This was a difficult message for me to receive and understand. I have often wondered why sometimes the Lord seems silent instead of responding to my prayers. He doesn’t always move my circumstances the way I ask. I have wondered why it is that some of us struggle with things that don’t change. I just didn’t understand.
Why do some of us become sick, while others do not? Why do some of us have what we need, and others do not? Most of all, why it is that the right thing seems to happen to the wrong people, and the wrong thing happens for the right person?
Why didn’t someone stop Russia from invading and killing the people of Ukraine and destroying their country? How should we feel about that? What should we do? Things like these make no sense to me. But then I learned that the very thing I want from God my situations, He wants from me. Here is what I mean.
There is a parable in Luke 12:32-33 of a rich man who asked Jesus to tell his brother to divide their inheritance. Now that seems fair and right to me. If your parents leave an inheritance, it seems right to me that the siblings who remain should divide the inheritance.
In my view the man wasn’t asking Jesus to do something wrong. It seems like a fair request. Tell my brother to do right. But Jesus responded to the man by saying man, who made Me a judge or an arbitrator over you? That’s all He said. He didn’t doanything. So, I wondered, why did Jesus not make the brother do what was right?
Then in verses 29-33, I found the answer. Jesus will never make you or me or anyone else do anything against what we want to do. He says this to the people who heard how He responded to this man, “Do not seek what you should eat or drink, nor have an anxious mind. But seek the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added to you.”
Here is what made this so difficult for me to understand. I have often wanted the Lord to make others do right. I have wanted Him to change the hearts of others. And especially in close relationships, I have wanted Him to step in and to make people do right by other people. But it seems like He doesn’t hear me.
But He does hear. And He responds to me by helping me to see something important. While I cannot make God move the way I want, I can be to Him the treasure that He wants. When I want Him to move on something I love, He wants me to move my love to Him even more.
When I wanted Him to make my brother do right by me, He wanted me to store up the treasure of doing right by others before Him. When I wanted Him to heal someone from a sickness, He wanted me to store up with Him my reliance on Him for my health and the health of others.
Each time I want Him to right an injustice against me or make someone else do right, I must instead store up with Him the treasure of my own desires to do right by others and do the right things for others.
The Lord may not change the ways of others directly before you. But because He treasures your ways before others, it is His good pleasure to give you the treasures of the Kingdom. He may never change our circumstances, but He will give you enough kingdom treasures to make you learn to live through your circumstance until what is against you changes.
Learn to be the treasure He will store up for Himself in heaven. Adversity can’t live there with you and Him.
Live a Delivered Life. Love you.
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