that God had commanded him, that’s what he did. He did according to all that God commanded him. He was faithful. Now, it wasn’t easy. It’s not going to be easy for you and me to live the Christian life and to walk with God because God isn’t always going to lead us where it’s easy. And sometimes I say to young pastors who are coming out of seminary or still in seminary and they want to know, well, what size church are they to be looking for? I said, God’s size. What size is that? Pretty small. Why is that? Because it’s best for you. You’re better off starting out small because you have to absolutely totally depend upon God. There are a lot of people who want to get out of school and go over yonder to the biggest. There are a lot of people who want to get out of college and they want what they’ll make when they’re about 30 years later. They want it now. Faithfulness is learning to be steadfast. Walking with God when I don’t understand Him. Walking with God when I don’t even like where He’s leading me. Walking with God when I am really opposed to what He’s doing, but I’m going to hang in there anyway. Why? Because that’s what God’s called us to do. Now listen, if my mindset is that I want God to help me… God, you help me. Here’s what happens. Going gets rough. People say, well, God, I want you to help me. I want you to find me another job. I want to go to another place. I want to do this. I want to do that. But if the idea is, God, I’m walking with you today. Where are you leading me? Oh, is that where you’re leading me? Father, you and I have talked about that. You know I don’t want to go there. I know that, but we’re going anyway. God, I don’t want to go there. It’s okay. We’re going anyway. Why is God going to lead us there anyway? Because he knows what is best for us. Our heavenly father will never lead us where it’s not best. Sometimes it is in the darkness. Listen, dark does, but not to him. When you and I say, God, I don’t know what to do next. You know what he’s doing? He’s looking at the light. Some of you have walked in some real difficult places in your life. And you’ve said, you know, I’ve trusted the Lord Jesus in my life. I’ve tried to be obedient to him. Why has God got me here? Because you’re just walking with him. That’s the reason. And sometimes it’s tough. Sometimes we don’t like it. Sometimes it’s excruciatingly painful. Listen, listen to this carefully. If you forget everything else, don’t forget this. It’s not where we walk, it’s who we walk with. It’s not where we walk, it’s who we walk with. If we’re walking with God, it doesn’t make any difference where we walk. Because listen, that is the place of serenity. That is the place of security. That is the place of safety. It doesn’t make any difference how we may mire up and how bad it looks and how painful it feels. If you and I are walking with God, the only thing that matters is who we’re walking with. So if we’re going to walk with the Lord, first of all, it requires what? Secondly, we’re to walk what? And thirdly, we’re to walk what? Faithfully. And then we’re to walk fruitfully. Think about this in Noah’s life, for example. Here’s a man who was faced with all kinds of circumstances, but I want you to notice something about him. You see, if you and I walk fruitfully, there’ll be something that will not be found in our life, and that is waste. When you walk fruitfully, you don’t waste what? You don’t waste your time. You don’t waste your talents. You don’t waste your testimony. You don’t waste your treasure. You don’t even waste your trials. You and I, when we’re walking with God, what? We are making everything count because listen, we are yielded to the one we are walking with. We’re surrendered to him. We’re in on what he’s up to in this life. And he’s working his will and expressing himself through us. There is no waste when you and I are walking with God. Wastefulness is sinfulness. And when a person’s life is fruitful, it is not wasteful. And here is the man whose life counted. There’s nothing wasteful about his life. Here’s what Noah did. In obeying God, he left a testimony to the world even unto day and probably will be till Jesus comes. There it is, that old ark buried over there in the ice, God preserving it. And what does it say? The Word of God’s true. That this God that Noah served is God. And what Noah said about this is true. And what Jesus said about Noah’s day is true. He’s left us a lasting testimony. What? Of the reality of God. Of the power of God. Of the person of God working in a man’s life. How fruitful was he? Here’s how fruitful he was. Listen. While he saved a family, Noah was in the genealogical line of the Son of God. Because from Adam all the way to the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ, Noah was the man who stood between absolute doom of all of humanity and the one man, the one family, that God allowed to live, to enter that ark, to be preserved through all the flood. What did he do? He saved the whole human race. He was fruitful. One last word I want to give you, and that’s this. To walk with God requires fellowship with God. It means fellowship with Him. If I’m walking with Him, I would not do anything to bring dissension in the body of Christ. I would not do anything walking with God that would hurt. I would be obedient to God. This is what walking with God is all about, which requires fellowship. Now, what’s this fellowship all about? This fellowship is about God drawing you and me into oneness with Him. This fellowship is you and myself being on our knees before God and in His Word doing what? Finding out what God says about Himself. Finding out what God wants us to do so that we will know how to walk with Him, how to relate to Him, how to fellowship with Him. There’s some things won’t be there. Because you see, I can’t walk with God and do some things or say some things or feel some way or have attitudes. But if I’m walking with Him, I’m going to be consistent with who He is. Walking with God… You can have a oneness of mind and heart. That’s what God wants for his children because he loves us and he wants to fellowship with us and he wants us to be what he has planned for us. And walking with God means I have to give up my rights to myself. I have to lay down those things that I want to say, Father, to walk with you. Here I am. Where do you want to go? Where do you want to take me? Whatever it is, the answer is yes. I thought about something that I never even thought about asking God about. In fact, it never even crossed my mind. And I was down praying one day and this thought came to my mind. And so I just said, Lord, what is the most important thing you want me to know about you? Well, there’s a lot I have to learn yet. I know a few things about him, but there’s a lot I have to learn. Now, it just came out. Lord, what is the one thing you want me to know about you above everything else? And you know what came just that fast? How much I love you. That’s what I want you to know about me above everything else, how much I love you. Then I begin to think about that. Why would that be the most important thing? Because God knows when you and I begin to taste of his love for us, when you and I really and truly begin to experience and feel the love that God has for us, what does that do? That just draws us to him. We want to be obedient to him. We want to walk with him. We want to love him. We want to serve him. We want to be an expression of his life in this life. Walking with God is the only place for real safety. It’s the only place for real security. And it is the only place for genuine serenity, no matter where He walks you.
SPEAKER 02 :
Thank you for listening to Walking with God. 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.
