Divine Intervention – 6 reasons to rest whether He answers our way or not
So when does God intervene in our circumstances? Can we inspire Him to intervene through desperate prayer? Why is it we pray and pray for an outcome only to have it go the complete other direction?
Short answer – I don’t know.
Long answer – Here’s my best shot…6 points.
1. Perspective – God sees everything in series. We see everything in sequence. We don’t know when His intervention is active, meaning He DOES something; or passive, when He doesn’t (apparently) do anything. The key to coming to an answer that you can live with is to recognize your limited perspective and His OMNISCIENCE. He knows everything. We don’t.
2. Relationships – God is working on and in multiple people’s lives during a crisis. You’re not the only one. He may be using the disruption to wake someone up from spiritual death, to re-awaken someone else who has drifted, by encouraging someone else by showing His love for them through others. He could be protecting someone from incredible pain and heartbreak later on….and all through intervening, or not intervening in the same situation. God is all about relationships. Us with Him. And between people.
3. Timing – We want what we want when we want it…..basically now. We can deal with waiting if there is certainty in the outcome at the end of the wait. Death and life after death is at the top of the list of things where God’s perspective on time and ours is way, way different. If we believe that Jesus died and came back to life as a living, breathing human being, then we should take great comfort in His promise of life after death for us too. If God can do it once, He can do it again. If He can do it for one, He can do it for everyone.
4. Goodness – God is good. Do you believe that? If not, you’re going to have a long, confusing journey through life. It wasn’t His idea for death, disease, evil and pain to come into the world. He created life, joy, beauty and love. Believing that God is good, no matter how bad the circumstances, gives us hope.
5. Love – God loves you. He loves me. He loves us enough to give us free will, which required Him to tolerate death, evil and suffering. But He also loves us enough to provide an eternal way out, through Christ’s death and resurrection, we know how He loves us and expect the next life to be pain-free, death-free and spectacular.
6. Trust – With the other points in hand, the final one is trust. God wants you to trust Him. No matter the circumstances, even when He doesn’t intervene, we can be o.k. regardless of the outcome.
Question: Do you believe God intervenes in your circumstances? Does His invisibility build or weaken your faith?
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Responses (2)
Right on, Redge. Prayer is one of the most powerful (and sometimes confusing) part of our faith. Points 4 and 5 are the most significant to me.
Goodness–believing that God is good–speaks to His identity, and as you point out, knowing Him and who He is (and who He’s not) makes all the difference in interpreting things in this life.
Love–believing that God loves us–speaks to our identity in Christ. If we know who He is and therefore, who we are as a new creation in Christ, the rest is just details.
If you can get a handle on those two things, I think you’re 80% ahead of curve, b/c those two things are *that* important, and because everything else can flow from that understanding.
Oh, and I completely believe that He intervenes in our circumstances. Bible study breeds wisdom (and it’s awesome) but life builds faith. It’s only when faith is challenged that it grows and in the miraculous answered prayer or in the midst of the storm that threatens never to go away, either God is specifically and precisely building our faith–molding us more in His image with every success and especially with every failure. (James 1, 2, 5, etc).