Dear Lord,
Today…….I am asking all my prayer warriors to say a prayer that may help others. So many people are hurting right now. Many are struggling with finances and need jobs. Some are facing foreclosure and don’t even know how they are going to make it from week to week..

Many are lonely. . Many are heartbroken. . Many are facing sickness and health is fading. . Some are dealing with difficult family members. Many have lost HOPE.. Tonight, let us put our prayers and faith together decree and declare breakthrough over our families. Financial miracles WILL take place. Jobs WILL be found. Our Bodies WILL be made whole & sickness WILL flee. Marriages and relationships WILL be restored. Family members WILL find Jesus. Heartbreaks WILL be healed. JOY WILL be restored and HOPE WILL be found. In Jesus Name. Amen!!!!!! Keep God First…….

Start your day off, right? With the free in touch.
Devotional, subscribe today in touch with Dr Charles Stanley, reaching the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ through sound biblical teaching.
Next on in touch lessons I have learned.
Do you live by principle or by the pressures of the moment?
Do you find yourself making decisions based on immediate feelings or rather by the principles of the word of God?
Are you more influenced by your environment around you or by the Holy Spirit who’s living within you?
Could you say that you have a sense of direction, a sense of meaning, a sense of purpose in your life?
Are you just sort of responding and reacting to life as situations and circumstances arise?
The Bible is full of great principles, Godly principles by which our Lord wants us to live.
In fact, you could go from Genesis to revelation and there’s one principle after the other that God has given us because you see this is God’s instruction book for living, the wisest thing that a father can do for his Children is to teach them very early in life.
Listen to believe that this is the word of God.
And to share these principles of scripture in such a fashion that they will be guided by divine principles, those principles that make it possible for us to live life at its very best.
And I want you to turn if you will to Proverbs chapter three, which is probably the anchor chapter in the Bible for me personally, because there’s a simple passage within this that somehow I’ve always gone back to over and over and over again through these years.
He says, beginning in verse one of chapter three, my son do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments the length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you.
Do not let kindness and truth leave you, bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart.
So you’ll find favor and good repute in the sight of God and man and listen to this trust in the Lord with all your heart, do not lean on your own understanding in all your ways, acknowledge him and he will make your path straight.
Do not be wise in your own eyes, fear the Lord and turn away from evil.
It will be healing to your body and refreshment to your bones, honor the Lord from your wealth and from the first of all your produce.
So your barns will be filled with plenty and your bats will overflow with new wine.
My son do not reject the discipline of the Lord. I love his reprove for whom the Lord loves.
He reproves even as a father, the son in whom he delights what I wanna do in this passage.
And in this message primarily is to share with you some of the most important principles that God has laid upon my own life, those principles by which He has guided my life.
There are many others besides the one I want to mention.
But these are the ones that He is most impressed upon my own heart, guided me by over all these years, for which I’m very, very grateful.
And I want to begin with the very first one, the one that my grandfather taught me when I was 17 years of age.
He didn’t even realize the impact he was having upon my life.
But he laid this principle before me in a very simple fashion.
Obey God and leave all the consequences of your obedience to Him in order to be obedient to God and leave the consequences to Him.
It requires two things. Number one, it requires that you and I first of all learn how to listen to God.
If I do not know how to listen to God, then I will not know how to be obedient to God.
That’s why you cannot separate, learning to listen to Him and obeying him.
A second thing that is absolutely essential.
And that is that I trust Him one of the biggest problems we have in this whole issue is the idea of the fear of what may happen if we trust him.
That is if I do not understand what the consequences might be, if I can’t see what the consequences are, if I can’t see my way clear.
Oftentimes one of the reasons we don’t obey him is because we want Him to give us in graphic detail.
What the consequences will be if we obey Him and God is under no obligation to show me the consequences.
But I will say this, God has made himself responsible. He is obligated.
Listen to be responsible for the consequences of our obedience.
Remember that God is responsible for the consequences of our obedience.
It is my responsibility to learn how to listen to Him, my responsibility to trust Him, his responsibility to as a result of my obedience, take care of all those consequences.
Now, often times, one of the things we have to deal with is the clamor of other people, what they think we should do, how they think we should live in decisions, they think we ought to make.
And the truth is if you listen to the world and often times even if you listen to people, people who mean, well, you will not find nor hear the will of God.
Oftentimes people tell us what they think we want to hear, what they think will be easy on us or what they think we should do from their perspective when nobody knows the will and purpose of God for our life.
But almighty God. And therefore, when we say obey God and leave all the consequences to Him, we cannot learn a greater lesson in life.
It takes courage to be obedient. When you don’t know what the consequences are gonna be.
It takes faith to be obedient when you don’t have any idea what the consequences are gonna be.
And oftentimes when we try to picture and foretell in our own mind and our own thinking from a human point of view, what we think the consequences might be so often, we are absolutely totally in error because only God in His omniscience knows what the consequences will be.
So if you remember, obey God, leave all the consequences to Him.
Almighty God is totally responsible for the consequences of our obedience.
Second lesson I would mention is simply this and that is learn to trust the Lord for every single thing in life that we need.
And oftentimes it is difficult and failure that teaches us how to learn to trust Him.
God is going to send us enough difficulty and hardship in our life.
He’s going to send us enough trials and tribulations in order to teach us to trust them.
How would we ever know how to trust Him if we didn’t face circumstances and situations in which we didn’t feel helpless and hopeless and lost apart from the divine intervention of God.
You can trust him for every single need. You can trust him to protect your nervous circumstance.
And one of the scriptures, he keeps laying on my heart all through these years is no weapon formed against you shall prosper and over and over and over again.
His weapons have been tossed at me for one reason or the other over and over.
He sent me back to that passage.
You, you’re gonna believe what I’ve said rather than what you see and what you feel.
If you’ll just remember that, believe what He says, rather than what you feel or what you see.
Because if you believe what you feel, it can be very erroneous.
If you believe what you hear, it can be very erroneous.
If you believe what God says, you never, never go wrong doing what’s right.
The third lesson that I think is so very important is this and that is learning to wait upon God for his direction and his timing.
Here’s what I discovered when he says, wait, it’s probably for one of three reasons.
Number one, because I’m not ready for what he has.
It may be that what I believe is the will of God is the will of God, but the timing is not my timing.
It’s his timing. He says, no, wait. And sometimes we wait a while. We think God I’ve waited long enough.
He says, no, wait. Are you gonna believe what I said, are you gonna believe? Are you gonna believe?
What you, what you see? Are you gonna believe what you feel? When God says what?
I cannot tell you how important this is.
This is one of the most difficult lessons to learn, but it is one of the most important, don’t budge until God gives you permission to move.
One of the reasons is because we’re not ready.
A second reason because the circumstance that He is preparing for us, that circumstance isn’t ready you.
And I can’t rush God, we can’t hurry. God.
When God puts the situation circumstances together, he puts it together in his perfect timing in his perfect way.
Oftentimes when God says, no, don’t move. Why Lord just trust me, don’t move.
But God look at all these things that have taken place and time is going by, don’t move, trust me, don’t move.
A third reason is because God has something better here.
We are waiting for this and God has something absolutely better over here that you and I have never dreamed of never thought about.
And so I would say lesson number three, very important lesson, learn to wait for God’s direction and for God’s timing in your life.
The next one I would simply say is one that uh is so very important.
And often times we think well, principles and lessons that God would teach us.
How would, how could this possibly be one of them?
But it’s one of them because as I think about over the years, one of the most profitable things I ever have ever done I learned very early in life.
And so what is this principle, this principle is this, give generously to the Lord’s work. Here’s what I’ve discovered.
If I, if I hold on, if I become attached to anything in life, materially, what I’m doing is I’m holding on to something.
If I’m holding on to something, God can’t put anything in the hands that are, that are tight li Fi like this.
When I open my hands to God and say, Lord, whatever I have is yours.
You can take anything you want, you can take as much as you want.
All you gotta do is to tell me what you want. And here it is.
If I do that, you know what I know that I’m not, I’m not attached to anything.
Any time you get, get to holding on anything and money becomes a priority in your life.
Mark this down, you’re going to lose it. God is going to see to it that you lose it.
Money is not our goal. Our goal is to walk obediently before God.
But if you and I will walk obediently before God and follow His principles of giving.
Here’s what He will do. He will prosper you in ways you’ll never be able to imagine. Here’s something else.
It will protect you from greed, it will protect you from selfishness. It will protect you from becoming materialistically attached.
I’m telling you what’s part of what’s wrong with this whole nation of ours is that we’ve become a greedy nation.
Somehow. Somebody is convinced and persuaded us.
If we have enough things, enough of this and enough of that, enough of the other, we will be happy.
There is no happiness, no joy and no peace in things.
It is to be found in a relationship with Jesus Christ.
Well, I think another principle that’s so very important to me. And that is I cannot live the Christian life.
It is Christ living it through me. I can remember the first time that ever came to my mind.
I’d never heard a sermon on it. Never read a book, never saw a track, never heard anything about it.
I picked up this book by Doctor V Rayman Edmon who was then the president of the Wheaton College and he wrote this book entitled They Found The Secret.
It was simple, simple biographical sketches of the spiritual life and the spiritual journey of some great men and women of God.
I opened that book up one night, one Friday night and uh walked out to my stud in the backyard and I began to read, I began to read that first chapter about Hudson Taylor.
I didn’t read but a very few pages probably about page seven.
But the time I got there, I thought Lord, here’s somebody who feels exactly the way I feel.
Here’s somebody who’s struggling with the bird things I’m struggling with that night for the first time in my life.
The very idea that Jesus Christ came to live on the inside of me, to live through me a life I could not live because I was struggling trying to do my best.
Grew up in a legalistic kind of a church. Don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t do the other.
Tried my best to do what I should do. Didn’t do very well at it.
I was a Roman seven Christian. What I didn’t wanna do. I found myself doing what I wanted to do.
I didn’t have the strength to do failure after failure, after failure, after failure, trying and trying.
And I would plead and pray and fast and tell God what I was gonna do and I was gonna do better and better and better and I got worse and worse and worse until he finally got me to the absolute total end of myself that somehow the Christian life was not working.
And I can remember the very week that I was uh that I read this book.
I’d already come to the conclusion. God either. You’ve gotta tell me something. I don’t know.
I’ve gotta quit telling people you just trust the Lord Jesus Christ and he’ll give you peace and happiness and joy in your life because I’ve got it on Sunday come Monday.
I don’t have it something’s wrong. I remember one of the fellows in that church.
He, he come down the aisle about uh about at least twice a month. That’s no exaggeration.
Come down, rededicate his life. I got to thinking that what in the world is wrong?
He is a good friend of mine.
What in the world is wrong that he has to dedicate his rededicate his life? Every two weeks.
I thought something’s wrong. Something is either wrong with the preaching. Uh Something’s wrong with him, something’s wrong.
And then it’s like the Lord showed me, what are you preaching? You’re preaching, do good. Be good.
You can’t do good. You can’t be good. There’s something all messed up in all this.
I got up off on my knees that night when I realized John chapter 15 and verse those first few verses when Jesus said, I’m abiding in you and you’re abiding in me.
He says, as the branch abides in the vine.
He says, so I’m abiding in you and you’re abiding in me for the first time in my life.
I recognized I heard God say to me so crystal clear. I’ve never intended you to live the Christian life.
You can’t do it. You never have done it. You failed.
And, and now you’re preaching to people, they don’t know what in the world is going on because they can’t live up to it either.
I’m telling you, you can’t, I’m the only one who can live this life through you.
When I got up off that place, I was so liberated. I was so free.
I didn’t even know how to explain it.
It’s like God had dumped the whole theology in my mind and heart. I didn’t know how to explain it.
I, I couldn’t even understand what it was all about at first except I knew that what I had been trying to do.
God never intended me to do.
He intended for me to rely upon him, trust in him and allow him to live his life in and through me.
Then all of a sudden Galatians chapter two verse 20 came to my mind and it came to my heart when Paul said, I’ve been crucified with Christ.
Nevertheless, I live yet not. I he says, but it’s Christ living on the end inside of me and the life which I now live.
I live with the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
You’re talking about liberated. I dumped off all of listen, all of my attempts to live up to and please and somehow uh perform for God to accept me.
All went away in one night. It’s the most liberating lesson I’ve ever learned in life.
And it’s my and the tragedy is this, the tragedy is this, most believers will go to their grave in the bondage of trying to please God trying to perform, trying to live up to trying somehow to be good enough to get his acceptance when it is absolutely impossible.
Remember what grace is all about grace is all about the fact that God loves us in spite of who we are.
God has forgiven us when we don’t deserve it.
It is not living up to performing or trying to measure up to anything.
One of the most liberating lessons is it is Christ in us when I began to read the epistles of Paul.
After that, everywhere I turned in Christ, in Christ, in him, in whom in fact, you could, you could rack up the whole theology of the apostle Paul in these two words in Christ, because Paul understood that he understood his own failures.
And that’s why in Romans seven, he says, I couldn’t do it.
I tried and I couldn’t in Romans eight, he says, thank God that he has liberated me in the person of Jesus Christ.
Romans eight is a great chapter of victory. Romans seven is a great chapter of defeat.
Most of us live in defeat until somehow we learn that it is Christ in us and not we ourselves.
Well, when I think about all these principles and think about what God has done in my own heart, I think about one of the most reassuring ones of all is the fact that God loves us, unconditionally, listen carefully.
The reason God loves you and me unconditionally has nothing to do with what we are.
Who we are, how we act. It has to do with His nature.
It is the very character and nature of God to love with all the fullness and all the potential that the divine love has to offer.
It has nothing to do with us. It has to do with Him.
You say He’s the one who gets the glory and the credit and the praise it is God loving us in spite of us and loving us through and loving us.
Not because of anything within us, but simply because He’s the God. He is.
It took me years and years and years to ever come to the conclusion.
Yes, I can confess, I can declare to the world. God loves me unconditionally no matter what.
When I think about people, for example, who cannot believe in eternal security, who struggle with it and the millions who do, they just can’t believe that that that once they’re saved.
But the grace of God, they say, well, you know, if you believe that, then that’s license for sin.
My friend, listen, once you understand that God loves you unconditionally, you don’t look for license for sin.
You’re not looking for freedom for sin.
What you wanna do is you wanna be obedient to God because you’re so grateful for that kind of love.
When you trust Him as your personal savior, he seals you. The Bible says under the day of redemption.
He says, you’re a child of God nothing you can ever do can listen, can alter the fact that Jesus Christ died for your sin.
Can ever alter the fact that He loves you absolutely unconditionally.
You could never be lost after God has saved you because He says He sealed you with the Holy Spirit.
He’s living on the inside of you.
You’d have to take the spirit of God to hell with you to die and be lost.
When I think about people who live in the bondage of fear every day, you’re going to heaven.
I’m not sure why not. Well, have you trusted Jesus as your savior? Well, I tried.
Well, did you do it? Yes, I did. Well, uh, did he save you? Well, I think he did.
Well, you save, I think I am. No. Are you saved? Well, I think so. You know what they’re doing?
Here’s what they’re doing, looking at their behavior, looking at their conduct, looking at their past Judd, listen, judging themselves the way they would judge someone else when God loves us.
Absolutely and conditionally unconditionally and has saved us forever.
Well, the next principle when you notice is this and that is that God is in absolute control of every circumstance of life.
I don’t know of a more comforting thought than that. That God is absolutely in total control.
He says no weapon formed against you will prosper not any. He says why?
Because He’s in control, what appears to be oftentimes something that is against us or something that uh that would destroy us in some fashion.
God knows exactly what is happening.
You and I listen, we live under the of his divine listen, omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence.
He is in absolute control of every single facet of our life.
If I didn’t believe that I would quit preaching the word of God because it would mean that we are now victims and the world can do this to us and the world can do that.
And just anything can happen within, where is faith?
Where is this Jehovah God who is absolute and he is absolute and faithful, listen infinite in power.
If he is all the Bible says, he is, he is absolutely sovereign.
Therefore, he’s in total control of every single thing that happens.
People who don’t believe that they’ll tell you what you ought to do.
They want you to make this decision, that decision, that decision.
The problem is they’re not going to trust God.
They don’t know the God that you know, they don’t understand that He’s sovereign in control.
Listen, if God is in sovereign control of your life, who am I to tell you how to live your life?
Who am I to tell you what to do next?
If God is in control of your life, if you’re listening to Him, if you ask me, I’d say, well, here’s what the word of God says that you have to make up your own mind.
Does this fit the principles of God? Is, is this, is this a sovereign God at work in your life?
Doing something very good. How often I have seen in my own life and the lives of others things that were so painful, things that were so difficult with the listen was the very substance that God was using to build and strengthen and edify and listen, make strong and solid and established and undergird and overshadow that person’s life.
Listen, don’t turn away from difficulty, hardship. What does he say in Proverbs three?
He says, he says, do not reject the discipline of the Lord. Why?
Because oftentimes it is that discipline which may come because of something we’ve done or because something someone else has done or just because God has something in mind, he says, don’t turn away from it.
God is loving us and what is he going to do?
He says, he’s gonna turn all of that into something absolutely beautiful.
It’s easy for us to believe that about other people’s lives but not our own.
Next lesson is this and that is the importance of absolutely depending upon the Holy Spirit for everything.
I think one of the most profitable lessons is to realize, I don’t have to do anything in my spirit.
I don’t have to do anything in my flesh. I don’t have to do anything in my strength.
There is the indwelling supernatural power of God that in dwells every single believer, whatever He calls you to do, you can do it well and you can do it in a way that will make an impact that because that’s the way God designed you and me to live that he would live on the inside of us.
His life through the Holy Spirit, enabling us to accomplish whatever it might be.
That’s why none of us can take any credit.
You can’t take any credit if God is the one who’s doing it. And so pride is a heinous sin.
In fact, God says He hates it. He hates it because it steals Him of his glory.
He hates it because of its destructive element in the person’s life.
Because when a person ceases to depend upon God, they must depend upon themselves.
And once they do, I’ll tell you, Satan has a hook in that person’s life and they’re headed down.
Well, as I think about all these principles and how important every single one of them is.
I think about this very important principle and that’s this. What I believe is the priority of life.
And that is one of the most important lessons you’ll ever learn is this, listen, that your personal time of meditation with God should be the priority of your life.
Listen, you cannot do anything in the Christian life.
More valuable, more fruitful, more productive because it is, listen, it underlies every single one of these other principles and that is the time that you and I spend on our knees before God and listen, the time that you and I spent on our knees with the word.
Not listen, not just praying. You can pray all kinds of stuff.
You can get, listen, you can get off on all kinds of tangents praying.
But if you’re praying with the word of God, reading the scriptures, asking God to speak to your heart, God speak to my heart about this.
Show me the truth about this. What are you saying to me? Here’s what happens.
God loves us and he wants us to himself.
He wants us to spend time alone with Him, just like every man and every woman who that loves each other.
They want time alone when there’s nobody else.
There, just the two of them, they want a fellowship and have that kind of relationship.
God wants you and me alone with Him.
The most valuable time you and I can spend in any given day is time when we spend alone being quiet, listening to him, praying, crying out to him.
And oftentimes pastors will say to me, well, if you just have one thing to say to me as young pastor, what would you say?
Tell them all the same thing.
The most important thing in your life is the time you spend alone with God on your knees in the word for yourself, not looking for a sermon, but you’re looking for God to speak to your life cannot tell you how important that is.
Your dad’s gonna teach your Children how to do that before they go to bed at night.
You go to that with them and open the word of God with your Children.
Read him a pastor scripture and you can read them other books too.
But listen, don’t neglect the word of God so early in life.
They can’t even remember when they saw this book, you read a little passage, pray with them, talk to them.
Listen, they will grow up, be listen, they’ll grow up with a faith that is strong early in life.
Because what you did is you fed them on the word of God. You instructed them in the things.
What you’re saying by using this book is, listen, this book is important. This message is important.
This is the word of the living God.
The gospel of Jesus Christ can penetrate the most heart and heart, transform that life and change their eternal destiny.
If there is one thing that I have learned over these years, it is this, this is the most precious thing on the face of this earth.
This is the revelation of Almighty God.
And the Apostle Paul said, I’m not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, but he says, I’ve learned that it’s the power of God and the salvation to everyone who believes.
And as I think about so often, a simple message, you can speak to several 100 people or seven tho or several 1000 or several million people.
You know what they, it’s amazing. They all here, they all hear what God is saying to them.
Those who are listening and God can take, listen my voice or someone else’s voice, put it in some other language.
Let somebody else say it doesn’t make any difference. It is the awesome power of the living word of God.
It can transfer form of life. It can absolutely transform a person’s eternal destiny.
You and I have the most precious message the world has ever known will ever know.
And here’s what Isaiah said about it. He says the grass withers and the flower fades.
But the word of our God stands for ever. This is God’s instruction book and my friend.
If you want life at its best, I just laid out some principles to you that I know that work.
I’ve seen them work in other people’s life. I know they’re working in my life.
Every single one of them comes from this book. You ask God to show you the principles for your life.
He’ll add some to those. He may not give you the same ones. They’re all the truth.
If you want life at its best, you go to the best book, you go to the instruction book, you go the revelation of God.
This is God’s mind put in human print in order for you and me to understand who he is.
And to be able to come to him through his son, Jesus Christ.
If you’ve never trusted Jesus Christ as your savior, this is the way you do it.
You accept the testimony of the word of God, which says that Jesus Christ is God’s only begotten son.
He sent him into this world to down the cross placed upon him, all of your sin.
So that your entire sin debt, past, present and future he took with him to the cross.
When he died on the cross, he paid your sin debt and pull the way that you’re saved is this.
You ask the Lord Jesus Christ to forgive you of your sins.
You accept his death, his full payment for your sin.
You tell him that you’re receiving him as your personal savior.
And the moment you do that by faith, you become the child of the living God and grew up with the Holy Spirit, sealed the day of redemption.
And then listen, you have the wonderful privilege of joining all of us in the greatest adventure of life.
And that’s living the Christian life by allowing Jesus to live that wonderful life through you.
Moment by moment, day by day, I can tell you my friend, this is the only life that really counts.
This is the only life that really works.
This is the only light that listen, not promises but provides the joy, the peace, the happiness and contentment in good times, bad times in pleasure and in pain.
Our God never changes. Yeah.
So wherever you are, I want to encourage you to whisper a simple prayer, asking Him to forgive you and telling him that you’re trusting Him as your personal savior today.
And my friend, one thing, but certain you ask him, he is ready to save you, ready to change your life.