Dr Charles Stanley - The Origin

0:00He is an absolute final oath with control of every single thing. Therefore, whatever pain, whatever heartache, whatever disappointment, whatever hardship, whatever hurt, whatever rejection, we can respond in one or two ways. We can blame God, we can blame others, we can be unforgiving, we can sulk in our hurts and in our rejection and in our pain, or we can look to God and ask the question, God, please your goal for my life in allowing this need to be in my life at this point. God has an answer for our unmet needs. That's the joyful message you'll hear today on In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. Jesus said, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free and included in that is knowing the truth about ourselves. Today's message challenges us to take an honest look inside to find the origin of our unmet needs.

1:02God has an answer for all of our unmet needs. If they are material needs, He has material answer. If they are physical needs, He has a physical answer. If they are emotional needs, He has an emotional answer. If they are spiritual needs, He has a spiritual answer. God will not meet emotional needs with material answers. He's not going to meet spiritual needs with some physical answer. God wants us to become whole persons and therefore He wants us to discover what our need is. He wants us to understand where this need came from. He wants to make us whole persons. In this message I want to talk about the source, the origin of our needs. What I'd like to do also is to give you someone in the Scripture who would relate to that need and then personally to explain how these things come about in our life and how they can be met. So I'm going to turn if you will to Philippians chapter 4.

2:03And the 19th verse to remind you again of this awesome promise that our Lord has made. Paul said, my God, shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus, which was His way of promising to us that on the basis of our relationship to Him, He would make every single need that we have, He would make it available. Now, what is the source of these needs in our life? Now remember, we want to get under the surface that we all know that we have such needs as food, clothing, and shelter and that we have those common needs that everybody has in life. We understand that. So one of those issues in light that caused us to have difficulty ever having an appease and joy because there are people who have every material thing, all the recognition, all the prominence, all the prestige, they have all the notoriety, they have anything in the world that could possibly own and they're still deep down inside there is a level of misery they cannot understand and cannot handle.

3:06Well, the first source of these needs, look at it this way. The first source of those needs we create for ourselves. And I want us to turn if you will to Luke chapter 15 for a moment and let's look at it the example of one who created his own need. No question about his need. The 15 chapter of Luke you'll recall that this son asked his father to give him his portion of the possessions so the Bible says, yes, what happened? Once he gave it to him. Verse 13, not many days after, the youngest son, yeah, that everything together went on a journey into a distant country. And there he squandered his estate with loose living. Now, when he had spent everything a severe famine occurred in this land on the country and he began to be in need. And he went and attached himself to one of the citizens of that country and he went into the fields to feed swine. And he was longing to fill his stomach with the pods that the swine were eating. No one was giving anything to him. But when he came to his senses, he said, how many of my fathers hired men have more than enough food, a bread, but I'm dying here with hunger.

4:10I'll get up and go to my father and say to him, father, I've sinned against heaven and in your sight. Now, let's look at it this way for a moment. Here's a young man who suddenly found himself in need. In fact, he had become so desperately, desperately, hungering, thirsting, yearning for something deep down inside that here, this Hebrew boy had hired himself out to a Gentile, the swap hogs, or the feed and care for these hogs. He could not have been in a worse situation. Now, you see, sometimes we have needs that we create ourselves. You see, the reason he's in the hog pan when he could have been on his father's, maybe some great plantation of some sort, he swapped places with his wealth and his position and his prosperity and his confidence and convenience for a hog pan. You know why I did it? He made some wrong decisions in life. You know why oftentimes we have needs in our life because we create our own needs by disobedience, by rebellion,

5:14by misinterpreting what's going on around us, by blaming others, by accusing, by lust and desire and covetousness, or whatever it might be, we make wrong decisions in life. And you know what? When you make wrong decisions in life, you suffer the consequences in life. And so therefore, what we have here is we have needs that are so deep, needs that are much deeper than food, clothing and shelter, something that motivating him, something that caused him to leave and to lead the best and to take less than the best. He made some very wrong decisions. And so therefore we have to ask the question, what's the real need? The real need with the product of the sun was something that was deep down inside of him. He created some needs and these created needs. Listen, even when he created these needs, there was no real genuine satisfaction. So one of the ways that we find that there needs in our life, there needs that we create ourselves.

6:15Secondly, I want you to notice the second way that we discover these needs in our life and that's this. And that is there are needs in our life that are created by others. Their genuine needs that are created in our life by others. Let's take Joseph as an example. You recall that Joseph grew up in a home where his father favored him above all his other brothers. The Bible says his brothers hated him. They hated him so intensely that the first opportunity that they got to kill him, they tried to do it. They found a through him in a pit and finally sold him as a slave to ultimately he got down there where a pot of a who was the bodyguard of Pharaoh bought him off the slave block. So now I want you to see something very important here because Joseph ending up in the household of Potapher as a slave. Here's what he did. He could have said poor me. My brothers hated me.

7:16They tried to kill me. They sold me in the slavery. Here I am a slave in this man's household. Who am I? I'm a nobody. Suddenly not very confident that being anything and I don't belong to anybody. My family is way up. Yonder, they rejected me. Who am I? What can I do? You know what he did? Now, don't you listen to him carefully. Because this will affect you. Here's what he decided. I'm going to do my best and here's what happened. The Bible says in a very short period of time, Joseph became so accepted and became so much a part of this family. And he became of such worth to Potapher, the bodyguard of Pharaoh. He demonstrated his competence until finally, Potapher said, Joseph, I'm turning everything in my household over to you. You are in charge. Everybody is subject to you. I will not even spend my time giving my thought to the affairs of my household. I'm turning it all over to you because you have certainly proven to be competent

8:20and worthy. And you certainly are a vital part of this family now. Let's ask yourself the question. What is it about Joseph? What is it about him that made this difference? What caused him to survive this whole circumstance was his intimate relationship with Almighty God. I cannot tell you how very, very, very important it is that we begin to teach our children very, very early in life. What it means to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, that it isn't just the matter of going to church and listening to a Sunday school class or listening to a sermon, but it is the matter of learning how to relate to a God whom we believe in, the God of the Bible, and beginning to teach those children that God is their friend, and that he wants to meet every single need of their life, and that he will live on the inside of them to the person of his son Jesus Christ. We want our children to grow up that way. You know how that happens when mom and dad begin to say to them and speak to them and

9:21feed their soul and feed their heart and feed their spirit the truth. What happens? Teaching them to have an intimate relationship with Almighty God. I'm here to tell you that growing up in a society, if they don't learn how an intimate relationship with God somewhere out there, the devil is going to get them one way or the other. We live in a viciously wicked, vile, sensual, sexual or in its society, and Satan's doing everything he possibly can and what is he doing? He is making this world a sexual wilderness and causing people to think if I can just have this or that or him or her, that will satisfy this deep abiding need in my life when the only thing that's going to satisfy that is an intimate personal relationship with Almighty God through his son Jesus Christ. You do not start teaching people that when they're teenagers. You begin to teach them that when they are children. They don't fully understand, but if they hear enough, God will interpret the truth of that to them. And so what saved him? What saved him was an intimate personal relationship with Almighty God.

10:27Well, there's another source of needs in our life and this is one that most people don't think about. That is the needs that God creates in our life. We're saying, wait a minute. Aren't we talking about God meeting needs, not creating needs, I am? Because God will indeed meet every single possible need that we have as children of God. That is the basis of your relationship to him. Does he want to meet your needs? Yes. Trust him as your personal safety. God begins to meet your needs. But what about those needs that God creates? Well, let's say that here's a young man who's 36 years of age, has three children, lovely wife and he's been doing real well in his job. And so they just moved into this beautiful new home and got their friends and everybody's happened there in the right neighborhood with the schools and everybody's just fantastic. He comes home one day and he says to his wife, honey, God's calling me to preach. He's doing what? God's calling me to preach. Oh, what does that mean?

11:27It means I'm going to have to go to seminary. What does that mean? Well, I guess it means we're going to have to move. You mean sell this house? Yes. What are the kids going to think we're going to have to explain that to him? He's got a whole bunch of needs, not one single one that he choose. He didn't choose to leave his job. He didn't choose to sell his house. He didn't choose to explain this to his family. He didn't choose any of those things. All these things, God chose for him. Well, what will God do? He will meet every single one of those needs because all mighty God is absolutely, totally committed to meeting every single need he creates in our life. So let me just say this. Oftentimes when you and I go through some difficult hardship, looks like my God, listen, Lord, you could have stopped that. This did not have to happen. Sometimes God, listen, allows circumstances and situations in your life and my life. Sometimes it's things that he creates. Sometimes it's things that he allows to happen in your

12:30life and my life. And we thank God you could have stopped it. Absolutely. I believe he's absolutely totally sovereign. He can stop anything, start anything he chooses. He is an absolute final ultimate control of every single thing. Therefore, whatever pain, whatever heartache, whatever disappointment, whatever hardship, whatever hurt, whatever rejection, whatever criticism, whatever persecution, all these things that are allowed into our life and come into our life. We can respond in one or two ways. We can blame God. We can blame others. We can be forgiving or unforgiving. We can sulk in our hurts and in our rejection and in our pain or we can look to God and ask the question, God, what is your goal for my life in allowing this need to be in my life at this point? What is your purpose for allowing this need, allowing this hurt, allowing this pain in my life? And if you and I are wise and we develop our relationship with him, God will take us through

13:32those difficult times. What will he do? He will be preparing you and me to be wise, godly, helpful, encouraging vessels to other people who are going through the same thing and we will understand it better because we have been there. God creates some needs in order to accomplish his purpose and his plan and his purpose in our life. Well, there's one other area of needs that I want to talk about here and this one is a little more personal and probably sometimes a little more painful. I want to talk about the needs we inherit from our childhood. Now, all of us have inherited some. When you think about your own childhood and think about things that you grew up with, you say, well, you know, my parents did this and my parents did that and I don't have any hurts and I didn't get any needs from my parents. Well, let me just say this, if you cram it and you jam it and you stuff it and you ignore it and you deny it, you will until you come to grips with things back there, it may have been something that your parents did that they didn't even realize at

14:36the time how they were damaging you. They may have thought they were motivating you when they said, look, you know what, you're not going to mount anything. Get a thing, get stuff a job and get with it. It may have been that your father may have thought that he was motivating you but in your child mind and your teenage mind what you said was they don't want me. They don't want me. They want me to get out of here. I'm a burden to them. I'm costing them money. You see, what we don't realize oftentimes is how a child hears what a parent says. How a child interprets what that parent says. And so we all have a self-image and that self-image that self-concept is the way we see ourselves and I want to say again, you and I are going to act out and live out the way we see ourselves. If we see ourselves as competent and that we belong and that we're accepted, we're going to act out that way. But if we do not, we are going to act out exactly what we feel. What I want you to see is this, when people are emotionally damaged, when they've got hurts and fears that they grew up with

15:43and they've never been dealt with, don't want to deal with them because their idea is if I get married, they'll settle it. Well, you know, after a while I'll outgrow it. Or they go to some counsel, the counsel says, well, you can just forget that no, you can't. You'll outgrow it no, you won't because you have to deal with it. You have to be willing to rip off the scab and look inside and face the pain of seeing and recalling and reliving out some hurts and some difficulties and hardships that are very difficult. But you know what? That's the way healing comes. I don't mean just stirring up the same old pot over and over and over again, but doing what? Looking to realize, what's the real basis of these needs? Children get damaged. And you know what happens? They grow up and nobody ever says to them, well, let's think about what the real need is. And so people can't live together and so they lead the separate, the divorce. They hate each other. They have all kinds of animosity toward each other and unforgiving spirit. He did this. She did that. And somehow, until they're

16:47willing to open it up and say, oh, God, what's the real need? What happened back, Yandat? It makes me feel these feelings. I feel why do I hurt? Why do I feel rejected when no one's rejected me? Why do I treat relationships the way I treat them? When people try to do their best for me and somehow I can't accept it. You see, when we get handed down, those hand me down emotions and those hand me down needs, they're not easy to deal with. None of us like to talk about ourselves and we certainly don't like to talk about our personal life. I would simply say this, God certainly has a purpose for allowing these things in our life. And if we respond properly, He'll turn them for something good. I can tell you this, God can heal any damaged emotion you have experienced. He can heal any need that you have, but only if you're willing to deal with it.

17:49You know what Jesus said? He said, when you know the truth, the truth will set you free. Where does that start? The truth about Him? Does it end there? No. I also need to know the truth about myself so He can also free me of damaged emotions, free me of these memories that will keep haunting me unless I am freed of them by being healed of them. And I simply want to challenge you to take a good look on the inside. Remembering that God loves you, He'll make your whole person, but you've got to let Him do it His way. It may be the most painful experience of your life, but you know what? It's in the valley that gets me ready to walk on the mountain top. Your God, Jehovah God of the Bible is on your side, and He'll set you free if you let Him do it by His wonderful grace. You're listening to In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley.

19:01Knowing the truth about the Lord and yourself frees you to move forward in faith. Ask God to help you understand your inner needs and allow Him to be the solution. To study more about relying on God as you live out the Christian life, visit our website in touch.org and click on today on radio to hear this message again. If you'd like to have a copy of Dr. Stanley's complete message, open our online store. The title is The Origin. Or order His teaching set. God has an answer for our unmet needs. Again, you'll find these resources at in touch.org. You can also call or text 1-800-IN TOUCH. To write to us address your letter to In Touch, post office box 7900, Atlanta, Georgia, 303-5-7. When you're walking in step with God, your circumstances won't always feel perfect, but your spirit can be a peace. Today's moment with Charles Stanley is coming up.

20:06Do you take sermon notes on the back of your bulletin, Jot's scripture references on the offering envelope? Start keeping things in one place, one organized place, with the In Touch No Takers Journal. This leather soft journal contains 150 pages for taking notes and includes Dr. Stanley's 30-life principles. Find everything in one convenient place with the In Touch No Takers Journal. Call to afraid 1-800-IN TOUCH or visit intouch.org. You don't need to be perfect for your children. Kick it over this way. That's it. But with just a little encouragement. We're a pro at this, aren't you? A lot of laughter. Some time and attention and a bit of patience, you'll pass along confidence and affirm connection with God that lasts a lifetime. In his book, Man of God, Dr. Charles Stanley helps us understand what it takes to grow into a man after God's own heart. Order your copy today at intouch.org slash store.

21:10You're listening to Intouch. The Christ-centered life is the one we're meant to live. Here how to find real contentment as you listen to a moment with Charles Stanley. Well, the scripture says, for you have been called for this purpose since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in his steps. Now let's think for a moment of some of the things you can expect when you begin to walk in step with him. First of all, you'll get to know him in an intimate way. That he's a personal friend. That he's with you all the time. You'll begin to understand who he is in a way that you've never known before. You'll begin to see things from his perspective. That is, you'll see good where you've not seen good. You'll see evil where maybe you've not seen evil. You'll see things that you've never even thought were important in your life and all of a sudden they become very important from his perspective. You'll go where you would never choose to go because you see some people have the idea that if you

22:14walk with the Lord, it's just going to be ease, comfort, and pleasure to know. And sometimes you hear people talk about that and like that, it's not true. It wasn't true in his life. It wasn't true in their apostle Paul's life. It's not going to be true in our life. When we walk in step with him, he will lead us to go into those places that do what? That deepen that intimacy, that grows up and mature spiritually and that make us the men and women he created us to be. We'll make new discoveries about ourselves. Once you begin to walk in step with him, you're going to begin to make an impact on other people. The power of the Spirit of God begins to work in you and through you. You cannot be the same walking in step with him. Likewise, you're going to begin to experience an inner peace and contentment. You have never known before in your entire life. Why? There is this awesome sense of security in your life that comes as a result of walking in step with him,

23:15knowing that you're walking in his will. Likewise, you're going to have a great sense of confidence and courage to face those difficult times of life that before have been extremely hard for you to deal with. Now, let me just say this. Before you can walk in step with him, you must receive the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior. What that does is open the door for you to have a relationship with him. You can't live in rebellion and walk in step with God. Receiving Christ as your Savior by faith is the first step to walking in step with God. And you receive Christ as your Savior when you humbly trust in him to forgive your sin. Learn more at ntouch.org. Tomorrow on ntouch, do you wonder why some of the things you long for always seem out of reach? We'll see why our needs remain unmet, Friday, on ntouch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. This program is a presentation of ntouch ministries at Lata,

24:21Georgia and remains on this station through the grace of God and your faithful prayers and gifts.