God’s Power is Greater than My Circumstances
OPENING PRAYER:
Gracious Father, help me to keep my eyes focused on you, even when it feels like there is no way out of my circumstances. Guide me to discover your loving and supporting hand that upholds me every day.
You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. 1 John 4:4 (NIV)
REFLECT:
Feeling hopelessly trapped by present circumstances is undoubtedly close the pinnacle of human emotion. The feeling of powerlessness, futility, and angst, mark the existence of a people enslaved or imprisoned by immovable constraints. In short, it’s finding yourself stuck, with no visible means of escape. Without question, this was the daily experience of Israel during their Egyptian captivity. Hopelessly caught in the snare of Pharaoh, with no human means of deliverance.
Life today can feel much the same for you and me. Feeling ourselves to be a casualty of life issues like failing health, a dead-end job, lonely singleness, a troubled marriage, kids or the absence of kids, financial pitfalls, as well as drugs and alcohol addiction, just to name a few. We can feel trapped by so much of life. And if we fail to lift our eyes and looking to God, we often fall into the trap of despair. Too often we rely on personal power overcome, not God. We suffer a myopic life view, where our problems loom so largely, that we fail to focus on God and his powerful ability to change our circumstances.
Early in our marriage, my wife and I had a strong desire to have children, maybe three or four! We prayerfully trusted God to provide, and He graced us with a beautiful daughter born just a year later. We were blessed and overwhelmed by God’s goodness for this new life entrusted to us. Life was sweet! But then, six-weeks later, an unexpected medical condition struck my wife and we nearly lost her. With a ton of prayers lifted, and some phenomenal doctors, her life was saved. But only by undergoing a total hysterectomy. We were grateful but mourned our loss. Having more children now felt impossible. It seemed to us that God had placed within our hearts the desire for more children, but now that was blocked! Adoptions cost thousands of dollars and that was financially out of reach for us. Or, at least that’s the way it appeared to us at the time. We could never have imagined that 20-years later, we would become a family of eight! This was not devised by human effort, but by God making a way.
APPLY:
Set aside some time today to consider 2 or 3 ways that God made a way for you in the past. Then focus your prayer on God and his power to make a way for you through your present circumstances.
CLOSING PRAYER:
Lord, please help us to deal with the circumstances that life thows in our paths today, and do things to honor you. Amen.