"How do I know when it's time to wait on God or to take action?"

Steve Brown: How do I know when it's time to wait on God or to take action? The answer to that and other questions on Key Life.
Guest (Male): Welcome to Key Life. Our host and teacher is Steve Brown. He's nobody's guru, but he does have honest answers to hard questions about the Bible. God's grace changes everything. How we love, work, live, lead, marry, parent, evangelize, and worship. Now, here's Steve and Pete Alwinson from Forge Truth with street-smart Bible teaching for real life.
Steve Brown: Thank you, Matthew. Hi, Pete.
Guest (Male): Hey, happy Friday.
Steve Brown: Happy Friday to you too. You're doing all right?
Guest (Male): Yeah, man. I'm doing great. You know, Friday's a good day. I try to catch up everything on Friday.
Steve Brown: Me too. Exactly. Catch-up day. Back when we were pastors, it was panic day.
Guest (Male): It was panic day. And now it's catch-up day.
Steve Brown: Listen, if you haven't read Like Father, Like Son, what a great book, a life-changing book. And if you haven't gone to forgetruth.com, you ought to go there. That's a great website, great teaching, great podcast. It's especially for men, but they let women come too. So, you ought to check it out just to know what your husband's thinking. And there's that old statement, I wonder what my husband is thinking. And the counselor said, he's thinking he's hungry. That's all he's thinking. But anyway, check out forgetruth.com. As you know, Pete comes in on Fridays and we answer questions, and we do love your questions. You can ask a question 24/7 by dialing 1-800 Key Life. That's 1-800-539-5433. Follow instructions, ask your questions and we'll put your name or your voice on the air. Or you can write to Key Life Network, Post Office Box 5000, Maitland, Florida 32794. In Canada, Key Life Canada, Post Office Box 2860, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 6J8. Or you can email your question to [email protected]. And if you can help us financially, please do. We're a member of ECFA in the States and 4C's in Canada. And both of those organizations oversee our finances to make sure that we're ethical. But we were ethical before they came along. But you can check it out and if you can help us, be generous. If you can't, say a prayer for this ministry. Pete, why don't you pray for us and we'll get to some of these questions.
Guest (Male): All right, let's do it. Our great Father, what a joy to come into your presence today, to be able to call the God of the universe, our Father, all because Jesus is our Savior, and the Holy Spirit, the one who brought into our lives an awakening to bring us to the end of ourselves and draw us to Christ. And so we praise you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We are so thankful that you have made us come alive to a living hope. And Lord, it's the end of the week and we need your hope. Lord, life is hard for so many of us, and our listeners are not immune to the problems of life, Lord. So we pray that you would be with us with the bills we have to pay, with the relationships that go sideways on us, with the challenges that we face, even in our local church and in our country. And Lord, we pray for our leadership in our country and ask that you would give grace and wisdom and holiness to their leadership. So Father, you know we have so many needs. Meet us at the very point of our need, draw us to you and work in a way that brings glory to yourself. We ask that you take this Q&A time now that we have. Pray that you would use it and Lord, answer some questions that we have by your Spirit and through your word, and we commit ourselves to you in Jesus' name. Amen.
Steve Brown: Amen. Pete, this is an email. If I'm praying and asking God about a situation or a decision, how do I know when it's time to wait on God or to take action?
Guest (Male): Yeah, that's that's a great question.
Steve Brown: It really is.
Guest (Male): So, so, you know, it depends, right?
Steve Brown: Right.
Guest (Male): It depends. I think there are times when I I feel like I need to make a decision, but there's a check in my in my spirit. Reading the word, even getting godly counsel, I might call you up and say, Steve, what do you think? And then you might give me input, but I still have a check in my spirit. And that might be the Holy Spirit saying, wait a bit. Wait a bit.
Steve Brown: The Holy Spirit, uh, Satan always says do it now. God always says think about it. And uh, that's a general principle that works for me.
Guest (Male): Yeah, that's good.
Steve Brown: And I would also say that the circumstances themselves often, uh, determine whether to take action or to wait. You may have been offered a job and they need to know by tomorrow. Don't put it off for a week or you'll lose the job. And God's in charge of those circumstances. And generally, we know when it's time to move, when it's time not to.
Guest (Male): Generally, generally so. I I would say, as a guy that asked for counsel this past week about something he has to say to a close family member, I said, I said, if you do it that way, it will all come flying out in anger. You know. And so he goes, huh. He hadn't thought about that aspect of it.
Steve Brown: Yeah.
Guest (Male): And I know that because I've been there. And, uh, so it was it was time to rethink how he was thinking about addressing that situation.
Steve Brown: Good stuff. Pete, neither of us want to even bother with this question, but it's been asked. And so let me bring it up. In Jesus' parable in Luke 16, the parable of the dishonest manager, is Jesus really saying that we are to make friends who are like that manager because of their shrewdness? Or is this a form of divine sarcasm?
Guest (Male): Which is well put, um, because it does seem like sarcasm.
Steve Brown: Yeah.
Guest (Male): Um, and it's Luke 16:1 through 11, or 1 through 9. My question back to you, do you think Jesus ever uses sarcasm?
Steve Brown: I think uh, Elton Trueblood years ago wrote a book called The Humor of Christ. And uh, yeah, I think he does.
Guest (Male): Okay.
Steve Brown: And I think there are times when you go, that's tongue and cheek.
Guest (Male): And and and it could well be.
Steve Brown: Yeah. You got to be careful, but it could well be.
Guest (Male): I think the why you and I are both holding off on this is it's it's it falls into the category of FF Bruce and others that have said, this is one of the hard sayings of Jesus.
Steve Brown: Yeah.
Guest (Male): Where absolute clarity is is difficult to to get here. Um, you know, Jesus says be wise, you know, wise as a serpent and innocent as a dove, right? So there's a sense in which that's true too. And that God's people sometimes are not as shrewd in their dealings with shrewd people.
Steve Brown: That's true.
Guest (Male): And so it may well be that this is a straightforward statement that Jesus is making. Make friends for yourself by means of unrighteous wealth so that by so that when it fails, they may receive you into eternal dwellings.
Steve Brown: Wow.
Guest (Male): I don't know. That's a rough one. It's just it's just rough.
Steve Brown: It really is. But it's in context. What follows that passage?
Guest (Male): What follows that is is unique. Uh, he who is faithful in a little is faithful in much. Uh, one who is dishonest and very little is dishonest in much. And so there may be a it's difficult to see how that is connected with what precedes and if it clarifies what precedes.
Steve Brown: Or makes it more confusing.
Guest (Male): Or makes it more confusing. In the at the end of the day, at verse 13, which clearly ends a paragraph, no servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. That may may be the the lynchpin there that it connects it back to that. You can only have one master.
Steve Brown: Yeah.
Guest (Male): Yeah. And and it's God. And so that seems to bring the clarity to that difficult text.
Steve Brown: And you know, we'll someday we'll know. Uh, because some things are not clear.
Guest (Male): Yeah.
Steve Brown: And some things you have to put on the back burner and let them cook. The shrewdness thing works for me. So that's the way I'm going to go for the time being.
Guest (Male): There you go.
Steve Brown: Uh, do you have any suggestions for my prayer life?
Guest (Male): Oh, wow.
Steve Brown: That's like in a couple of seconds, would you give me some
Guest (Male): I mean, that's a softball right there, you know.
Steve Brown: Thank you.
Guest (Male): You know, I I I think I love that. Jesus taught us and taught His disciples how to pray. So we need to be taught how to pray. Get get your book, Approaching God, would be one thing on prayer. Um, but you know, really, I I need a framework for prayer and the Lord's Prayer does that for me.
Steve Brown: Oh, I do too. And that's helpful. But listen, you know, you want to know the most important thing about prayer. Do it.
Guest (Male): Do it. Just pray.
Steve Brown: Just do it.
Guest (Male): And start it start it in the morning and keep it going all day. Pray without ceasing. First Thessalonians 5:17, I think it is. But yeah, you just start your day with your Father, with your Lord and walk with him.
Steve Brown: That's so good. You know, there's an old sermon illustration about a man whose pastor visited and he was sick, he was dying and he was saying he was having trouble uh, praying. And he asked the pastor what to do, and the pastor said, picture Jesus sitting in this chair where I'm sitting now and just talk to Him the way you would talk to a friend. And the man thanked him, and the pastor got a call the next day. And it was the daughter of the man and she said, Sam died last night. And I went in to bring his breakfast. And it was the funniest thing, he had his hand on the chair where you were sitting yesterday by his bed.
Guest (Male): Hmm.
Steve Brown: You know, that's kind of corny, but it is so good and so instructive, just do it.
Guest (Male): Just do it. He's omnipresent, which means He's present with us.
Steve Brown: That's right.
Guest (Male): We there's there's read Psalm 139. You can't go anywhere where He is not.
Steve Brown: You know, I don't want to make a big deal out of this. Whenever religious leaders talk about how they're the expert in prayer and they're men or women of prayer, I wince. But you and I really are, aren't we? I mean, we're not just saying that. I mean, you and I both get up early and Jesus gets us up.
Guest (Male): It's a joy.
Steve Brown: It really is.
Guest (Male): For both of us over the years, we have found that the most enjoyable time of the day is grabbing that first cup of coffee and spending time with Jesus.
Steve Brown: Coffee and Jesus will get you going. It really will. And that's and, you know, I even don't even like to say what we just said.
Guest (Male): I know.
Steve Brown: Because it sounds so pious. And if you listen to Pete's prayers or my prayers, you would know it's not pious because we tell him everything.
Guest (Male): We need him. We need him.
Steve Brown: That's true. And remember that. That's a helpful thing. You can say anything in the presence of a God who loves you. Hey, Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.