See God in Your Circumstances
12/19/1997
“Once the outward man is broken, man’s spirit very naturally abides in the presence of God without ceasing.” It’s our pride and our selfishness and desire to please our self that keep us from the very natural inclination, the supernatural thing that would happen automatically. It’s our lack of brokenness that keeps us from the thing that Jesus wants us to flow very naturally into. The “without ceasing” is not something you attempt to accomplish, but something that happens naturally when the outward man (our fears and our pride and our selfishness) is put aside. That can allow the other stuff to emerge out of us rather than trying to accomplish things.
“First many who live in darkness are not seeing the hand of God. While God is working, while God is breaking, they do not recognize it as being from him. They are devoid of light, seeing only men opposing them. They imagine their environment is too difficult, their circumstances are to blame....” One of those things you see in every man of God in the history of the written Word is they respond to situations with a full knowledge that God is in it. This situation isn’t something random, it isn’t something even unfair. God himself is orchestrating this for his own divine purposes, and I want to be a part of it. I’m not shocked and appalled at this thing. I don’t need to blame anybody. I don’t need to accuse. I don’t need to strike back. I don’t need to react in any way because I really truly honestly believe that God is sovereign over my situation and is desperately intent on me becoming more like his Son, which is where riches are found. So these things are okay. It’s not an accident. I don’t need to look for circumstances that are opposing me from that light as much as I just need to say, “Jesus had his eye on me before I was born. He knew exactly the sequence of events that were necessary in order to bring me into his likeness and into fellowship with him, and I want to be open to these things and embrace them rather than fighting and squirming and reacting to them.”
You see that with men that God entrusted great riches of every kind to, spiritual and physical, is that they saw God in their circumstances. They were able to respond to their circumstances in Jesus, and through Jesus, and to Jesus, without being battered around by it. It’s a peaceful thing knowing that God is God, he’s our Father, he loves us. And the sparrows, every feather on their wings are numbered.
