Welcome to the In Touch podcast with Charles Stanley for Thursday, January 22nd.

God desires for each of us to know him deeply and follow him faithfully.

To gain practical insight and spiritual clarity, listen to Part 2 of Finding Clear Guidance

and discover how to walk closely with him every day.

How can I be sure I'm making the right decision?

How can I be sure I have very clear guidance about this?

How can I be sure I'm about to do the will of God?

God is given to each one of his children the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.

One of his primary responsibilities, is to give

us clear direction for our life. And this is why he says he will guide you into the truth, the

truth of what God wants us to do in our life. So we have that wonderful privilege. Now, the problem is

that today people choose all kind of different ways of figuring out what they're going to do.

For example, some say, well, what I'm going to do is to find that clear direction. I'm going to throw out a fleece like Gideon did. Well, a fleece was simply the wool covering of a lamb, a sheep. And here's what he said. He said, now, Lord, I want to be very sure I understand what you were saying. And the truth is, he knew what he was saying. He was afraid. And so all of us have probably been afraid at times in our life. It's something God required of us. And so he said, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to take this fleece. And I'm going to lay it on threshold floor here. And if tomorrow morning when I get up, it's wet and the ground is dry, I'll know that I've heard you.

Well, God and his patient said, okay, next morning he wakes up.

He rings the water out of that fleece and being natural and normal.

This ought to be real encouraging to all of us, real encouraging to us.

You ought to say, well, he just said, okay, God, I'm going after the Midian nights. He came back, he said, the Lord, don't get mad. Don't, don't get upset, Lord. Now, it's not that I can hear him now. It's not that I don't believe you. It's not that I don't trust you. But tonight, I'm laying it out again. And tonight, I'm asking that the police be dry and the ground be wet. Next morning, I woke up. Police dry as gunpowder. Earth around it, soaking wet. What did God do? He knew what Gideon needed, and he gave him very clear direction. You can go all the way through

the scripture. So somebody says now, well, that's what I like doing. I like throwing out a flee.

So you know, if I really want to get something my way, I can throw that flee so it lands the way I

want it to land, which is not a very reliable way to do it. And that's not a

principle of scripture, of finding clear direction. That's what Gideon did, but nowhere else in the

Bible do I find people doing that. And of course, you remember that somebody else who wanted to play

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