The In Touch Daily Devotional. Now available in easy to read large print. Order yours today. ♪♪♪ male announcer: “In Touch,” the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. Next on “In Touch,” “Listening to God.” Dr. Stanley: It is a very comforting thought to think about the fact that God loves you and me enough to have made a plan for our life.
And He planned it before you and I ever existed because He’s known everything for all time. So that you weren’t just an accident. God had a plan for your life. Now whether you understood that or not is a different issue. But He does have a plan for every single one of us. And the very fact that He has a plan is an expression of His love for us, that He thinks enough of us that He wants the best for us.
He has a plan that He has laid out in His Word, that if we will just follow His Word, follow His plan, we’ll have life at its very best. Because His plan is always the best. His plan is not always the easiest, but it is the best. Some of His plans may lead us to places like we have to climb mountains, or walk through valleys, or whatever it might be.
But He has a plan. And I would simply ask you in the beginning of this message: Have you ever asked God to show you His plan for your life? Have you ever asked Him if you were following His will and His purpose for your life? Or did you just sort of grow up thinking, “I’ll do what comes next,” or “I’ll do what’s the most convenient to do”? If you have never asked, “God, show me Your will for my life.
What is Your plan for my life?” If you’ve never thought about it, you need to think about it now, and this is a good time in this message for you to think about it, because God has certainly done that. He’s made a plan, and the question is, if He has a plan, is He willing to guide you in that plan? And the answer is yes, because here’s what He says.
He says in Psalm 32, “I will teach you and instruct you in the way which you should go; I will guide you with My eye upon you.” So that’s what I want to talk about. The very idea that God would guide our life. But in order for Him to do that, there’s something that people oftentimes don’t think about. And that is if He’s going to be my guide, I’ve got to be willing to listen to what He says.
God has a plan for your life. And He’s continuously giving you a sense of direction. But if you’re not listening, you’re going to miss it. Because you see, it’s one thing to be guided, it’s something else to be a listener, and that’s the part that I want to talk about today, and that is the fact that our responsibility is to listen to Him.
Now if you’ll turn to Mark, the 4th chapter, look there for a moment. There are three passages here in Mark that I want you to notice because Jesus was very conscious of the fact that whenever He spoke, He wanted people to listen to Him. And so, look if you will, in this 4th chapter of Mark and beginning in verse 1: “He began to teach again by the sea.
And such a very large crowd gathered to Him that He got into a boat in the sea and sat down; and the whole crowd was by the sea on the land. And He was teaching them many things in parables, and was saying to them in His teaching,” now watch this, and this is the way He begins. “Listen to this! Behold, the sower went out to sow.
” So He begins His parable by saying, “Listen to this.” And if you look at the 23rd verse of the same chapter, He said, “If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.” And He was saying to them, take care what you listen to. It’s not only necessary to listen, but you have to be careful what you listen to. And then look, if you will, in the 7th chapter.
We stay right in Mark. Look in the 7th chapter and look, if you will, in the 14th verse of the 7th chapter, and He begins here. “After He called the crowd to Him again, He began saying to them, ‘Listen to Me, all of you, and understand.'” Because He knew that regardless of what He said, if they weren’t listening, it wasn’t gonna do them any good.
So you ask yourself the question: I wonder if God’s been speaking to me and I haven’t been listening. God’s guidance is of no value if I’m not listening. And no one else can listen for you. There may be someone who can give you a suggestion here and there and so forth, but God doesn’t speak–watch this carefully.
