Are Those God's Instructions? (307) - July 19 2025

We all have big dreams and plans that we want to work. As believers we must understand that apart from God we can do nothing. If your plans are not submitted to God and prayed about, you might not be with the Lord on everything. If you're not in Christ, this could be why some things don't work out. 

This program covers the following Scriptures from the Amplified Classic version (AMPC): Galatians 2:20, John 15:4-5, Philippians 4:6,  Samuel 15:3, 1 Samuel 15:7, 1 Samuel 15:10, 1 Samuel 15:23.

Pastor Catrice teaches on this topic this week.

Transcript

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(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) And welcome to another episode of Touch of God. My name is Catrice, and I'll be bringing the message to you today. Everything that's going to be talked about today is going to be referenced from the Amplified Classic. All the scriptures that will be talked about, that's where they'll be coming from. I'd like to say good morning, good day, good evening to all my listeners out there. And today's message is called, Are Those Gods Instructions? As believers, we can plan our lives around ideas. We write about a planned idea, research it, look up definitions, even do an outline. We even go and ask friends, family members, schoolmates, what do they think? Then we execute the plan exactly like we envisioned it. The plan does not work. Nothing is going right. Frustration tries to set in as the idea is reviewed and every part of the idea that you had should have worked, but it did not. Whose instructions are we following? We want everything to be a life in Christ, but what if our lives are separate from Christ and we just don't realize it? We say we are with him. We say that he is a part of our lives, but we really do everything without him. Our big decisions don't include him. Could it just simply be our lives and then there is the person Jesus? We don't know what to do with him sometimes. Could that be our current reality? As a believer, when we become saved, Jesus becomes Lord over our lives. Galatians 2 verse 20 says, I have been crucified with Christ. In him, I have shared his crucifixion. It is no longer I who live, but Christ the Messiah lives in me and the life I now live in the body I live by faith in by adherence to and reliance on and complete trust in the son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. Now, if after becoming saved, Jesus is Lord, then why is it we can forget to even go to the Lord sometimes pertaining to life's decisions? We seem to ask everyone but God. Then we wonder why things are not working out. Let's take a look at John 15 verse four to five. It says, dwell in me and I will dwell in you. Live in me and I will live in you. This is Jesus talking. Just as no branch can bear fruit of itself without abiding in, being vitally united to the vine, neither can you bear fruit unless you abide in me. I am the vine. You are the branches. Whoever lives in me and I in him bears much abundant fruit. However, apart from me, cut off from the vital union with me, you can do nothing. Be sure to inquire of the Lord because he is your Lord and savior. Pray and ask the Lord what to do. Wait on the Lord for an answer. If you do not hear from the Lord yet, continue to inquire of the Lord. Remember, apart from God, we can do nothing, according to John 15. Include the Lord in your plans so the work of your hands may be blessed. Let's take a look at Philippians four verse six. Do not fret or have any anxiety about anything, but in every circumstance and in everything by prayer and petition, definite request with thanksgiving, continue to make your wants known to God. Let's think about this in another way. When we were children, we did what we were told. If our father said, do this, we did it. In some cases, some children did not. It would be said that they, the child, has a mind of their own. What does this mean? It means they have decided to follow their own rules, do things their own way, use their own reasoning. In this scenario, we see two minds at work, the mind of the father and the mind of the child. The father is a father because he has lived and experienced life and then reproduced after his own kind and understands the dangers of life. The child has not lived life, has no experience, and does not understand the dangers of life. The father creates rules to keep his family safe. The child is creating their own rules based on what they want to do or what they see fit. There is no understanding, just the idea of what they want and what they want to do. A father says, do not touch the fire. We're just looking at this in many different perspectives. So, in this second perspective, a father says, do not touch the fire. A child filled with what they want to do touches the fire anyway. The result is that they get burned. The child is upset because they got burned. They think, I should have listened to my father. How can this child get rid of the need to not listen to and to stop doing what they want to do so that they won't get hurt? We must begin to understand that two people wanting opposite things doesn't work. Why? Because they are going in two different directions with two separate needs and reasons for their lives. Does a child get his own needs and wants as a child or do they wait until they are fully matured and filled with wisdom, knowledge, and understanding to be able to navigate in life? Should they be allowed to touch a fire because that's what they want? Who gets to love them enough to discipline them, even if they don't like it, to keep them from being burned? Why doesn't the child understand that the father is trying to keep them safe? We can see that the mind and will of the father and the mind and will of the child are different. This can be like some of us when we are not referring to the Lord's instructions, reading the Bible and praying for everything in our lives. So back to the scenario with the child. Thinking this way causes the child who desperately needs instructions to not understand what the father is telling them. The child's own voice, desires, needs are louder than the voice that guides him in life. Even if the instructions are meant to keep the child safe, this causes the child to be rebellious. How many of us have been here? I've been here. A person's emotions, dreams, desires, needs can be louder than God's voice. We miss his instructions for us because we place things higher than the Lord. I know it's hard to hear. It's like a reality check. I thought I was following the Lord. Then my needs took over. We reject the Lord, not deliberately, perhaps. It was not our intention, but we must be very careful. Let's look at an example from the Bible. We're going to go to 1 Samuel 15 verse 23. Here we have the prophet Samuel is speaking to Saul who is king at this time. The prophet Samuel had given King Saul instructions from the Lord to follow. The instructions were in 1 Samuel 15 verse 3. Samuel tells King Saul, now go and smite Amalek and utterly destroy all they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and donkey. Now we're going to go ahead to 1 Samuel 15 verse 7 and this is what King Saul actually does with the instructions that prophet Samuel gives him. Saul smote the Amalekites and Havilah as far as which is east of Egypt. And he took Agag king of the Amorites alive, though he utterly destroyed all the rest of the people with the sword. Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep, oxen, fatlings, lambs, and all that was good. And would not utterly destroy them, but all that was undesirable or worthless they destroyed utterly. The prophet Samuel's response in 1 Samuel 15 verse 10. Then the word of the Lord came to Samuel saying, I regret making Saul king, for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commands. And Samuel was grieved and angry with Saul and he cried to the Lord all night. Now let's look at 1 Samuel 15 verse 23. It says for rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft and the stubbornness is as idolatry. Terrafim household good luck images because you have rejected the word of the Lord. He also has rejected you for being king. This is the weight of not following instructions, not taking God's instructions seriously. Although in this time, perhaps some of us don't have mentors or we're not being discipled by someone. It's very important that we utilize the Lord and incorporate him in our lives. Because when we look around and we're trying to create something, we're trying to move forward in life. We're wondering why we're not successful. It could very well be that we're not listening to the Lord's instructions. We haven't even acknowledged him. We're not praying. We're not reading our Bible. And if we're not doing that, we're not getting the instructions that we need. Now it could very well be that maybe some of us didn't know that we're supposed to read our Bible every day and we're supposed to pray and we're supposed to talk to the Lord. But now that you know, you can correct that. But for those of us who the Lord knows that we know, it is like rebellion. We're simply not following the instructions. And in the example that I gave where the father instructs the child not to touch the fire and the child does it anyway, that is rebellious. And God doesn't want us to be that way. And God wants to deliver us from this type of behavior because this type of behavior can lead us astray. And we don't want to be led astray because we can see in 1 Samuel 15, that whole chapter that's going back and forth between the prophet Samuel and King Saul, where King Saul was given specific instructions and he chose not to follow what was given to him. And King Saul literally had a person talking to him. He had a prophet representing the Lord. How many of us wish that we could have prophet Samuel just sitting in our room, talking to us, giving us literal instructions so that we won't go astray? Well, this is what happened with King Saul and he did not honor what God had said, even though God was leading him to a life of victory. This is a message for all of us that even though we become saved, being saved that one day is not a lifestyle in Christ. Being saved is the entry point to salvation, but now we have to continue to grow up in the way that we must go so the word of God won't depart from our mouths. We're not going to know what to do unless we're reading the word, inquiring of the Lord, submitting our prayer requests unto the Lord like in Philippians 4 so that we understand what to do and God will answer you. And after you start learning how to see how God answers you in the manner that he answers you, you're going to have the Lord directing you. But until you do that, until you're waiting on the Lord, until you're inquiring of the Lord for everything, you're not going to get the responses that you're hoping for because you're not following instructions. Not because God doesn't want to bless you, simply because you really are not following instructions and God has left you an entire Bible to refer to, to get instructions, to begin to pray, to begin to lean on the Lord, to trust in him, to acknowledge him in all your ways so that he can direct your paths. And we all want to be in this place. We all have desires and dreams that we want to accomplish in life. But again, like it says in John 15, if we are apart from God, we can do nothing. And we have to know, honor, and understand that and have reverence for what the Lord has told us and have literally fear of the Lord and not want to not do the instructions that you at least know what to do. And it's not a bad thing. This is a good thing because when you can clearly hear the Lord and you've studied the word, you've shown yourself approved, and you're starting to see how God can talk to you, then in those times of trouble, God can show you which direction to go, whether you need to go left or whether you need to go right. And let's just face it in these times, we definitely need to hear God's voice with the different things that are going on in the world. You want to be in that place right under God's chin. When he begins to speak, the word comes out, it hits your ear and you know what to do. You have understanding, you have wisdom, and you have knowledge. If you choose to not do this part, then you would unfortunately continue down the same path as you were on, which is you're not seeing results. And nobody wants that for you. God doesn't want that for you. God wants you to see results in your life. He wants you to be more than a conqueror. He wants you to have life abundantly. And he wants to be the lamp unto your feet, the light unto your path. But he can't do that if you don't follow the instructions. It's kind of like if you get a job and you're on the job and they gave you a job to do, but you never read the manual, you never look at the instructions and you just do whatever it is you want to do. And then when it's time to turn in the work, you bring in the work and they're like, well, we see that you did something, but did you do what we asked you to do? There's a difference. We all want to be rewarded for the work that we've done and we're excited about moving forward. But if we're not moving forward, following the instructions that were given, we're not going to receive the reward because that would be considered rebellious. When God does appoint you and you're elevated from where you are and God instructs you to do it the way you are wanting to do it, then you have freedom to do that. But that is after waiting on the Lord, hearing his voice, we're all wanting to be blessed. We don't want to be walking in rebellion. We don't want to not follow God's instructions. We want to move forward and we want to be prosperous. So let's just take a little time and let's think about this. And you want to use all of these things that we talked about today as prayer points. And what I mean by prayer points, if any of this struck a chord with you, you want to begin to pray. One of the things that you can pray, I like to tell people to pray, you can pray Psalms 51, which talks about creating me, oh Lord, a clean heart and a clean mind and clean hands, renewing me a right spirit. So you can begin to pray that over yourself. You can begin to pray, Lord, forgive me for being rebellious. I don't want to be rebellious. I want to listen to you. I want to hear your instruction. I want to hear your voice. I want to walk with you, Lord, in all your ways. These are the things that you want to begin to pray into. And we want to earnestly listen to God's instructions. And if you haven't heard from the Lord, or you can't hear the Lord's voice yet, this just means you just need to go deeper in the word. You need to be reading your word. When you wake up in the morning, be reading your word before you go to bed, be praying about the things that you're waiting on the Lord to see change in. So if you are praying for finances, you want to go into the Bible. You want to look up all the scriptures that's talking about finances. One of the scriptures is you will prosper as your soul prospers. So if the scripture says prosper as your soul prospers, then you want your soul to be prospering the way your soul is going to prosper is by you every day reading the word. And it's not after one day and then you're like, okay, God, I read the word one day. No, this is a lifestyle where every day you're inquiring of the Lord. You're building a relationship with the Lord. You're entering into God's rest so that you are always with the Lord. You're always living this kind of lifestyle. So when emergencies arise, you already have practice in listening to the Lord, in responding to his instructions, in being obedient so that you can carry out everything that you were supposed to do so that you can be in a safe place and you can be in right standing. This is something that you want to practice and you want to do. You don't want to only go to God when you have an emergency and be like, oh Lord, I'm in tons of debt and I need money and I just need you to do something right now. When you read in the Bible and people come to knock on the door when Jesus comes and he's like, I knew you not depart from me. You don't want to hear that because if you've been going to the Lord only as your ATM or only in your emergencies and you have no relationship with the Lord, you have no idea how the kingdom of God works. You're not reading your Bible. You're not praying. You could miss out on your blessings and we don't want you to miss out on your blessings. So God, I just thank you Lord that your word has hit the bull's eye Lord that every seed that is planted, that it's been planted in good soil and it will begin to flourish. I thank you God that you're giving them ears to hear and eyes to see what the Holy Spirit is saying to them. I thank you Lord that this word would touch them and they would see that God loves them and he chastises those whom he loves so that they can grow and they can be nourished and they can grow up the right way and not grow up on a crooked path. I thank you Lord that you are being faithful Lord. We just thank you Lord for your faithfulness and for touching them Lord. Bring them dreams and visions of their next steps, what you want them to do, where you want them to go Lord. Help them to hear your voice Lord. Those of them who want to hear your voice Lord, open up their eyes, open up the deaf ears to hear what you are saying. Lord that you would touch them, that you would touch the work of their hand Lord. Thank you Lord for just blessing their hands Lord. Thank you God for just blessing their feet, every place that their foot treads belongs to Jesus Christ. Thank you God that they take heed to your instruction, that they take it serious, that they have reverence for the Lord and that they remember that apart from you they can do nothing. Help them to remain in Christ. Help them to never be found apart from you. Help them to always be hidden in Christ so that they can get the fullness of the plans that you have for them according to Jeremiah 29 11. God we're so grateful for the listeners. We're thankful Lord that this is another opportunity for them to grow. This is another opportunity for another door to open for them if they were to take in this wisdom and they were to take in this knowledge Lord so that they would be even stronger after listening to this message and understand how important it is to listen to instructions so that they won't get burned in the fire literally like the child in the example that we talked about. That at the end of life Lord that they would have eternal life and they would not have to go and be burned in the fire Lord. That you would touch their lives, turn their hearts around, help them to understand you in a better way. Yet another opportunity to praise the Lord. Another opportunity to be thankful. Another opportunity to submit our prayer requests unto the Lord. God we just thank you for perfecting those things concerning us Lord and that everyone that you would bless them within the sound of my voice and of course if you have not taken Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior this is always an opportunity for you to do so. Just simply get in a quiet place and just say Jesus come into my heart. Be my Lord. Be my Savior. Change me Lord. I desire to live my life for you. I repent for all my sins Lord. Please forgive me for all my sins Lord and I completely turn away from those sins and turn to you oh Lord. We just thank you in Jesus name. Amen. Bless you all. Bye.