God has a preordained plan to deliver us out of our fiery trials. No matter what you are going through, he has a plan tailored for every difficulty, one that could never be conceived by the human mind.
For example, take the trials that Israel faced in the desert. There was no bread or food of any kind. What committee could have come up with this idea? “Let’s pray that tomorrow we wake up and discover white flakes of food with a taste of honey covering the ground.”
Today I want to speak to believers who are overwhelmed by accumulating afflictions. You are not alone. In the psalms, David tells of being nearly crushed by unbearable troubles. “My heart is severely pained within me, and the terrors of death have fallen upon me. Fearfulness and trembling have come upon me, and horror has overwhelmed me” (Psalm 55:4-5, NKJV).
Search the scriptures, and you will not find anyone who speaks more than David about trusting God. No one opened up more about seeking and waiting on the Lord for strength in times of need.
Faith is a command. Without faith, it is impossible to please God. It is written, “Now the just shall live by faith; but if anyone draws back, My soul has no pleasure in him” (Hebrews 10:38, NKJV).
Unbelief is a bottomless pit of fear and discouragement. It begins with fearing what we cannot see. One fear leads to another, then we begin fearing everything present and future. The result is uncontrollable anxiety and despair. This is not a small issue with God. It is a matter of life and death.
God has embedded in me a dread of unbelief. This dread is the result of searching the scriptures for examples of the dire consequences of unbelief. I thank him for revealing to me the harm and ruin caused by unbelief. We believers have taken this matter too lightly, thinking that God overlooks the doubt of those facing great affliction and hard times.
“Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13 NKJV).
We see in Acts 4 that as Peter and John stood waiting for judgment to be pronounced, the man who had just been healed stood with them. There, in the flesh, was living proof that Peter and John had been with Jesus. Now, as the synagogue rulers looked on “and seeing the man who had been healed standing with them, they could say nothing against it” (Acts 4:14).
The more someone is with Jesus, the more that person becomes like Christ in purity, holiness and love. In turn, his pure walk produces in him a great boldness for God. Scripture says, “The wicked flee when no man pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion” (Proverbs 28:1 NKJV). The word for bold in this verse means “secure, confident.” That’s just the kind of boldness the synagogue rulers saw in Peter and John as they ministered in Acts 4.
Paul said, “To die is gain” (Philippians 1:21 NKJV). That kind of talk is absolutely foreign to our modern spiritual vocabularies. We have become such life-worshippers that we have very little desire to depart to be with the Lord.
Paul was torn. He honestly wrote, “For I am hard-pressed between the two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better” (Philippians 1:23). That said, he thought it best to stay here and “live in the flesh,” knowing the new church needed more teaching and encouragement.
We often approach God with preconceived ideas of how he will receive us. For example, if we have done something to grieve his heart, we may feel that he loves us but will be slow to forgive.
Jesus clears this up with the parable of the prodigal son. The story goes that the young man “arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him” (Luke 15:20 NKJV).
Sadly, great numbers of Christians do not know God’s voice. Some can go for months, even years, without ever receiving an intimate word from the Lord in their inner man. Oh, God did speak to them at one time; but over the years, they’ve learned to silence his voice in their hearts. Others have been turned off by so much foolishness among those who believe that every word that pops into their minds is divine. Such people boast, “God told me”; yet the ‘word’ they hear is only their covetous flesh taking voice!
In desperation, David cried out, “Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications” (Psalm 130:2, NKJV). This sounds to me like the plea of a dying man. David obviously wasn’t just uttering “thought prayers.” He was face down on the ground, broken, contrite, pleading from the very depths of his heart, “O holy God Jehovah, you must hear my cry! I can’t go on any longer. My sin is ever before me, and I’m sinking with fear and dread. Please, God, have mercy on me.”