WHEN GOD TROUBLES YOU

If you believe in Murphy’s Law, then you know, “If anything can possibly go wrong, it will”! From personal experiences, we have all felt the casualties of when we least expect it, disaster in some form or another, always seems to hits! Well, let me remind you of another law that is at work all around us, yet we seldom give credit to the one who’s credit is due. That law, is the law of mercy and grace. You see when we least expect it, God delivers something good to us and we are surprised as His kind fortune drops in on us.  Yet fortune has nothing to do with it really. For it is the same act of God that brings the sun up and gently sets it down in the evening, day after day. It is an act that was set into motion when the first man and women sinned and suddenly found themselves in a grim situation brought on through their disobedience to God, yet even in their punishment they found mercy and grace that sustained them during their lifetime of reaping from the consequences of their actions.

 

There were other times and other people that God would shed mercy on and send grace to sustain them in their own difficult times.  Job said to his wife, when she was begging him to curse God and die over his grim situation in Job 2:10, that she was talking foolish. He ask her, should they not only receive good from God and not trouble as well…and by his meager understanding of God, He did not sin by what he said. Job understood that God teaches by trials, and every trial should be looked upon as sent, to teach us some lesson of importance. For the trials of the saints, what a different book the Bible would have been without those examples. How many records of the trials and troubles of believers are there today for us to turn to in times of grief, pain, trials and hardships that we do not understand. Who can be in trouble today, and not find a companion or kindred spirit from someone in God's Word, if we will go to it. The example that Job gives us alone is enough to encourage us to trust and wait until God reveals His plans in our situation. Everything Job had, was taken from him but his wife, and she appears to have been spared, to have been nothing more than trouble and a tempter for him. For all the ravaging of Job’s trials, the heartache and loss of his children, the physical discomfort beyond what most of us have or will ever experience, Job knew that somehow, in some way, the hand of God was involved in his test and that God had fenced up His way and had set darkness in his path according to Job 19:8. For many those trials would have turned them away from God, yet it did not Job, but only served to strengthen his inner trust, so that he still declared, "For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another." Job 19:25-27.

There are those times however, when God simply fences in our way and He sets darkness in our path. Yet it is through those times that we learn that God is working out other things through the dark moments and our understanding is enlarged to embrace new dimensions of His will and purpose for us. God will never sanction any evil or sin no matter what the situation, for He is Holy. He will however allow and even send afflictions, bereavements, losses, crosses, pains and sorrows. At times, likewise, he gives liberty to our enemies, and allows them to trouble us, and for a time to prevail against us. He sends good and evil sometimes in quick succession. For instances, He sent the fish to preserve the life of Jonah, and grew a gourd over his head to provide him shelter and screen him from the hot sun. But He also sent the worm to destroy the gourd which in turn destroyed his shelter to teach Jonah a life lesson. Who can read the life of Jacob or Joseph, of David or Daniel, and not see that the Lord sends good and evil upon his people.

 

As we learn gradually what we must, we also learn to cease our struggle and yield to His workings in us, and then and only then do we no longer think of our restraints in terms of punishment and judgment, but in pure "the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby." Heb. 12:11. For it is during those tight restraints and dark times, that we might share the experience that Job went through, when for a time he had no conscious sense of His presence, and he cried out, "Oh that I knew where I might find Him! That I might come even to His seat! Will He plead against me with His great power?  No; but He would put strength into me. - Behold, I go forward, but He is not there; and back-ward, but I cannot perceive Him; on the left hand, where He works, but I cannot behold Him: He hides Himself on the right hand, that I cannot see Him.  But He knows the way that I take: when He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold." Job 23:3, 6, 8-10, and this sweet friend is how you and I must look at our situations on every side. Like Paul we will affirm the same truth that He himself learned as he endured hardship, and declare, "Having come to this settled and firm persuasion concerning this very thing, namely, that He who began in you a work which is good, will bring it to a successful conclusion right up to the day of Christ Jesus." Phil. 1:6. So please sweet friend remember this, that in spite of your prayers and best efforts, as you see your situation worsen as God may be what appears to you, troubling you, hang in there, pray with a greater confidence and embrace those new dimensions of His will and purpose for your situation and know, just know that as you turn to Him through them, you will move them with more ease and peace, never to forget again that sometimes, God takes you through those troubled waters, not to drown you, but to cleanse you!

Loving on You,

Bren