The more you focus on your difficulty, your hardship or even your pain when you’re suffering, the more you focus on what happens, the bigger it gets. Well, I have been going through this and I’ve been going through that. And if your friends listen to you.
Oh, so sorry. I feel so sorry for you. The more pity they give you, the bigger it gets and the bigger it gets, the more you doubt God.
And so the issue is focus. And I think when I think about gas, I think of many instances in the Bible. But one of the primary ones is Daniel and the Lion’s Den. And so the Bible says he slept with the lions all night.
If he had been focused on lions, he would have been sleeping. He had been over in the corner. Some were all crouching down, hoping that they wouldn’t see him or something. And it brings me back to one of my most favorite illustrations when God just did something for me in one of the most difficult times of my life.
It was up to the very top and this lady came to see me and she said, I want you to have lunch with me and then I want to take you up to my apartment and show you something. What? She was about 70 something and I was 30 something. I felt pretty safe.
And so. So we ate lunch and I went to see it and I was going through a very difficult time at church, they were doing their best trying to get rid of me. And so she we walked in.
She said, I don’t sit down. I want to show you something.
I walked out and showed me this picture of Daniel in the lion’s den and she said, No, son, I want you to tell me what you see.
So I said, Well, and I can still remember looking at that picture. I see this line over here looking up and this one looking down and see the bones. And so I thought of everything this little lady get positive thought about. And I said she said, well, do you see anything else?
I said, no. She said, if you’ll notice. And the picture had all these lines that Daniel had his hands behind him. He’s looking at this ray of light.
She said, What I want you to see is Daniel doesn’t have his eyes on the lions, but on God, it was like, God, hug me that day.
Because from that moment on, all of my fears disappeared and all of my uncertainties and a lot of other things probably disappeared because she got my focus right.
When you focus on the trouble and the heartache and the burden and the pain, it gets bigger and we feel less confident, less significant and overwhelmed.
Because remember this, Daniel was looking at omnipotence. Who created Alliance? He could shut the lion’s mouth, he got to kill everyone, I’m in a second, he just let them hang around while Daniel went to sleep at night. And before we probably went to sleep, and when he woke up, he went up and looked up and this reminded you of God that he was where he was because he had obeyed God and he had delivered him.
God always operates on the basis of principles, not on the basis of feelings and how we feel and our own principles. For example, the simplest one is we read what we saw more than we saw later than we saw.
God always operates. He does never change that.
And so, for example, one of those principles is obey God, leave all the consequences down. That means I’m going to do what he says.
I’ll let him take care of the consequences. God always acts. For example, he says one of those principles is that God acts in behalf of those who wait for him.
And so if I’m going to act on the basis of principle, then I know I’m going to be heading in the right direction, doing the right thing, because God operates on principles.
And that’s the reason you and I can learn how to relate to him.
Because if I don’t understand his ways, then I’m going to say, God, what are you up to? Well, he’s just out there doing and being who he says he is.
And so you could come up with most any problem and I believe give me a little time and I could come up with a principle and say, if you will obey this principle, watch what happens, because God wants us to obey him and listen, leave the consequences to him. Let me ask you a question. Is there any consequence of your obedience God can’t handle, right?
None. He handle every one of them? Well, if I obey him and leave the consequences to him, here’s what happens. I’m going to be able to have peace and a sense of joy and confidence and assurance. It doesn’t make any difference what’s going on because he’s in control. And if I’m obeying him, he’s already taking care of it.
They can listen. The only thing that can happen in your life is what God allows.
If you’re a child of God, what he allows, he allows for reason. I may not like it. And there have been lots of times I’ve told him I didn’t like it. And you know what he said?
Nothing. Nothing. He just let me hammer away with it and deal with it until I finally said, Yeah, you’re right, I don’t like this. And no, you’re right, because that’s what your word says.
And even though I don’t like it, I want you to have your way, no matter what, when you’re living with the guilt in your life, are you’re living with sin in your life, you’re going to have a very difficult time trusting God because sin short circuits the power of God in a person’s life.
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