Welcome to the In-Touch podcast with Charles Stanley for Wednesday, July 30th.

Obeying God isn't always easy, especially when it costs us something.

But we are not left to do it alone. God gives us what we need to follow him.

Today's reminder is this. God himself is our strength to obey.

God has planned the very best possible life for you. God doesn't make any bad plans. He doesn't come up short. He doesn't show any prejudice.

He's a loving father. We don't always understand the ways that he oftentimes

operates, but one thing but certainly always plans the best. And he plans the best for all of us,

and then some people are able to experience the best, and some people are not. One of the

primary reasons people don't experience the best is because they just refuse to acknowledge God's plan.

Somebody says, well, if I just knew what the plan was, then I might obey it.

That's not the way God operates.

God doesn't operate on giving us something to consider.

He operates on the basis of giving us something to obey, something to fulfill. I want to

talk about the strength to obey God, because I do believe that many people really and truly

want to be obedient. And you try and try and try, and somehow it doesn't work, you just want to

give up and quit. You don't have to give up and quit.

And what I want to show you in this passage of Scripture, in all of these passages, you can obey God if you choose. Maybe you've just said, well, you know what, I do the best I can, and somehow my best isn't good enough. I don't end up obeying God, and I don't know why I don't. I'm going to help you understand why you don't.

I'm also going to help you understand why he can. So I want us to turn, if you will, to John. And the 12th chapter, this is not the passage that I really want to preach on, but I just want to give you this passage because it's sort of a key verse of scripture about this whole idea of obedience and life of Jesus. And I want you to look, if you will, in the 12th chapter of John. And I want you to listen to

what Jesus said in this particular passage. He said, for I did not speak on my own initiative,

but the father himself who sent me has given me a commandment

as to what to say and what to speak. I know that this commandment, or his commandment,

is eternal life. Therefore, the things I speak, I speak just as the Father has told me.

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