Let God make sense of our circumstances

Pastor Kevin Wade

Let's be honest – nobody wakes up and says, "I hope I suffer today." We don't. We want smooth roads, good health, and easy relationships. But if you follow Jesus long enough, you're going to hit a wall. And what you do when you hit that wall will shape who you become.

As I've been studying Acts chapter 4, I keep coming back to one moment that just wrecks me. Peter and John have just been arrested, dragged before the religious leaders, threatened, and told to never speak the name of Jesus again. And when they're released, here's what they do: They go straight back to their faith community.

When hard times come, run toward your church family, not away from them.
Too many of us do the opposite. Things get hard, life falls apart, and we quietly slip out the back. We tell ourselves we'll come back when things are better. But the apostles modeled something different. They walked back in and said, "Here's what happened." And the church prayed together.

I saw this play out on a recent trip to Romania. I went with my dad – his first time out of the country – and neither of us were totally sure why we were there. We weren't exactly skilled construction workers. But God had something planned that we couldn't have scripted. One of the men hosting us had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes shortly before we arrived. My dad, who had received the same diagnosis a couple of years earlier, was able to sit down with him, his wife, and his daughter-in-law and say, "I've been there. Here's how you manage it. Here's what to watch for. You're going to be okay."

That's the body of Christ doing what it's supposed to do. That diagnosis wasn't something my dad would have chosen. But God used it. Your suffering isn't wasted – it becomes the comfort you can offer someone else.

Now back to Acts 4. Here's what gets me. When the church gathers and begins to pray after the arrest, they don't ask God to punish their enemies. They don't beg for an easy out. They don't ask to be spared from more suffering. They pray something completely different. They start by praising God – reminding themselves and each other that He is the Creator, He is sovereign, He laughs at the vain schemes of those who think they can stop His purposes.

Before they asked God for anything, they acknowledged who God is.
That's something I want to challenge us to actually practice. The next time we sit down to pray – especially when things are hard – spend real time just telling God who He is before you bring your list of requests. It changes the whole atmosphere of the conversation.
And then, after all that praise, here's what they asked for: boldness. Not relief. Not protection. Boldness. They said, "God, give us the confidence to keep speaking even though it's dangerous."

That's a tough prayer. But it's the right one.

Here are a few practical things to discern from this chapter of Acts:

• Run toward community. When life gets hard, resist the urge to isolate. Call someone in your church family. Let people know what you're going through.
  
  
• Praise before you petition. Start your prayers by acknowledging who God is – Creator, Sovereign, the One who raised Jesus from the dead. Let that shape what you ask for.
  
  
• Pray for boldness, not just comfort. Ask God for the courage to keep talking about Jesus – not across the world necessarily, but across the street, across the hallway, to the person sitting in the next room.
  
  
• Trust that your hard seasons have a purpose. The diabetes diagnosis, the arrest, the persecution – God doesn't waste any of it. Suffering produces endurance, and endurance shapes character, and character makes us more like Jesus.

Romania taught me something I can't shake: communism lasted 40 years. The church of Jesus continues. The schemes of men are temporary. The purposes of God are eternal.
Stay faithful. Stay with your people. And keep praying – even when it's hard. God isn’t aloof. He’s here. He’s near, ready to show Himself present, responsive and good – faithful to His promises.