Pentecost 75 Overwhelmed By Circumstance?

[HKHaugan]

Pentecost 75 Overwhelmed By Circumstance?

When I was in grade school I rode an old yellow county bus back and forth over the red clay roads of Guilford County in North Carolina. When the bus dropped me off at my house in the afternoon I generally ran to the door which was always open, went in and shouted, ‘I’m home.’ My mother would usually reply ‘I’m here.” When she didn’t answer I would look for her and felt uneasy until I found her. Either she was off shopping or washing clothes out back.

Little things like that ring a bell in later years. They remind me of the security that parents offer their children. When they are there you’re covered. When they are not you find you are on your own. But they also remind me that God is always there and if you ask if He’s there His answer is always, ‘Yes.’ “But as God is faithful, our word to you was not Yes and No. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us—by me, Silvanus, and Timothy—was not Yes and No, but in Him was Yes (2 Cor.1:18-19).”

How could Paul be so assured of the presence of God? Not only had he experienced the presence of Jesus on the road to Damascus but He was buoyed by His words, “Then instruct them in the practice of all I have commanded you. I'll be with you as you do this, day after day after day, right up to the end of the age (Matt.28:20 Message Bible)." Not only for individuals and large assemblies but for small groups as well, “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them (Mt.18:20).”

In the most difficult of circumstances God is always there. It is when we are in those circumstances that we feel most alone. For instance, when we are in some physically demanding situation, when the body and the mind are undergoing stress, when critical decisions have to be made and you are the only one that can do it, these are the times when you have to act. What you believe in, who you trust, where you put your faith, these make the difference.

Here’s what Paul encountered, “I've worked much harder, been jailed more often, beaten up more times than I can count, and at death's door time after time. I've been flogged five times with the Jews' thirty-nine lashes, beaten by Roman rods three times, pummeled with rocks once. I've been shipwrecked three times, and immersed in the open sea for a night and a day. In hard traveling year in and year out, I've had to ford rivers, fend off robbers, struggle with friends, struggle with foes. I've been at risk in the city, at risk in the country, endangered by desert sun and sea storm, and betrayed by those I thought were my brothers. I've known drudgery and hard labor, many a long and lonely night without sleep, many a missed meal, blasted by the cold, naked to the weather. And that's not the half of it, when you throw in the daily pressures and anxieties of all the churches. When someone gets to the end of his rope, I feel the desperation in my bones. When someone is duped into sin, an angry fire burns in my gut (2Cor.11:23-29).”

What Paul faced, he faced by faith in the Lord Jesus. It was the recognition that the physical circumstance of the moment and even the unseen pressures don’t define or control who and what you are. It is who you trust in, the One in whom you have faith to handle the unseen conflict within while you are going through the circumstance that determines the reality of who you really are. This is how Paul dealt with life. Jesus told Paul face to face about the immoveable thorn in Paul’s side, “My grace is enough; it's all you need. My strength comes into its own in your weakness (2Cor.12.9).” Grace, that indomitable quality of God’s acceptance of us, His assurance of His presence, the quality that sustains the universe holding everything seen and unseen together, that is the strength Paul knew in the Lord. And that is how we all are held together. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God…(Eph.2:8).”

Stay tuned……..