Day 17

“The Undetected Sacredness of Circumstances”

“We know that all things work together for good to those who love God.” (Romans 8:28 NKJV)

ARE YOU CONVINCED that every detail of your life is continually woven together? Are you convinced that His designed purpose is your calling through His Spirit? Every circumstance in our lives as followers is ordained of God. In the life of a follower, there is no such thing as chance. God by His protective care brings us into circumstances that we can’t understand, but He understands completely. He brings us to places, among people, and into certain conditions to accomplish a precise purpose through the intervention of His Spirit in us. We must never put ourselves in front of our circumstances and say, “I’m going to manage this matter on my own, I will watch this closely or protect myself from that.” All of our circumstances are in the hand of God, and therefore we never have to think they’re unnatural or unique. Our part in intercessory prayer is not to agonize over how to intervene, but to use the everyday circumstances and people the Holy Spirit puts around us by His intervention to bring them before His throne, and to allow His Spirit in us the opportunity to intervene on their behalf. In this way God will touch the whole world with His Church. We must ask ourselves, are we making the Holy Spirit’s work difficult by being blurry and lacking assurance, or are we attempting to do His work for Him? We must do the human side of the Spirit interceding in and through us—utilizing the circumstances in which we find ourselves and the people who surround us. It’s up to us to keep our awareness and conscious life available for the passion and leading of the Holy Spirit. Then as we raise others to Jesus through prayer, His Spirit intervenes for them. Your intercessions can never be mine, and my intercessions can never be yours, “but the Spirit Himself makes intercession” in each of our lives (Rom. 8:26 NKJV). The Holy Spirit actually takes hold of us in our human frailty to empower us in our weakness by rising up within us, intervening on our behalf, and doing what we can’t do. And without this heavenly Spirit intervention, the lives of others would be left in hardship, poverty and devastation.