What Does God's Will Have To Do With My Circumstances?

We’ve been talking about God’s Will for the past 4-5 Sundays. Today I ask the question, “What does God’s Will have to do with my circumstances in my everyday life?”

God answers our prayers all the time. But many of those times we don’t even realize it was God trying to get our attention. Listen to this true story:

The name of the church was Almighty God Tabernacle, a strange name for some.

It was late on a Saturday night, and the pastor of this tabernacle sat at his desk at the church, refining the next day’s sermon. He suddenly decided to call home to check on his wife. He dialed the number and listened to the phone ring…and ring…and ring — certainly he’d called the wrong number, he thought. Where else would his wife be on a Saturday night?

He called the number again and found his wife at the other end of the line. He laughed when he thought about the person he must’ve disturbed so late in the evening.

Not long after that, the pastor received a call from a man who wondered if a phone call had been placed to him from this number. “Oh, you must be the one,” the pastor said, laughing, and began to apologize for phoning the wrong number.

“There’s no need to apologize,” the man replied, and began to tell the story of that evening. “You see, that evening I sat in my living room, seriously contemplating suicide. I told God, ‘If you’re really there, please show yourself to me, and I won’t kill myself.’ Just then the phone rang. When I looked at the caller I.D., it read, ‘Almighty God.’ I was afraid to answer the phone.' So, today I finally got the courage to call the number back. Thank you, for saving my life.” Circumstance???

Many times, we pray and ask for God’s help, or His assistance, or for His Will to be done and we don’t even realize it’s God when our prayers are answered. We don’t make the connection. You see, circumstances aren’t always just circumstances. We have to learn to see God at work. And that’s what God is going to teach us in this message today.

A lot of times in life we come across some confusing circumstance. The doctor finds something unusual during routine lab work. We’re offered a promotion, but it requires more travel. We obey what we sense God wants us to do, but we sometimes face criticism and opposition.

We can feel overwhelmed by our circumstances because we don’t know how things will turn out in the future. If we knew, we could make decisions with confidence. So, what do we do? We live by faith, trusting in the one Person who knows the future and who loves us with an unending love. Today we use Romans 8 to help us understand all this.

READ Romans 8:26. What do we do if we don’t know what God wants? Paul says, “we do not know what we should pray for as we should, but the Holy Spirit does. Did you catch that? You might not have ever thought of the Holy Spirit like that. But it is the Holy Spirit that puts on our heart what to pray.

WE’RE NOT ALONE! When we pray and seek God, His Holy Spirit intercedes on our behalf. There’s no one better to pray with us than the One who perfectly knows the mind and will of God. Think about that the next time you pray. You are not alone as you pray. God’s Holy Spirit is directing your thoughts and prayers.

READ v. 27. The Holy Spirit knows the heart and mind of God. He understands how God intends to work in our lives. He knows how God will even use our circumstances for our good and for God’s glory. The Holy Spirit is never going to be caught by surprise or bewildered by our circumstances like we often are. He will guide us as we pray for God’s Will.

I want you to think about this when you pray. If you are like me, many times I pray and ask God for what I think would be the best for someone. That makes sense. If we pray for someone, we pray for what we think would be the best thing for them. But if you read Ephesians 3:20, it might change the way you pray.

Eph.3:20 – “Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.” Did you catch that? Infinitely more. What we are asking for when we pray, even though we feel it is the best, might be far beneath what God wants to do for those we pray for. So how do we solve that?