Join Charles Stanley in today’s In Touch Podcast as he guides us through understanding the periods of silence we often face in our spiritual journey. Drawing from Genesis chapter 16, Stanley discusses how God often stretches time to prepare us for the answers we seek and tests our faith in the process. The episode takes a closer look at the common human error of attempting to ‘help God out’ and the impending danger this choice presents. Deepening the lesson of faith, the narrative of Sarah, Abraham, and Hagar highlights the emotional turmoil and long-lasting consequences of taking matters into
Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Friday, February 21st. Do you ever wonder if you are your own worst enemy? You could be if you’re trying to get ahead of God’s plan. Stay with us for this lesson from Genesis chapter 16 on the hazards of filling God’s gaps.
SPEAKER 01 :
The title of this message is Filling God’s Gaps. And you may wonder, what in the world do you mean by filling God’s gaps? Well, all of us have attempted to do that at some point in our life. And usually when we do, we get ourselves in trouble. So I want to be talking about something that all of us have to deal with, not just once in life, but many times. And let me illustrate it this way. Oftentimes when you and I go to the Lord in prayer and we ask Him for some need or whatever we may be concerned about… And oftentimes we have the assurance that God is going to do what we’ve asked Him to do. And so we become joyous and confident. I believe God’s heard my prayer. I’m expecting God to answer my petition. And then there’s this long period of silence. We don’t see any action. Everything’s quiet. And we begin to say, God, I know what you’ve said. I know the assurance that I felt in my heart. Lord, why aren’t you doing something? That’s what I mean by God’s gaps. Oftentimes, He will give us a little indication of what He’s going to do, and then… He just stretches the time and nothing’s going on. And what do we do when God creates those gaps in our life? Sometimes they’re short periods. Sometimes they stretch over weeks and months and even into years. And somehow we find ourselves trying to figure out what God is doing, and we’re speculating on, well, did we hear right or did we not? And one of the most basic lessons we have to learn is to learn not to try to fill up those gaps that God has created in our life. Now, what we do, we respond in this fashion. Because things aren’t on our time schedule, what we want to do is we want to step in and help God out. Now, you’ve heard people say, God helps those who help themselves. The real truth is that God helps unravel the mess that we get into trying to help God out in doing the thing that God’s trying to do in our life. God doesn’t help those who help themselves. He wants us to walk obediently before Him and to follow Him and to walk according to His pattern. So, sometimes we want to get in and help God out. Oftentimes, when we believe we know what God is saying for us to do, we, instead of waiting for His timing, we step ahead of Him. We initiate… our own methods of achieving what God has already promised us He’s going to do. Now, I’m not talking about doing something that God doesn’t want us to do. I’m talking about achieving or accomplishing or receiving what even God has agreed to, but we somehow have to manipulate our circumstances to get it done our way. So what do we do? We sort of fill in those spaces that God allows in our life. Now, what we have to ask is this, why in the first place does God allow these things? If you’ve asked the Lord to give you direction for your life, why is it that God will give us direction and assurance and then all of a sudden, There it goes. One day, one week, one month, one year. Why does God create these gaps in our life? Well, one of the reasons is in order to prepare us for the answer. For example, sometimes it takes God time to prepare in the minds and lives of the people who are involved in the answer, and so He allows the gap to stretch on. Sometimes it is to test our faith. We have absolute assurance that God has told us what He’s going to do, and if God does everything pronto just when we expect it, there’s no room to grow us up in our faith. The how and the when are totally God’s responsibility. If He says He’s going to do it, that should be sufficient for the believer. Sometimes He allows those gaps to correct us. God has made us a promise. We are walking in the right way. We’re doing the right thing. What He’s promised, we are in agreement with that. No question in our minds, but then we get off base somehow. Sin creeps into our life, and so what does God do? He just lengthens the time. Why? To get our attention, to correct our attitude, or to correct a sense of direction we suddenly change to, and so God just prolongs the time. Now, I want you to turn, if you will, to Genesis chapter 16, because here is a perfect example of what I’m talking about. And all of us are guilty of it at times in our life because we’re just impatient. That’s the kind of society we live in. And we want it now. We want it our way. And if God doesn’t meet our schedule, we get in there and sincerely and honestly help Him out. Now, the 16th chapter of the book of Genesis, beginning in verse 1, is an account of the response of a woman who decided to help God out, to take the initiative. Her motivation, I’m sure, was pure. But I want us to read the first six verses, and then I want us to look at why we do this in our own life. Why do we get in the middle and mess it up for God? Chapter 16. Now, Sarah… Abram, or his name as we know it, Abraham, his name was changed as well as hers. Now Sarah and Abraham’s wife, Abraham’s wife, had borne him no children, and she had an Egyptian maid whose name was Hagar. So Sarah said to Abraham, Now behold, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Please go into my maid, perhaps I shall obtain children through her. And Abram listened to the voice of Sarah. And after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Abram’s wife Sarah took Hagar the Egyptian, her maid, and gave her to her husband Abram as his wife. And he went into Hagar, and she conceived, and when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her sight. And Sarah said to Abram, May the wrong done me be upon you. I gave my maid into your arms, but when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in her sight. May the Lord judge between you and me. But Abram said to Sarah, Behold, your maid is in your power. Do to her what is good in your sight. So Sarah treated her harshly and she fled from her presence. Why is it? that you and I oftentimes attempt to take the initiative and manipulate our circumstances and fill in those gaps. One of the primary reasons is the influence, listen, the influence of those around us who have good intentions. Now think about this for a moment. I am sure that Abraham must have certainly thought about the idea. Well, here’s Hagar. And more than likely, it must have crossed Abraham’s mind that, you know, ten years have gone by and still no descendants, and God’s made a promise. And after all, here’s lovely Hagar. But Abraham more than likely never mentioned that to Sarah. So, now I want you to watch this because it’s so very important. It would have been one thing… for Abraham to come up with the idea. He probably would have been smitten with conviction. But when the gal he loved the most, the girl who was the closest to him, one whom he cherished and loved as a gift of God, when she brought up the idea, it was a little easier for Abraham to say, well, not a bad idea. And so the Bible says that Abraham listened to his wife, Sarah. Now, I want to say two important things at this point. Number one, we have to be extremely careful whose advice we listen to. And you see, Satan knows how to get us off track with those who are the dearest and sweetest and closest people we know. Because from their perspective, they don’t want to see us suffer. And I’m sure that from Sarah’s point of view, it was probably a very sacrificial experience for her to humiliate herself to say to another woman, you go in and sleep with my husband and bring to birth a son because I am unable, I am barren. You think of the humiliation and rejection that she went through. So I would never question her motive to some degree at that point because it wasn’t easy for Sarah to do it. Here’s what I want you to see. The advice offered by others may be sacrificial and costly to them. That is never the question. The question is, is their advice consistent with what you know the Father has told you in this given circumstance in your life? If it is not consistent with the promise of God, the principle of Scripture, you must not obey regardless of how wonderful or how close or intimate you are with that person. Second thing I want you to notice here is this. One of the primary reasons we want to fill in God’s gaps is that it appears oftentimes to be the logical, reasonable, rational thing to do. Now, Sarah looked around and she saw other women who were offering their handmaids to their husbands. And, I mean, some of these men had whole harems. And, I mean, they had children running hither and yonder. They had kids in this tent and kids in that tent. And these belonged to her and these over here belonged to her. Here’s poor old Abraham. Wonderful, faithful man of God, no children. And so, what do you do when you don’t have any and you could when the possibility is right there before you? You just do the reasonable, rational, logical thing and you do what other folks are doing and you go ahead and settle the problem, get on building with your family. Listen to me very carefully. Be very, very certain of this, that if you’re going to walk in the ways of God, the one thing you never do is to get your cue from what everybody else is doing. Because, my friend, not only is the world going the wrong direction, much of the body of Christ is not listening to God, but taking their cue from the world and doing what the world is doing. You and I are walking to a totally different drumbeat. We are to be obedient to God. And listen, if God creates the gap, God is loving you in the creation. And God has His best at the end of that gap. Third thing I want you to notice here. One of the reasons we try to fill in God’s gaps is we become very impatient with what God is up to. Now you think about this. Ten long, dry, dusty years had gone by. Surely, after 10 years, God surely must be expecting us to do something. We get impatient because it isn’t fitting what we want. Now, that is just as natural and normal as it can be. But remember, you and I are not natural people. We are the children of the living God, walking on a higher plane, listening to a different drumbeat, heading in a different direction, in love with a different person. We are not the same as the rest of the world. Friend, impatience can get us in lots of trouble. That’s when we start filling in the gaps when God’s schedule does not meet ours. Next thing I want you to notice here. One of the primary reasons we fill in those gaps is we doubt what God has said to us. Now, we begin to doubt because, you see, the longer that stretch of space, the more prone Satan is to begin to attack us and say, well… How long are you going to wait? Can’t you hear that? How long are you going to wait? I mean that subtle, deceitful, cunning trickery of Satan. You can’t wait forever. Listen, if God says you can, you can. You can’t wait but so long. Listen, what are your friends going to think? And so here’s what happens. Oftentimes when we know what God has said… We allow Satan’s lies to penetrate just a little, and we begin to doubt. Well, now, I wonder if I really heard that right. Your doubts of what God has said does not alter, listen, does not alter this gap. It will not cause God to suddenly close it up. I’ll tell you what it may do. It may cause him to make an extension of what he had previously planned to begin with. Let’s move on. Then I want you to notice also that whenever you and I begin to fill in God’s gaps, we find trouble all about us. Now listen to what happened. Abraham and Sarah were deeply in love with each other. I believe that’s here in the Scriptures. When Sarah convinced Abraham to take Hagar as a wife, immediately the Bible says something happened in that home. When Hagar became pregnant, things really changed. There was bitterness and resentment and hostility and divisiveness. This hostility that rose up in Sarah. The Scripture says that immediately she began to criticize her husband. She began to criticize the maid, Hagar, and that home was in instant turmoil. Divisiveness, division, animosity. the kind of cruel things that must have been said to one another. Why? Because Sarah took the initiative to fill in God’s gaps and not wait for God’s perfect timing. I know it had been 10 years, but God knew it had been 10 years. Now let me show you how the consequences that this thing goes on and on and on, because the same thing is true in our lives. If you’ll think for just a moment the descendants of these two young men. Finally, Sarah bore a child by the name of Isaac. Ishmael came through Hagar, Isaac through Sarah. God had promised that all the nations of the earth would be blessed through Abraham in his choice. God intended for that to be through Sarah. When Sarah intervened in God’s plan and took Hagar, we have Ishmael, the Ishmaelites from which the Arabs today descended. We have from Isaac the Hebrews, the Jewish nation from which the Jews today descended. Here’s what I want you to remember. There may be some times when you and I fill in God’s little gaps or big gaps, and after genuine confession and repentance and some unraveling, we can sort of work our way out of it. But there are times when you and I take the initiative to intervene in God’s plan in our life, and we find ourselves in those irrevocable circumstances from which we will never fully escape. How many people today are in debt, deep in debt, past their nose? In fact, they are just making it. They’re living as financial slaves, the banks and credit union and credit card holders, all of these things. Why? Why? Because they’re unwilling to wait for God to make provision in His time. Listen, you and I do not need anything, nor do we have any desires that have to be met before God chooses to meet them in His own loving, abundantly divine, marvelous, wonderful, sometimes miraculous fashion. Listen, it is His timetable. He’s never late. He is an omniscient God. Now watch this. Past, present, future, He knows them all the same. The omnipotence of God in the past, the present, the future never change. The omnipresence of God past, present, future never change. Nothing is a surprise to Him. So this God who is so omniscient and omnipotent and you’re always in His presence… Do you and I not understand and realize that we can trust this all-loving Heavenly Father who knows all of your needs, past, present, and future, who has already made provision for all of them? Can we not trust Him to meet those needs when He in His divine loving wisdom knows the proper time is right? Then one last thing. Whenever we do that, whenever we begin to fill up God’s gaps, what happens is we hurt innocent people. Listen to this. And we blame innocent people. Listen. In verse 5, Sarah said to Abram, now remember it’s her idea. May the wrong done me be upon you. Where in the world did that come from? It was her idea to begin with. Now she wants to blame Abraham. I gave my maid unto your arms, but when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in her sight. May the Lord judge between you and me. And Abram said to Sarah, Behold, your maid is in your power. Do to her what is good in your sight. So Sarah treated her harshly, and she fled from her presence. Listen, Hagar and Abram, though they were involved, and I’m not going to say that Abraham was totally not responsible. He was responsible, but look who’s doing the blaming. the one who initiated the whole idea. You see, when we begin to fill up God’s gaps and things don’t turn out the way we think they ought to, one of the first things we want to do is to blame somebody else for our own initiative of disobedience to God. Now, I think that’s clear enough. It’s simple enough. I think everybody understands the principle. That is, that God creates gaps. It may be for our protection, our correction, It may be to teach us to trust Him. It may be for preparation. There’s always a reason. And here’s what I want to leave you with. God always reserves His very, very best for those who are willing to wait, even when they cannot see anything happening. And so I simply want to ask you one question, my friend. Do you want God’s best? Then are you willing to wait? And walk in simple, childlike faith and obedience to a loving Father who’s made you a promise. The very best that He has, He’s going to reserve just for you.
SPEAKER 02 :
Thank you for listening to Filling God’s Gaps. If you’d like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
