Transcription
You are never wasting your time when you're waiting on God. In fact, it is the most important thing you do in life because God did not put you on this planet to mark things off your to-do list. That's not why you're alive. The most important thing you can do in your life is spend time alone with God every day.
Now, how do I know God's vision? How do I get a vision for my life? How do I get God's dream for my life? Well, fortunately, there's an entire book in the Bible about that very question. It's a little tiny book. If you open your Bible to the middle, you come to the book of Psalms, you're in the Old Testament, you go a little bit further over here, you come to a book called Habach, not Tobacco, Habach. Habach is a three-chapter book. And you better be glad that one's in the Bible because it tells you how to get God's dream for your life.
Now, I always like to study some of these little minor prophets in the Bible so that when you get to heaven, you're not going to be embarrassed. Now, the background of this book, Habachok, is the country of Israel is in chaos for a number of reasons. Number one, they are in economic recession. Number two, people are out of work and many of them are starving. Number three, they're in constant conflict. And number four, they're being attacked by terrorists. Does this sound vaguely familiar?
And in chapter 1, Habach asks six very profound questions. They're all the questions you've asked. Why is this happening, Lord? Why is this happening to me, Lord? Are you going to do anything about this, God? How long is this going to take? Why do I have to put up with this? Have you ever asked these questions? Yes, you have. And in Habach chapter 1, he asks these six most common questions. Why is this happening? And how long is it going to take? How long and why do I have to put up with this?
And then in chapter two, he stops. He says, "Okay, I've said my peace. Now I'm going to shut up and I'm going to listen and I'm going to wait for your vision." And in chapter two of Habach, God says, "Okay, if you will do these six things that I tell you to do, I'm going to help you see why what is happening in your life is happening. I'm going to help you get your vision for the future corrected. I'm going to help you get God's dream for your life."
Now, are you interested in Habachok? Oh, yeah. You're going to be glad you came to church today 'cause we're going to look at how to get God's vision for your life. Now, I want you to think about some area of your life that you need some advice in. Maybe it's your career. What am I supposed to do next? Maybe it's schooling. Maybe it's getting married. Maybe it's kids. Uh, I don't know. Maybe it's you're moving toward retirement. Whatever area of stage of life you're in, you need a vision, not television, God's vision for the next stage of your life.
In chapter 2, I want to read this passage and it says this after Habach could add these asked these questions. He said, "I will climb up into my watchtower." Now, that's a Hebrew expression means I'm just going to sit down and shut up. I'm going to I'm going to get quiet. I'm going to have a quiet time. I will climb up into my watchtower and I will wait to see what the Lord will say to me after I've asked all these questions and how he will answer my question. Then the Lord said to me, "Write my answer in, you know, write it down what I tell you in large clear letters so that a runner can read it and tell it to everybody else." God says, "I'm not only going to give you the vision for your life, Habach. I'm going to give you my dream for the future for all your people." So, this is going to be good.
Now, God has a dream for your life. And this is what God says to you today. God says, "But these things that I plan, this vision, this dream for your life, these things I plan for you won't happen right away. It's not going to be immediate, this vision. He says, 'Slowly, steadily, surely the time approaches when the vision will be fulfilled in your life. If it seems slow, wait patiently for it will surely take place. It will not be delayed.'"
Now, the first step to getting God's dream for your life instead of the American dream, but God's dream for your life, the first step is desire. I must want to do God's will. I must desire it. It's a choice. I choose to do God's will. And the first thing Habach does is he says, "I will go up into my watchtower." He says, "I'm going to make a choice. I'm going to spend some time with God because I've got to know his will for my life. I've got to know his dream for my life. I've got to know God's vision for my life."
Now, the point is this. You're not going to hear God unless you really, really, really want it. I'm not talking about, "Oh, it's an option." I'm not saying, "Oh, it would be nice." It's got to be a necessity. God doesn't tell his dream for your life if you want to debate it. God doesn't want to tell his vision for your life if you want to discuss it. God doesn't tell you what he put you on earth to do just so you can choose to say, "Let me think about it. It would be nice to know what God put me here on earth to know." No, it's got to be a necessity, God. I've got to know. I've got to know why I'm here on earth. I've got to know what you want me to do in the next step of my life. I've got to know. I've got to hear your voice. I've got to have your vision.
Now, the classic example of this is King David, who wrote the book of Psalms. Here's a couple of them. They're on your outline. He says, "My God, I want to do what you want." He says, "I I don't want to just know it. I want to do it." And in the next verse, he says, "What I want most of all and at all times is to honor your ways." Notice David is passionate. He says, "What I want most of all, this is not just little option. I've got to know your wisdom. I've got to know your vision. I've got to know your goal for my life." And when you read the book of Psalms, David used very passionate words. He says, "I long for it. I crave it. I hunger it. I thirst after it. I'm I'm like a deer panting for water. God, I've got to know what I'm here for. I've got to know your dream. You got to know your vision. It's not optional. You got to tell me or I'm going to die." And when you get that desperate, you're going to hear from God.
You see, most people talk to God, but they never hear from God. And for them, prayer is a monologue. You can't have a relationship with a monologue. How about if I, you know, uh, I I married my wife and I only talked to her and she never talked to me. That's not a relationship. You've got to have a conversation. And you, just as much as important as you talking to God in prayer is you listening to God and letting God talk to you. And how does that happen? First, I've got to want it more than anything else. This is the first step. Deuteronomy chapter 4 on your outline says there, "If you search for God with all your heart and all your soul," in other words, passionately, you will find him. Guaranteed you will find him.
Step two, after the want, the desire, I want it with all my heart. Step two is withdraw. And withdraw means I got to get alone with God. God isn't going to speak to you if there's a bunch of noise going on in your life. You've got to get alone and you've got to get quiet. And we call this a quiet time. And what I'm going to teach you on how to do this, how to hear God today, is not something you're going to do once in your life and that's it. You're going to do it every day of your life for the rest of your life. Because this is where you get the power. If you're not having a daily time to hear God, you're you're the toaster that's not plugged in. You're the vacuum cleaner that's not plugged in. You're the blender that's not plugged in. You have no power in your life. And that's why you're tired at the end of every day 'cause you're going on your own energy. You weren't plugged into the power and you can't hear God and feel his vision in your life. You've got to withdraw and get alone with God.
Now, getting alone in a quiet place is pretty difficult today. I don't know if you realize how much noise there is in your life. You've always got the radio on in the car or you've got earbuds in your ear from your Walkman or your iPad or iPod or whatever. You go to a doctor's office, you go into a grocery store, you go on an airplane, shoot, you go on an elevator, they've got music. There's very little time in your life that's absolutely quiet. You're hearing traffic. You're hearing things. And so, you have to carve out solitude by yourself.
Now, if you've got kids at home, that could be difficult. You may have to lock yourself in the bathroom. You may have to go into the garage. You may have to go out into the front uh yard, sit in the car. When my kids were growing up, I actually made a little prayer garden down on my slope where I'd go down and I'd sit down there under a tree. And even today, I have a chair out under an oak tree on my slope in the backyard that I climb over the fence and I sit on my slope. And where I do that, I I it's my time where nobody's around and I can talk to God out loud and nobody's going to hear me.
Now, if you got preschoolers, you really have a problem. But let me give you some hope. Susanna Wesley, one of the great women of history, had two sons, one named John Wesley and one named Charles, who changed culture and changed history. Not just Christian history, but all Western culture. John Wesley founded the Methodist church, spread Christianity across the western part of America through the Methodist revival preachers. John, his brother Charles, wrote over 6,000 hymns. Susanna Wesley had 18 children. How do you find time alone when you have 18 children? Well, I read her biography and one of the things she did is every afternoon she would go and she would sit in her favorite rocker and she would take her apron and throw it over her head. And for the next hour, mom with the apron over her head means no child bothers mom or you die. And Wesley said that it was the prayers of his mom that shaped his life. You can find time alone if you are that desperate. If you'll make time alone.
So you remove all the distractions. You take the phone off the hook when you're having a quiet time. You don't answer your email. You don't answer the cell phone. Jesus gives some very specific advice. Luke chapter 5, it says Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. Now circle the word often. That means he made it a habit. This needs to be a habit of your life every day. He would withdraw uh draw to a lonely place. You may go to a park. You may you may sit in your favorite chair. I it doesn't matter. Jesus says it like this in Matthew 6. Find a quiet secluded place so you won't be tempted to roleplay before God. I love this in the message paraphrase. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can as you can manage and the focus will shift in this quiet time. the focus will shift from you to God and you will begin to sense his presence.
Now, let me tell you the key to getting in touch with God and to hearing God speak and hearing his vision for your life and his dream is this. Write this down. God wants to meet with me. You need to realize you're not waiting on God. He's waiting on you. God made you to have a relationship with him. He knows everything about you and he loves you. He wants you to know about him and love him. And he wants you to spend time with him on a daily basis. He wants you to schedule a date with him, to be with him every day. God is waiting.
In fact, here's what God says in the book of Jeremiah up here on the screen. Call to me. In other words, get with me. Call to me. Talk to me and I will answer you. I will tell you wonderful and marvelous things that you know nothing about. You know what that is? It's your future. You don't know zip about your future. No palm reader can tell you. No tea reader can tell you. No astrologologist can tell you. No stock broker can tell you. The truth is nobody knows the future except God. And he says, "You talk to me. I'll talk to you and I'll give you a dream and I'll tell you where I'm taking you and we'll get you along and you'll learn things you don't know any other way."
God is far more willing to talk to you than you're willing to talk to him. And the truth is he cares about every single detail of your life. Jesus said this, "Don't worry about what you'll eat. Don't worry about what you'll drink. Don't worry about what you'll wear. Your heavenly father knows you need these things." Did you know that God is concerned about every area of your life? Every detail. If you're concerned about it, he's concerned about it. You know what that means? It means you ought to talk to him about everything. If your face breaks out, if you're concerned about it, God's concerned about it. If your stomach's upset, if you're concerned about it, God's concerned about it. The Bible says God knows every hair on your head. He's got them numbered. You don't even know that. He knows how many fell out in your brush this morning. God knows more about you than you do. And he's interested because he is a loving, perfect father. And he's interested in everything. You can talk to him about everything in your life. He cares about all the details, all the decisions, all the delights, and all the disasters.
So you come to God. I desire God. I want to know your dream. I want to know your vision. And then I withdraw and I get alone with God and I talk to him about everything that that's on my heart. And then here's the third step to getting the vision. Wait. I want I withdraw and I wait. I must calm my emotions. I must calm my thoughts and my emotions if I'm going to hear from God. The reason why most people never hear God speak to them is their mind is operating at such a high RPM, they never slow down enough to let God talk to them. And hurry is the death of prayer. Hurry is the death of prayer. You got to slow down. You got to be quiet.
Once you get into a quiet spot, now you got to get a quiet mind. And you can't do that fast. You got to wait. You can't you cannot calm yourself down quickly. It's like trying to go to sleep quickly. I'm going to go to sleep in 10 seconds. 10 9 8 7 6 5. It's like I'm going to get I'm going to get calm. Here I am. I'm getting calm. Okay. I'm really really really calm. I'm really okay. Ready? Okay. I'm ready, God. I'm calm. I'm calm. No. No. It wouldn't work that way. You just got to take some deep breaths and you got to calm down.
Now, in Habach chapter 2, here's the thing he does. Says, "I will wait." In fact, in the New International Version says, "I will station myself." Circle that word station. What does it mean to station yourself? It means stay put. It means station. It means you do not move. He's like those guards out in front of Buckingham Palace and people are out there trying to get them to move and they are stationed and they're not going to look. They're not going to move. They're not going to smirk. They are stationed and they are not going to move. And that's what you need to do. You wait on God. You calm your body. I'm going to be still until I hear from you, God. I'm not moving, God, until you talk to me. The truth is, God talks to those who take the time to listen. God talked to David the most because David wanted it the most and he took the most time.
Now, how do you do that? How do you station yourself? How do you calm your mind down from all the stress and all the strain and all the things you're thinking about and all the conscience things and all? How do you calm your mind down? Okay, here's how you do it. You calm your emotions and you calm your mind by calming your body. You calm your mind by relaxing your body. Your mind always responds to your body's reactions. Would everybody agree that the way you feel physically affects your mood? Oh, yeah. Yeah. If you feel bad, you don't think good. You're not thinking happy thoughts. You know, it's hard to be a philosopher with a toothache. You all you're thinking about is is how bad you hurt. And so, your body influences your attitude. And as your body relaxes, so does your mind.
So, here's what you do in that quiet time with God. You just wait and you take some deep breaths. You breathe in through the nose, three or four breaths in, and then blow it out slowly. And you do that three or four times. And you just sit still. You don't move. You wait. And you relax your muscles and you get comfortable. The Bible says David sat before the Lord. You know, a lot of people think you have to be on your knees and hold your hands like this to pray. No, you don't. That's one appropriate way to pray in the Bible. But actually, the most common form of praying, the posture in the Bible is standing, looking up to heaven with your eyes wide open, talking out loud. Why? I actually find that's easier because I focus better when I talk out loud. The only time I close my eyes is when I'm going to sleep. If I get on my knees and close my eyes, I'm out in five minutes. Dear Lord, it it ain't if I'm on my knees, man, I'm going out quick. So, I don't pray on my knees very rarely. And I don't close my eyes. And I suggest you find a quiet place where you can keep your eyes wide open and you can talk aloud to God just like I'm talking to you right now. Hey God, here's what's going on in my life. You know, that really sucks. I don't like this. and and you just you just share what's going on and you just talk to God like and you know what you don't have to be poetic and it doesn't have to be a speech and it doesn't have to be these and those and you can actually stop. You don't even have to have complete sentences. God knows what you're thinking. You don't have to be eloquent. Say, "God, I don't know what to say right now. Help me to know what to say right now." Oh yeah. Remember that guy yesterday? I didn't like what he said. That ticked me off. and you talk to God about that and you know what I really am a little afraid of this and I don't know how to share that fear with my wife and I you and you just talk to God and if you're quiet you know when I talk to my wife we're not always talking back and forth all the time there's pauses in a conversation so you just get comfortable you might write this verse down 2 Kings 3:15 in 2 Kings 3:15 a guy named Elisha he was a prophet he has um uh uh somebody come in and play the harp while he prays and talks with God. You know what? That's a good case of instrumental music. Praise music. Kay loves to put on instrumental praise music during her quiet time. If I hear it going on in her study, I figure she's having a quiet time 'cause somehow it's that quiet music instrumental gets her in touch with God. If that works for you, great. Do it. Whatever works for you.
Now, David tells us to wait on the Lord. And all through scripture, there are many promises about waiting on God. In Isaiah, it says, "Those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength." Are you out of energy? Are you frequently wiped out and fatigued? You need to wait on the Lord. Those that wait on the Lord will renew their strength. They will mount up with wings as eagles. They will run and not be weary. They will walk and not faint. That means you're not going to poop out before you get to the goal. How do you get that kind of energy? You got to wait on God every day.
How do you do that? David says three things on the back of your outline. Write these down. First, in waiting on God, you wait quietly. Psalm 62, "I wait quietly before God, for my hope is in him." You mean I can just sit there and not be reading the Bible or praying? Yes. That's called waiting on God. You just sit there and be quiet. I wait quietly before God. My hope is in him. That allows your engines to cool down. You can't force yourself to calm down quickly. It takes time. So, you wait quietly.
Number two, wait patiently. Wait patiently. Psalm 37:7, "Be still. Don't move. Be still in the presence of the Lord and wait patiently for him to act now." So once your body is still and your mind is quiet, you start becoming more sensitive and you're going to hear God in a way you've never heard him before. Okay? You're going to hear him and you're going to be more open.
Now you say, you know, wait a minute, isn't this transcendental meditation? No, it's the exact opposite of transcendental meditation which is a middle eastern a new eastern new age eastern philosophy. Transcendental meditation says put your mind in neutral. Let your mind go blank and go um and contemplate the lint in my naval. No, that's not it at all. Okay. Uh, biblical meditation is focusing on God. Lord, I want to just feel your presence. I want to focus on you. I want to know you. I want to hear you. I want to I want to sense your presence in my life. And it takes time. But you have to calm yourself down.
Now look up here. Inner calm is the intercom to God. Inner calm is the intercom calm to God. You're not going to hear God. If you say, "God, I'm really in a hurry. If you talk to me right now, I got to go pick up the kids." God's going to go, "Hello." This is the most important thing in life. You are never wasting your time when you're waiting on God. In fact, it is the most important thing you do in life because God did not put you on this planet to mark things off your to-do list. That's not why you're alive. The most important thing you can do in your life is spend time alone with God every day. It doesn't have to be a long time, just every day where you plug in because you were made to know God. And if you get to the end of your life and you don't know God, sorry, you just blew your life. You just wasted the reason God made you because God didn't put you here just to make a bunch of things and die. Inner calm opens my inner calm to God. And the goal of prayer is to hear God's voice.
So I wait quietly. I wait patiently. And the third thing, I wait expectantly. Expectantly. This is the faith factor. I say, "God, I believe you're going to speak to me. I believe you're going to talk to me. I expect it because you've promised to do this." David says in Psalm 105, "I wait expectantly, trusting God to help, for he has promised." God has promised to talk to you if you'll take the time to listen to him. So waiting is never wasted time.
Now, here's the steps. Want. I got to desire to hear God's vision, goal, dream for my life. I got to want it. Withdraw. I get off by myself in a quiet time and quiet space. And by the way, the only way you're going to be able to do this is you're going to have to get up earlier. Now, if I told you that tomorrow morning at 4:00 a.m. the Queen of England, the President of the United States, and the Pope of the Catholic Church all wanted to meet with you privately at the Orange County Courthouse. You probably wouldn't even go to bed tonight. You'd take a bath. You'd probably take two baths. You'd go find an all-night barber or beauty salon. Go out and get a new suit, new get all dressed up, spiffed up. You get there 30 minutes early. The creator of the universe wants to meet with you tomorrow morning. You don't even have to get dressed. You can be in your PJs. You don't have to leave your home, but you do have to plan an appointment. And that means saying, "I'm going to stop doing this so I can start doing that." If you're burning the candle at both ends, you're not as bright as you think you are. So, you got to decide what's more important to me, another 30 minutes of late-night TV or time with God every morning. You just got to decide. And one day, God's going to say, "Which one did you choose?" You didn't have, "Oh, Lord, I I couldn't have meet with you this morning. I was tired. Something came up." Yeah, I saw it. It's big and white. It was called a sheet. So, you get alone with God.
And then you come to step four. Step four is watch. Watch. And what I do in watch is I let God give me a mental picture. I'm going to explain this. First, I want God, I want to know you. I want to hear from you. I want to know your dream, your vision, and then I withdraw. And then I wait and I get quiet. And I wait patiently and quietly. And I wait expectantly. And then I watch. And I let God give me a mental picture. The fourth thing that Habach does, he says here, he says, "I will look to see what he will say to me. I'm going to climb. I will." That's the desire. Climb into my watchtower. Get alone. And I will wait. That's step three. Wait to see what the Lord will say. Now, what is Look at that. Wait to see. I will look to see. What is What does he say? I will look to see what he'll say to me. Why wouldn't it be more right to say I will listen to hear what he'll say to me instead? He doesn't say I'll listen to hear what God says. He says I'll look to see what God says. Why? Because God's voice is usually visual, not verbal. He's going to give you a picture. He's going to give you an idea. He's going to give you a vision in your mind. God usually speaks by giving you an idea. It's not verbal. It's not vocal. It's visual. He puts an idea in your mind.
Now, is that weird? No, it's not weird. We do it all the time. Right now, there are pictures floating through the air. They're called television waves. And if you're tuned in, you receive the picture. Right now, NASA sends space probes to Mars and to Jupiter, and they're millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of miles away. And what are those space probes sending back? They're sending back pictures. Now, if NASA can send back pictures millions of miles away, don't you think God can send one to your mind? Duh. It's not that hard. Okay. People say, "Does God ever speak to you all the time? Has God ever spoken to you verbally through your ear? Of course not. Why? He doesn't need to. Do you talk to yourself? Yes. You do it all the time. When you talk to yourself, do you talk aloud? Well, hopefully not in front of other people. Woo! Woo! Woo! You know, when you talk to yourself, you're talking to yourself quietly. Do you have to talk through your ear for you to hear yourself? Of course not. Does God have to do that? Of course not. You're talking to yourself right now. You're going, "My stomach's gurgling. When's Rick going to get through with this?" See, I'm a mind reader. I'm a mind reader. And so, you you talk to yourself all the time. You walk in the room, you've already got a picture. What who's going to be in there? What are people going to think of me? How do I look? You talk to yourself in pictures all the time. That's why God uses pictures.
Now, we call those visions. It's not spooky. It's not crazy. You know, if I say apple, you automatically think of a picture of an apple. Just the way God wired our minds. And the Bible is filled with hundreds, thousands of examples of people getting God's dream, God's vision in their mind. people like Isaiah and Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Abas, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Naam, Peter, Paul, Mary, and not the singers, the people who are in the Bible. Okay? He he he's these are people who get vision from God. It's not a crazy weirdo thing. It's just a picture from God. God often uses a mental picture to clarify where he wants you to go in the next step.
Look at this next verse. Psalm 73. David says he had a problem. He says, "When I tried to figure it out, all I got was a splitting headache until I entered the sanctuary of God." I go, I go to church. I go to the temple. Then I saw the whole picture. The light bulb turned on, the paradigm shift. Then I saw God's perspective. And he said, "I could see it." He he said, 'I visualized what God wanted to do. Now people say, isn't this visualizing? Isn't that new age? Isn't that kind of cultic stuff? Well, it can be. The counterfeit stuff definitely is, but we're talking about the biblical kind of of visualization, which the Bible calls meditation.
Now, the very evidence proof of something real exists is when there's a counterfeit of it. The counterfeit proves that there must be a reality. For instance, have you ever seen a counterfeit $4 bill? No. Why? Because there's no such thing as a real counter a real $4 bill. Nobody's going to counterfeit something that doesn't exist. Satan cannot create anything. He Satan is not a creator. He's not God. He's a created being himself. Satan cannot create anything. He can only corrupt and pervert. God creates sex. Satan perverts sex. God creates money and wealth. Satan perverts money and wealth. God creates all of the great things in life. Satan corrupts and perverts them. He cannot create anything. All he can do is copy, corrupt, and pervert. So there are real legitimate teachers in life who teach the truth. And there are false teachers. They're fakes. They're phonies. They're they're counterfeits. There are real prophets of God in life. And there are false prophets who lead people astray. There are real visions and real dreams that come from God. So, there are false dreams and visions that come from Satan. They're phony. The reason that there are fake ones is because the real ones exist. You say, "Well, how do I know? How do I know when it's from God or Satan?" You need to go back two weeks ago if you missed that message when I talked about the seven ways you test an impression. If you missed that message, you need to go out and get it on the patio, buy the CD or watch it online or something because there's seven ways the Bible tells us to know whether that idea is from God or that idea is from Satan or that idea is from the burrito I ate last night. So everything God creates, Satan tries to misuse and pervert. But it doesn't mean you give it up. I mean, Satan perverts sex. That means everybody going to give it up? I don't think so. Satan perverts the use of money. Should everybody say, "Oh, forget money." No, I don't think so. No, you don't let him win.
Now, you you let God give you a picture in your mind. For many of you, I don't have to explain this because you are naturally visual thinkers. About half of you at least think visually. And when you read a story in the Bible, man, you can see that story in vivid technicolor. And when I say something, you can just picture it in your mind. So, it's very easy for you, but for the rest of us, it's a little harder. I am not a typical visual thinker. I don't think typically in pictures. I I tend to think actually in words. So, how do you watch in prayer if you're not a visual thinker? See, over and over, Jesus says, "Watch and pray. Watch and pray." Can you not watch with me? Because vision comes through the eyes, not through the ears. It comes through seeing in the mind's eye. That's when we sing that song, "Open the eyes of my heart, Lord." Remember that song? Open the eyes of my You're saying, Lord, help me to see with my mind what I can't see with my eyes or hear with my ears. That's what you're saying when you sing that song.
So, how do you watch in prayer if you don't normally see in pictures? Maybe you're like me. Let me give you two things. Write these down. Number one, ask God a specific question. You ask God a specific question in your quiet time. You're sitting there in your backyard. You've read the Bible for a little while. You've prayed, maybe talked to the Lord a little. Now, you're just being quiet and you're just sitting there. You are waiting before God, which means you're not saying anything. You're not reading. You're not praying. You're just waiting before God. And you can ask a question like, "Jesus, is there anything you want to say to me?" And you just wait. Is there anything I need to know that I'm not thinking about? And you just wait. You can ask God a specific question. Over 20 times we're told to ask in the Bible. Look at this verse. James 1:5. "If you want to know what God wants you to do, ask him and he will gladly tell you. For he's always ready to give a bountiful supply of wisdom to all who ask him." There's that word again, ask. But when you ask him, there's that word again. He's saying, I want you to ask. When you ask him, be sure that you really expect him to tell you. God wants you to ask him for advice. You're not bothering him. He's waiting for you to ask. He wants you to be specific. Build your faith. And he wants you to expect an answer. So ask.
Second thing, look into God's word. Write this down. Look into God's word to see what God might want to say to you from the Bible. Psalm 119:18 is a verse you should memorize. It's a good verse to just say in your quiet time. "Lord, open my eyes that I may see the wonderful truths in your word." You see, friends, every answer to every problem you have is right here in this book. And the reason you have so many problems is you don't know this book. This is a closed book. Even for many Christians, you got to read it. You got to study it. You got to memorize it. You got to meditate on it. You got to spend time in it. You got to get a modern translation that you can understand. Get some Bible helps.
Now, once you've done that, you come to step five. And this is a fun one. Step five is write it down. I want to hear God speak. I withdraw to a quiet place. I wait patiently and quietly and expectantly. I watch in prayer. And I say, "God, just give me a picture in my mind. What do you want to say to me?" And I read the Bible. I ask questions. And then I write down, I record the ideas that I receive. Now, this is the fifth thing that Habach does to get God's dream for his life. You got to write it down. In fact, the Lord even tells him commands him. He says, "The Lord gave me this answer. Write down clearly." So, some of your handwriting, you probably better use a laptop. The Lord said, "Write down clearly what I reveal to you." So, Habach does just that. In chapter, that's how we got this book, the book of Habach. In chapter one, Habach writes down what he says to God. And in chapter two, he writes down what God says back to him. And we get the book of Habach. That's how we got the book of Psalms. The book of Psalms is David's quiet time. David meditated. He thought about, he visualized the first five books of the Bible. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. They're called the Torah, the law. David meditated on the Torah and then wrote down his meditations and they're called Psalms. And in mo many of the Psalms, he just starts out with what he's feeling and then he ends up with what God says. And sometimes he's pretty ticked off. Sometimes enemies are after him. He's being criticized and unjust. He goes, "God, I hate the guts." That's in the Bible. God, I hate their guts. People say, "Well, if the why do you call this Holy Bible if that's in the Bible?" Because the Bible always tells the truth. It doesn't, you know, blitz over the negative parts of a person's life. And a lot of times, David will start out goes, "God, I don't like this. This stinks. I don't like this at all. And this is me. God, what kind of God are you? Did you know that you can get angry at God? He can handle it. When you say, "God, you're not helping me right now. I need a little bit more help." God's not going to say, "Oh, well, I've never heard that before." God can handle your anger. You know what? He loves it when you're honest with him. Why? Because in prayer is wrestling. And wrestling is a close contact sport. And as long as you're in contact with him, that's good. because he knows you're eventually going to end up in the right place. And at the end of the psalm, David, who's been complaining, saying, "God, you're not much of a God. You're not helping me right now." He's going, "Okay, I know you're going to help me, and I know I need to trust you, and I know you got a plan that's bigger than my problem right now." And so, okay, Lord, you're it. I'm wrong. You're right. Okay, let's go. And we get the Psalms. He wrote it down.
Now, if your prayer life is stuck in a rut and you tend to pray the same things over and over and over and you you even got these little cliches, "Bless the gift and the giver. Bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies and the hands that prepared to it." Wah wah wah wah wah wah. A lot of prayers are like the teacher on Charlie Brown. Wah wah wah wah wah wah. It's just like saying nothing. You just you're saying nothing. Jesus said, "They their lips are praising me, but their hearts are far from me." So, if you're always saying the same thing over and over, let me tell you what to do. Start writing out your prayers. What? Yeah, you can write them out. You mean I don't even have to say them? No. Writing them down is a prayer. God can hear it in your thought. And while you think your prayer, just write it down. Write down a sentence. Write down another sentence. Write down another sentence. You just write out your prayer. Is it okay to write out a prayer and then read it? Of course it is. When you're read writing it, you're praying. When you're reading it, you're praying. If you read it aloud, you're praying. Th this is called the spiritual habit of journaling. And all great Christians have understood this.
Now, a journal is not a diary. A diary is about the things you did. Dear diary, today Billy gave me a kiss. So boring. Nobody cares about the fact that you took the laundry in today. But what they generations from now will be interested in is what you learned, the lessons you learned, the mistakes you made, and the and how you learned from those things. and generations later would love to read that material because it's better to learn from the experience of others. So you write what I do is I write down what I say to God and then I write down what God says to me. This is the fifth thing. Write it down. God says write down what I reveal to you.
Now let me give you a couple suggestions on this. Go over to Target, buy yourself just one of those little three-ring notebooks, blank notebook, paper, whatever. or you can get a real fancy one, whatever. And there's several different things you can do. You can take a page and divide it in two columns. And on one column, you write, "This is what I said to God." And then you sit there and then this is what God said to me. And you write that down. Uh, another thing you can do is you can make two columns. Say, "Here's my prayer request." And then you leave it blank until God answers it. And then when he answers it, you write in the answer and the date. That'll build your faith. Or another one to do is just take a page and write at the top of the page yesterday and write down what did I learn yesterday about life, about love, about God, about money, sex, family, friends, and you write it down. And those lessons you you know I I know there's a CEO in this church who's been keeping a journal for over nine years. And he once told me, he said, nine years ago, he said, "I went through uh I was laid off and I went through an over a year of unemployment." And he said, "It was horrendous." And the scare and the fear and the anxiety I felt, I began taking a daily journal, writing down all of that stuff and the lessons that God taught me in that year that I was out of work. And then he said, "Recently, I got laid off again." And instead of me having to go back through and go through all those lessons and all that anxiety again, I just went back and read what I'd written nine years earlier and I didn't have to go through all that pain anymore 'cause I remembered how God had taken care of me and I could see how he had led me through that entire year. You see, some of you haven't been married 35 years. You've been men married one year and you've lived that same year 35 times because you're not learning. And if you don't write it down, you forget. And some of the things you learned as a husband 10 years ago or 5 years ago, you've already forgotten. The shortest pencil is longer than the longest memory. You got to write it down. So write, Lord, what did you teach me from lessons yesterday? What lesson did I miss? There's a lot of benefits this. It helps you keep your thoughts clear. It helps you remember what God said to you. You can go back and review it. Um, it helps you test an impression. If you think God has said something to you, you got an idea, you got a dream, you got a vision, you go and you take that to your small group, says, "Guys, let me check this out with you." Remember, that's one of the seven ways to test an impression. Test it with godly Christians. And you go to your small group and say, "Here's what I think God's saying to me. Anybody else confirm this? Anybody else think I'm on track? Did I miss it? Preserves a spiritual legacy for children, grandchildren, and on and on." The Bible says this, "Write these things down for the future so that people who are not yet born will praise the Lord." You can have influence in the next generation and the generation after that if you'll keep a spiritual journal.
Finally, number six is worship. That's the sixth W. I want it. I withdraw. I wait. I watch. I write. And then I worship. I thank God for speaking to me. I thank God for speaking to me. This is the natural response of hearing God speak to you. In Habach 3:2, he says, "Oh Lord, now I have heard your report and I worship you in awe." When you receive response to God's to a question you give God, it just makes you want to love him more. It just makes you want to love him more.
You say, "Now, Rick, every time you have a quiet time, does God always speak to you through an impression?" No. Through the Bible? Yes. Why doesn't God always speak to me through an impression, through a mental picture? Well, I give you a dozen reasons why God might be silent. One of them might be you can't handle the truth. You're not ready for it. If I told you what I'm going to do with your life, it would blow your mind and you need to grow more. And I'm not going to tell you yet because you're not ready to handle it. And so you got to grow some more. You I'm waiting for you to grow first. The timing is not right. There could be a lot of reasons God is silent. I want you to trust me. Sometimes God is saying, "Use your brain." If you ask a question like, "God, should I buy a Volvo or a Saab?" God's going to say, "Don't ask me that kind of question. I gave you a brain. You choose. Makes no difference to me. You choose." God, should I have broccoli or spinach in line today? God's going to say, "Doesn't matter as long as it's on the Daniel plan." Okay? Just don't have that greasy stuff. All right? Sometimes at the end of a of a quiet time, I'll say, "God, is there anything else you want to say to me? Is there anything else I've missed?" And a lot of times they just kind of get the feeling, "Nah, everything's okay. Everything's okay."
Now, friends, what we've looked at today will revolutionize your life if you will do it. Now, if you listen to this, you don't do anything about it. It's going to do nothing for you. Short-term change, you focus on behavior. Long-term lifestyle change, you focus on changing the way you think. And you got to get God's vision. We're going to talk more about this next week as we start a series on what it takes to really change the things in your life you want to change. But this will revolutionize your life if you'll do it.
Let's bow our heads. You can't hear from God until you know God. And there are three levels of knowing God. Recognition, acquaintance, and friendship. Some of you are at the recognition level. You know God exists. You just don't know him. Some of you at the acquaintance level. You you you know him a little bit, but you're you're really still a little afraid of him. God wants you to be at the friendship level. And at a friendship level, you talk together all the time. You're in constant conversation. God wants to be your friend. He wants you to be his friend. That's why he sent Jesus to die on the cross for your sins and to resurrect on Easter, which we'll celebrate in a couple weeks.
Father, I want to thank you that you love us enough to listen to us and to talk to us. And yet there's so many people here who've never experienced the joy of having a conversation in their minds with you. And there are others who only know you as an acquaintance. May today, whether people are listening online or any of our 10 campuses or in any of the venues and here at Lake Forest, may this be the greatest turning point in their lives today.
Now you pray in your heart. Say something like this. Dear God, I I am amazed that you would want me for a friend. I want to learn to have a conversation with you every day. Help me to practice these steps that Rick has taught me this week, but and to share them with others. Thanks for caring about every detail of my life. That is amazing. Jesus Christ, I want to know you more and more, better and better every day. I want to learn to depend on your guidance in my job, my family, my future, every area of my life. I invite you to be the manager of every area of my life. In your name I pray. Amen.