How God Gets Our Attention - Part 1

Dr. Charles Stanley: One of the key ways, and I believe one of the simplest ways that God uses to get your attention and mine to listen to Him, is to get us restless. You're going about your vocation, your church life, your home life, your everyday life, and there's this restlessness that begins to brew within your own spirit. You can't put your finger on it. You don't know exactly what's going on, but there's a restlessness in your heart. When that restlessness comes, my friend, the wise thing to do is to stop and give the Lord a little time to say, "Lord, are You trying to get my attention about something? Are You trying to say something to me?"
Guest (Male): Most believers know that God guides us, but do you expect Him to give you direction? And do you know how to recognize His voice? Welcome to In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. Today, we continue our Listening to God series with a reminder that God often has to retune our spiritual ears so we notice Him speaking to our hearts. Stay with us now for How God Gets Our Attention. Let's listen in for Dr. Stanley's message.
Dr. Charles Stanley: When you're talking with someone and you're talking to them about something very important about their life that relates to them, you expect them to give you their undivided attention. Whenever God speaks to you and me, He always speaks to us about something extremely important. It always relates to us, and God deserves our undivided attention. When you and I are walking in the Spirit, we are walking with our spiritual antennas alert to God and we can hear what He's saying. And the normal Christian life is to live alert to and listening to the voice of God in whichever form of fashion He may choose to speak to us. We said there were nine different ways that God spoke to people in the Old and New Testament. He speaks to people today primarily in one of four ways. He speaks through His Word, by His Holy Spirit to our spirit, through someone else, or through the circumstances in our life. We said that His objective is that you and I might comprehend the truth, that we might be conformed to the truth, and we might communicate that truth to others. What I want to talk about today is this: how does God get our attention when He wants to speak to us? The natural, normal way should be that all God has to do is simply speak in one of those four ways to us, and we will hear Him because our spiritual antennas are available to listen and to hear God. And if you've been a Christian long enough, you know that when you're walking in the Spirit, you can be about your business or about your family, whatever it might be, and God says something to you, you pick up on it right now and know exactly what to do. But since we don't always live that kind of life, God uses one of several ways of getting our attention. I want to list these ways that God gets our attention, and I want to say to you fathers and mothers, listen to me. If you will take notes and teach them to your children, for goodness sake, pass on the truths to your children. You will teach them and so ground them, you can eliminate a whole lot of things that are unnecessary if they know the truth very early in life. So I want to encourage you to get a pencil and piece of paper. I'm going to give you ten of them, ten ways that God gets our attention, so you don't have time to do anything but listen real quickly. The first one is this: a restless spirit. In Esther, for example, in the sixth chapter, here's a beautiful example of what I'm talking about. The day of the morning this event happened or the night, one of the most important decisions ever made for the nation of Israel was going to be made. On this particular night, King Ahasuerus could not sleep, and the sixth chapter of Esther says that during the night he couldn't sleep, so he gave an order to bring the book of the records, the chronicles, and they were read before the king. When they read them, they read of an incident that had happened sometime before where a man by the name of Mordecai, Esther's uncle, had saved the king's life by reporting that he'd overheard a conversation of two men who were going to kill the king. So now the next day, Esther, the king, and Haman, who hated Mordecai, were going to have a banquet together. And Haman had already tricked the king into making a petition sent out all among the people that said this: the king's provinces were sent this inscription: to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate all the Jews, both young and old, women and children, in one day. And so as a result of that, Esther, who had now become favorable to the king, and Haman were going to meet. The next day, Haman was going to be able to execute the command given by the king. That night, God gave him a restless spirit. He read in the book this man Mordecai, whom Haman wanted to destroy and all the Jews with him, Mordecai had saved his life. Giving him a restless spirit, getting the king's attention, getting him into the chronicles, saved the whole nation of Israel, put Haman on the gallows which he had made and prepared for Mordecai. One of the key ways, and I believe one of the simplest ways that God uses to get your attention and mine to listen to Him, is to get us restless. You're going about your vocation, your church life, your home life, your everyday life, and there's this restlessness that begins to brew within your own spirit. You can't put your finger on it. You don't know why it's there. You can't identify it. You don't know exactly what's going on, but there's a restlessness in your heart. When that restlessness comes, my friend, the wise thing to do is to stop and give the Lord a little time to say, "Lord, are You trying to get my attention about something? Are You trying to say something to me?" I can look back and recall, look back and read in my diary, that every single time God has moved me from one pastor to the other, for several months I would become very restless. No given reason, but just get me to seeking the Lord to see what He was saying, so when the time came, I would know that God was in the process of saying something. So friend, when you get restless, don't run to someone else. Just stop and ask, "Lord, are You trying to get my attention? Are You trying to say something to me that at this point in my activities I have not been able to hear You?" A restless spirit awakened the king, King Ahasuerus, and saved the whole nation of Israel, as he says, from annihilation. The second way, or a second way that God uses to get our attention, is speaking to us a word spoken through someone else. For example, if you'll turn to First Samuel and you'll recall that young Samuel as a child was given to the hand of Eli, who was the priest. And as he raised him up to be a servant of God—because you'll remember that his mother promised him to the Lord—raised him up to be a servant of God, that one night the Lord spoke to him. He said, "Samuel." And so Samuel thought that Eli the priest was calling him, and you'll recall that he went to see Eli and he said, "Did you call me?" and he said, "No." And so after a couple of times, Eli said to him, "Now the next time you hear this voice, Samuel, here's what you are to say. You are to say, 'Speak, Lord, for Thy servant is listening.'" God used Eli to direct young Samuel to understand that God the Father was trying to get his attention. Being young as he was and he did not know the Lord as Eli knew Him, the way that God got Samuel's attention was through a word of encouragement, a word of direction through Eli. I can remember one occasion when I was in the process of making a decision. One of my friends in this fellowship came to me one day. He said, "God told me this morning in prayer to tell you"—he called me early in the morning—"to tell you to spend tomorrow in fasting and prayer before you make that decision." Well, first of all, he didn't even know I was making a decision. He says, "God awakened me this morning and told me to call you and tell you to fast and pray." The next morning, that's exactly what I did. I got up and fasted and prayed that day. Before the day was out, the Lord had given me very clear direction that it was absolutely totally opposite from where I was headed. God used him to speak to my heart to say, "God's trying to get your attention before you make that decision. You seek the mind of God in a fresh, new way through fasting and praying." Friend, listen to me. That's why you and I must learn to listen with an open heart to the voice of God as He speaks through other people. Sometimes, God will get your attention through a word of caution through someone else. If you're proud and egotistical and you can't take any direction from anybody else, you need to read the book of Proverbs because he says over and over and over again, a man or woman who cannot take criticism or guidance is bound to fail. A person who's wise enough to take criticism and admonitions from someone else, from someone who's wise, is sure to succeed. One of the ways that God gets our attention is through a word given to us by someone else, when that person may not even know the slightest indication of what's happening in our life. God has the power to know what is going on within us. He has the power to place upon someone else a burden to say a word to us even when they don't have the slightest idea of what they're talking about. So He may say it through a word, through someone else. A third way that God speaks to our life—and everybody would rather choose this one, some of them are not quite as pleasant as this one—is found in Romans chapter two and verse four. And one of the ways that God gets our attention is through blessing us in a most unusual way. Here Paul is talking about how God brings people to repentance. And you see, it isn't always with some great word of judgment, but listen if you will in verse four: "Do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that the kindness or the goodness of God is for the purpose of leading you to repentance?" Sometimes one of the ways that God chooses to get our attention is to bless us unusually. It may be a spiritual blessing. It may be financial. It may be something in your home. It may be something in your vocation. But God, it just seems He heaps the blessing upon you. Now, the reason God can't use that method for everybody is because some people, who already are heading in their own way, independent—a little independent streak within them, not dependent upon God—if God heaped more blessing on them, they'd get more independent and more self-centered and more self-seeking and they would totally ignore God. That kind of person, God has to use some other method. But one of the ways He gets our attention is to bless us. And you see, what we have to remember is this: that in every single one of these methods by which God gets our attention, behind every single one of them, no exception, is that God is expressing love. God sees your future. God sees your present. He sees the plan that He's laid for you. He sees your plan. He sees them on a collision course. When God sees you on a collision course with His plan, out of an expression of His love, He's going to do something to get your attention, to stop you, to get you to looking to Him to think and to believe and to listen in order to save you from ultimate ruin. Is that not exactly what you would do to your children? If you saw your son or your daughter heading in the wrong direction—I mean, they were moving fast in that direction—wouldn't you do something as an act of love to get their attention, to stop them, to listen to you, to give them a word of wisdom to protect them from ruining and wrecking their life? That is exactly what God does. So as we go through these, remember this: that every single one of them is the result of a loving God who knows the future as well as the present and knows your past perfectly, knows the future perfectly, and He only seeks to get our attention in order to protect us and bless us to the maximum when we're willing to listen and to yield to His direction for our life. So I certainly hope that that is God's favorite way of getting your sense of attention, and that is by blessing you. A fourth one is not so pleasant, and that is found in Second Samuel chapter 12. And you'll recall at this given time that David, having become the king, having conquered nation after nation—rather young to be the king of Israel—fell into an immoral situation with Bathsheba. She's born a child now. Nathan's pointed it out to him that he has sinned against God. But God gets his attention in a way here that He gets oftentimes. He gets our attention, and that is—this fourth one is—unanswered prayer. David indeed prayed that God would heal this child. But listen to what he says in verse 15. "So Nathan went to his house. Then the Lord struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David so that he was very sick." Now listen. One of the reasons God does not answer prayer—and there are many reasons God doesn't answer a prayer. One of the reasons is sin. Another reason is that God oftentimes, listen to me now, He doesn't answer our prayer to get our attention. Listen. The prayer we are praying may be the will of God. It may be exactly what God wants to do. But because God's trying to get our attention in another area of our life that we're not even aware of, maybe something going on that we're not even conscious of, or maybe a sense of direction and we don't even realize we're heading in the wrong direction, in order to get our attention and to stop us, God closes the doors of heaven, refuses to answer our prayer, to force us to reevaluate our life—why He's not doing it, reexamine ourselves. And in the process of a reexamination, God may say, "Here's the reason I haven't answered your prayer, because over here, here's an area you need to deal with and you've not dealt with it. When you deal with that, what you're praying is My will, but I cannot answer this prayer until you have dealt with that in your life." So what does He do? He refuses to answer our prayer and He gets our attention. Now, my friend, listen. How you and I respond to God's attention-getting is very, very, very important. Because if I say, "Well, must not have been God's will," listen to me. There are times when God will not answer your prayer when it is His will to give you exactly what you're asking, but if He knows you're not ready for it, can't handle it, something's wrong over here, knows that if He answers your prayer, you're going to get off base, further off base, God's not going to answer it. Now listen. You can manipulate and finagle, and Satan will help you get—listen, Satan will help you get an answer to everything you want that is outside the will of God because he knows that the pleasure today means trouble for tomorrow. So one of the reasons and one of the ways that God gets our attention is He just closes the door. So don't chalk it off just because the prayer answer does not come; it's not the will of God. It may not be, and He'll show you that if it's not. But it may be that He's simply trying to get your attention in some other area of your life. All right. Numbers chapter 14 gives us another reason, and that is disappointment. In the 14th chapter of Numbers, you'll recall the nation of Israel now. They have come out of Egyptian bondage, down to Sinai, up to the Promised Land. And now all they have to do is to take it. And you'll recall that they sent 12 spies into the Promised Land. They came back and they had a report. The committee reported ten to two against possessing what God had already given to them and promised to provide to them in battle. So the people decided they weren't going to do what God says. And so the 26th verse of this passage says, "And the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying..." And the next verses all the way down to 30, through verse 35, is God's judgment upon the nation of Israel because of their unbelief and unwillingness to possess what God had provided for them. So then God through Moses tells the people what's going to happen. Well, when they heard it, verse 40 says in the morning, however, they rose up early, went to the ridge of the hill country, saying, "Here we are. We've indeed sinned, but we will go up now to the place which the Lord has promised." He says, "Oh no you won't." He says, "Don't go because if you go, you're going to be defeated. It's too late. It's too late." Listen. You're talking about getting their attention. Listen. These folks had come out of Egyptian bondage. They had on their backs the stripes of the taskmasters of Egypt. They could still smell the same old food they'd been eating for years and years, 400 years. Their families and their ancestors had been in Egyptian bondage. And here they were, standing on the threshold of a land flowing with milk and honey which God had promised them, and in unbelief, they believed the report of ten versus the two who believed in God. And God said, "No, it's all over." And the tremendous sense of letdown and mourning and crying and weeping and disappointment. But it was too late. But God got their attention, and He was able to show them that their unbelief would have cost every single adult, every single adult would die wandering around in the same old wilderness that was most like Egypt. Sometimes the greatest disappointments in life, listen, are God's attention-getters. Friend, God knows exactly what it takes to get our attention, and disappointment is a very effective way of causing us to back off and cry out, "My God, my God, what are you saying?" Listen. The wise response in each one of these is always the same. The wise response is an immediate saying, "Lord, what are You saying to me? In this given situation, whatever it is, Lord, what are You saying to me?" And friend, listen, God, if He's trying to get your attention, He will use that. He will use that as a loving time to refresh and renew and redirect if necessary or to give you the answer to what He's trying to get your attention about. Then, for example, what about those unusual circumstances that happen? Look if you will in Exodus chapter three. And this is the example and the story of Moses. Moses was a strong-willed man, and he had to be broken. Listen to how God got his attention. Verse one, chapter three of Exodus. Now Moses was pasturing the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. He led the flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. Now watch this. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush, and he looked and behold, the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed. Now listen. He'd seen lots of fires, lots of bushes burning, but he had never seen a bush that burned and burned and burned but was not burned up, not consumed. Now watch this. So Moses said, "I'm going to turn aside now and see this marvelous sight why the bush is not burned up." When the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, "Moses, Moses." And he said, "Here I am." Out of a situation unlike anything he'd ever experienced before, God got his attention. He had never seen anything like that. Something so unusual, he had to stop and ask. Then God spoke to him. What you and I must do is to learn to live and listen, look for the presence of God in every circumstance of life. Now listen to me. You hear of people who are looking for demons behind every bush. Forget it. A child of God walking in the Spirit is to look for the handiwork, the footprint, and the handprint of Almighty God in every single situation of life. If God is sovereign and you and I are His kept children, there's no such thing as an accident in the life of the child of God.
Guest (Male): Today in Dr. Stanley's message, we learned six ways God removes our focus from ourselves and places it onto Him. If you're confused about what to do next, turn your attention to the Lord and trust Him to guide you. To listen again, you can look for the link to "Today on Radio" at intouch.org. Open our online bookstore and there you'll find a copy of today's complete message, "How God Gets Our Attention," or you can order the entire Listening to God teaching set. Our web address again is intouch.org, or you can call or text us. The number is very simply 1-800-INTOUCH. You can also write to us at In Touch, Post Office Box 7900, Atlanta, Georgia 30357. Or call or text 1-800-INTOUCH. God gives direction to those who are committed to following Him. Today's Moment with Charles Stanley is just ahead.
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Dr. Charles Stanley: It is the very character of God that He would give us very clear guidance in every decision we make. Because think about this: He created us as His own. He created us to fulfill a purpose for our lives and for His will and purpose in the whole world. And so therefore, if He has a will for your life, He has something He wants you to do or a decision He wants you to make, since it is His will that you and I obey Him and please Him, then it is His responsibility to show us what to do. So it is the very character of God. He would not say, "Report for duty," and then not tell you anything. He would not say, "I have a will for your life, a plan for your life, here's what I want to do, I'm not going to tell you what it is, you just guess." There's no way under heaven that you and I would ever be able to figure out and guess God's plan and will for our life, whether it is in a major decision or a minor decision. So it is the character of God, as illustrated in the scripture and His promise after promise, that Almighty God is ready to give us godly guidance when you and I are wise enough to seek that guidance and to believe in our heart that He certainly will because He desires to do it. It's His nature, His character to do it.
Guest (Male): Learn more about the hope you can have through faith in Jesus Christ at intouch.org. Have you been encouraged by what you heard today? Take some time to let us know. Ahead on In Touch, we'll hear more about the ways that God gets our attention as our series Listening to God continues. I hope you'll join us again for In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. This program is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia, and remains on this station through the grace of God and your faithful prayers and gifts.