When A Hopeless Situation Gets Worse Pt. 2 — Morning Devotions

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Transcript

Yesterday, I said, What do you do when the hopeless situation you’ve got gets worse? Maybe you pray and pray and your situation doesn’t change. I want you to remember that when God says no to your situation, he always says yes to you. He will always provide you with the increased power and strength to endure that difficulty and you will have a sense of presence and give you His peace. It’s just a fact of life that God is not going to remove all these hopeless circumstances from our lives. It’s not an indicator that God doesn’t love you. It’s just this indicator that we live in a very fallen and disappointing world, and that’s really all the more reason for us to need Him. It’s amazing sometimes God allows the brokenness to continue so that we can experience His closeness and this weakness that we have is there so we can experience his strength.

When A Hopeless Situation Gets Worse Pt. 1 — Morning Devotions

Now we don’t understand how that works, but the Bible says we can depend on it. So what I’m saying this morning, God may not change your hopeless situation, but He’s ready to move in your life. And although He might be saying no to your circumstances, he’s saying yes to you.

God doesn’t waste anything and He doesn’t waste time

In fact, the situation may not change, but you will change because amazingly as it sounds, God will never waste the hopeless situations or the pain that we go through, because let’s look at it. Paul says in Philippians 1:6, I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue His work until it’s finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns. So that says God is at work within you. There’s a work that He started, and God will see that it gets completed because God is always more concerned with our character development, than he is with our circumstances. Not an easy thing, but that’s what He is more concerned with – our character more than with our comfort.

It means saying, look, Lord, my life is yours. I agree to walk with you and being obedient to you. Paul said, I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in Him, and then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.

So how do you react to distressing circumstances in your life? And if you read the New Testament, you’ll discover in Philippians that Paul had a terrible situation. There were people who were out to get him to smear his motives, to wear him down. He had persecution, mistreatment, and, and then he landed in a Roman prison cell, and it would have been very easy for Paul to become bitter and angry, and he didn’t go the easy route. He chose to rise above those circumstances and so it is today – we may have financial burdens or family conflict, even church conflict or some instability in our careers, but we need to understand that we are not in control of everything that goes on – because God is.

That same man Paul says we know that for those who love God all things work together for good for those who are called according to His purpose. So Paul’s life must have had some quiet calmness about it, and that’s the trait I think we should aim at having. If we believe that God orders all our circumstances to accomplish His purpose, then we can live in trust because God is in control. You are sustained by that power, no matter how hard life becomes.

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We are linked to the life and power of Jesus Christ because let’s face it, God’s knowledge is unlimited. We think we know so much, but God knows the past, the present. He knows the future, and so we can be thankful to Him that there is no limit to God’s power. God can’t contradict Himself. He’s not like a man that lies. He can’t sin.

Job in the Old Testament says, I know that you can do everything, and that no thought can be withheld from you. He had a terrible time in life too, but he understood there’s no such thing as an impossible situation. I am the Lord. I change not. That’s Malachi 3:6. So God is the God of love. That’s what He does.

Let’s Pray

Well, dear Lord, I know that some feel they’re not worth anything. They sense their failures and how sad that is, and I ask today that you will come to these people in a significant way, because your touch brings reassurance and strength in the midst of our circumstances, amen.