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.

The title of this message is filling God's gaps. 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?

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