Welcome to the in touch podcast with Charles Stanley for Thursday, September 19th.

When it comes to your relationship with Jesus Christ, you can expect the unexpected.

Let's continue the Ways of God series with a reminder that God

often makes surprise visits. God has a purpose for everything he does in your life

and mind. He has certain goals for us. He has plans for us. He has a will. he has

plans for us, he has plans for us, he has a will for us.

And sometimes those things hit us as surprises in our life.

So when we talk about surprise visits, what I want to talk about in this message is

God's surprise visits because one of the ways of God is this. He visits us as a surprise. That is, it's a very surprise that suddenly

we are aware of the presence of Almighty God. So here's what I'd like to do. But many of you who would say, well I don't believe God shows up anymore. Well, that was the Old Testament. That was the New Testament. This is a different day. It's a different day, but let me ask a question. Has God changed? No, he has not.

Methods change, yes. Time and in circumstances and civilizations come and go. He hasn't changed.

And oftentimes we want to put him in a box, and we want to put him in a box and we want to tell God how we think he

ought to operate and if he doesn't operate according to the way we think he operates then

we think well I can't believe that. All I ask you do is to open your

heart, listen to the word of God, and just see if God has something to say to you

personally, specifically, or maybe to help you open your heart so that when he does say

something to you in a very unusual way, you'll know it's God and not your imagination. You say well would God ever visit me in such a fashion

that I would feel overwhelmed? Yes, if it's necessary, if it's his will, it cannot be anything you concoct yourself.

Somebody says I'm going to fast and pray and see if God will visit me forget it.

He's not going to be manipulated.

It'll only listen you may live all of your life, listen carefully, you may live all of your life a very godly life and never experience what I'm talking about. Does that make you any less whole than anybody else? No. It's just that

God didn't choose to do that. And if he does, does that make you superior and more important in someone else?

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