The Undetected Sacredness of Circumstances

Click on Title for Actual Devotional Reading before reading my thoughts
November 7th.
My Utmost For His Highest
Oswald Chambers (1874-1917)

My thoughts:
A wise Christian will watch for opportunities to do good, to speak the gospel to the lost and pray the rescuing prayer of intercession for the Holy Spirit to convict the lost to know Christ. God never gets into a position where He must answer prayer against His will. And everything that is attributed to faith might with equal truth be attributed to prayer, for faith and true prayer are like two sides of the same coin. I will remember to be thankful for all experiences (good and bad) in my life, since they all "work together for good", that is the good of being conformed to the image of Jesus Christ (Romans 8:28-29). Because God has something better for me than what I have asked. (John 11:1-6; Luke 5:1-16; Luke 8:40-56). Also, I have to keep in mind that God may be withholding what I ask in order to do special work that He have placed me according to His plan and will (2 Corinthians 12:7-10). God knows before I ask because He is ALMIGHTY God. Romans 8:26 says that "The Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for". The Holy Spirit will help me know what I pray for. Learning from great faiths in the Bible, I can see that circumstances did not control them; it is their reaction to circumstances that determined what kind of people they were and most importantly, how faithful they were. To be unafraid regardless what is going on a person's life journey, true Faith sees everything in focus and be able to trust God no matter what happens. God leads me to my destiny according to His will and glory. Often I noticed that the providential of God leads me to what I call "coincidences" in my life which perhaps God will make sure that His wills will be done at His right time and place. There are two worlds, set over against each other, dominated by two wills, the will of man (me) and the will of God, respectively. Whose will have more power? Of course, God. He directs my life lives no matter what I do. Even the bad events that happen to me are circumscribed by a loving providence and God promises to use them all for my ultimate good. There is a verse in the Bible that God promises that there won’t be anything so bad happen to me that I am not able to bear it. God does everything--He governs everything. Faith is accepting God's Will. There is confusion between the determined Will of God and my responsibility as a Christian. In Isaiah 55:8-9 God says, "My thoughts are completely different from yours, and my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts."

In 1 John 5:14-15 says "And we can be confident that he will listen to us whenever we ask him for anything in line with his will. And if we know he is listening when we make our requests, we can be sure that he will give us what we ask for".

Faith in God is accepting God's will, God's power, and God's timing. God knows what He's doing, and He knows when to do it. Often I want to run ahead of God because I feel that He doesn't seem to be working fast enough for me. I often forget God is adjusting my history to His purposes. He knows what He's doing. I have to learn to trust His will, His power to do His will, and His timing to do it when the time is right--and not until then. That's the essence of real faith. God carries out His will in His perfect power and timing. Faith is keeping my eyes on Jesus Christ that I should not worry about my problems. If I look at my problems, I will probably only be looking for the immediate solutions to my problems without God and that I should not do.

QUOTES
It matters little what form of prayer we adopt or how many words we use. What matters is the faith which lays hold on God that is what gives Christian prayer its boundless confidence and its joyous certainty. Dietrich Bonhoeffer .

The best prayers have often more groans than words. John Bunyan

We pray for the big things and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet not so small) gifts. How can God entrust great things to one who will not thankfully receive from Him the little things? Dietrich Bonhoeffer

When a Christian shuns fellowship with other Christians, the devil smiles. When he stops studying the Bible, the devil laughs. When he stops praying, the devil shouts for joy. Corrie ten Boom

When I say 'hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come," I should be adding in my mind the words "in and through me," and so giving myself to God afresh to be, so far as I can be, the means of answering my own prayer. And when I say "thy will be done," I should mean this as a prayer that I, along with the rest of God's people, may learn to be obedient. J.I. Packer

Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire?-- Corrie Ten Boom

Those who know God the best are the richest and most powerful in prayer. Little acquaintance with God, and strangeness and coldness to Him, make prayer a rare and feeble thing. --E. M. Bounds

God's answers are wiser than our prayers. –Unknown

The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men. The Holy Ghost does not flow through methods, but through men. He does not come on machinery, but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men…Men of prayer." --E. M. Bounds

So when we sing, 'Draw me nearer, nearer, blessed Lord,' we are not thinking of the nearness of place, but of the nearness of relationship. It is for increasing degrees of awareness that we pray, for a more perfect consciousness of the divine Presence. We need never shout across the spaces to an absent God. He is nearer than our own soul, closer than our most secret thoughts. --A.W. Tozer

We have to pray with our eyes on God, not on the difficulties. - Oswald Chambers

God's timing is infallible. He takes every factor and contingency into account. We often want to pluck unripe fruit, but He will not be pressured into premature action. If He in His wisdom delays the answer to our prayer, that delay will in the long run prove to be for our good (Hebrews 12:10). It will be either because He has some better thing for us, or because there is something He desires to achieve in our lives that can be affected in no other way. J.Oswald Sanders, Guidelines for Disciples, pg 126

Tepid praying does not move God's arm. J.Oswald Sanders, Guidelines for Disciples, pg 124

The mature disciple will not stumble because of apparently unanswered prayer. He will not, however, adopt a fatalistic attitude; he will examine his prayers and seek to discover the cause of failure" J.Oswald Sanders, Guidelines for Disciples, pg 124-125

Thomas Aquinas wrote, "The function of God's angels is to execute the plan of divine providence, even in earthly things."

John Calvin wrote that "angels are the dispensers and administrators of the divine beneficence toward us."

Scripture verses:
God governs the world (Isa. 40:22-24), the nations (Isa. 40:15-17), and us (Proverbs 16:9).

Proverbs 20:24 A man's steps are directed by the LORD. How then can anyone understand his own way?

Proverbs 21:1 The king's heart is in the hand of the LORD; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases.

Jeremiah 10:23 I know, O LORD, that a man's life is not his own; it is not for man to direct his steps.

Matthew 6:34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

James 4:14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

Matthew 10:29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny ? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father.


My additional thoughts regarding the Old Testament stories:
The book of Esther show how God controls history through providence. There isn't a miracle in the book and the name of God isn't mentioned but at the same time, without anyone realizing that God is always in control of every single event in this world. The king mentioned in Esther favored Esther and Mordecai, spared all the Jewish people, made Mordecai the Prime Minister and hanged Haman on the gallows he build himself for the Jewish people and preserved the nation Israel. Hadassah, "myrtle" in Hebrew (Esther 2:7), or Esther, "star" or "Ishtar" in Persian. One of the greatest and most essential attributes of God is His sovereignty; God rules over all things and controls all things. God also uses providence to accomplish His will in the world. You won't find the word providence in the Bible. It's like the word Trinity. God directs and uses events to accomplish His own Will which meant: "the providence of God." Romans 8:28 says, "We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." All things are controlled by God to work together to fulfill His eternal purpose for His Will. When you can't explain the trouble you're experiencing, you need to understand the providential power of a sovereign God who controls everything in the universe for our good and His glory. Everything that happens in your life (including trials) somehow fits into the plan of God.