Circumstances

While Hubs was away, I shared this devotional with ladies from our Brigade who met to pray for our Soldiers. Today, I am circling back to it, applying truth once again.

The past month has been trying for our family. Circumstances have continually tried to get the best of me – things like deployment changes, preparation and departure for training, professional uncertainties, and potential reorganization. Dealing with those stressors on top of all the regular stuff like kids getting ear infections or pink-eye, relationship issues with friends and relatives, or the car needing repair can really tax a person’s ability to rebound after a hard day.

So, how do we deal with these circumstances? Consider the lives of Esther and Paul.

Esther was a Jewish girl who was born into slavery in Babylon. She was orphaned early in life, and subsequently raised by her elder cousin Mordecai (Esther 2:5-7). Esther was added to the King’s harem, and chosen to be Queen. Risking her own life, she approached the King in court without a summons and foiled Haman’s plan to assassinate all of the Jewish people.

That is quite an emotional roller coaster ride! Yet, she understood the truth that each of those circumstances had been woven together by God to accomplish His purpose, as Esther 4:14 so clearly states, “perhaps you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this.” She was able to rise above her earthly circumstances to see the bigger picture.

Paul had quite an exciting life as well. He chronicled some of his circumstances in his second letter to the Corinthians:
“Five times I received from the Jews thirty-nine lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, a night and a day I have spent in the deep. I have been on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers on the sea, dangers among false brethren; I have been in labor and hardship, through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. Apart from such external things, there is the daily pressure on me of concern for all the churches.”
2 Cor 11:24-28

Then, a few years later, Paul wrote these words:
“I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength.”
Phil 4:11-13

How do we achieve this mindset?

In chapter 12 of A Mother's Heart, Jean Fleming challenges mothers to let God be our only circumstance. In other words, don't be distracted by the little things. Instead, focus on the One who is bigger than and above any circumstance that life may throw at us.

Although circumstances are ever-changing, they don’t change the absolutes – that God loves us and has our best interests at heart, that Jesus desires a relationship with every single person on earth, that there are people hurting who need His touch, and that our purpose is to know God and to make Him known. Like Esther and Paul, we can endeavor to make God our only circumstance. In so doing, the chaos that swirls around us will fade and we will find rest in Him.