This series of articles is written by Dr Peter Masters, and is taken from https://metropolitantabernacle.org/articles/imagining-the-lords-interventions/
For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. (2 Timothy 1.7).
How we view and talk about God’s dealings with us from day to day can have a considerable effect upon our openness to his guidance in the great decisions of life. Many Christians have picked up a manner of thinking and speaking known as pietistic speech, which is very damaging to the perception of genuine guidance. These friends constantly ascribe all kinds of everyday events to the special and direct intervention of the Lord, as though their lives were filled with minor miracles. They believe this way of speaking is ‘spiritual’, and just what the Lord wants to see in his people. However, it frequently leads to a form of spiritual ‘superstition’ in which Christians interpret their perceived interventions by God as signals of guidance.
In a previous article, reference was made to Matthew 6.25-34, where the Lord gave the rule which his disciples should follow, saying:
Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? . . . But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness . . . Take therefore no thought for the morrow . . . The apostle Paul tells us that God’s power and blessing flowed most of all when he was weak and disadvantaged. He tells us about the thorn in his flesh permitted by God in order to counteract the pride he may have experienced as the result of the great revelations given to him, then he concludes –
Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong (2 Corinthians 12.9-10).
Paul also shows that believers are often called to endure hostility and unreasonableness, saying, ‘Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil: the Lord reward him according to his works: of whom be thou ware also’ (2 Timothy 4.14-15). Whatever Alexander did, the apostle was not delivered from his bitter hostility, and he warned believers of all ages to watch out for such a man. In the same passage Paul refers back to his first trial in Rome when no one stood with him, remembering that – ‘Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me’ (2 Timothy 4.17).
In 2 Corinthians 11 the apostle describes his ‘stripes above measure’, how he had been imprisoned many times, beaten with rods, stoned, shipwrecked three times, and suffered danger, treachery, exhaustion, sleeplessness, pain, extreme hunger, thirst, cold, and exposure. None of these trials had been averted, and so the story of his life contrasts sharply with the accounts of non-stop, divinely provided comforts which some speak so excitedly about today.
Troubles came frequently to Paul because he served the Lord, and although these were not always averted, he was always strengthened to withstand them until God’s moment of deliverance came. We notice also that when God intervened to deliver Paul from his first imprisonment, it was specifically for a spiritual purpose, namely – ‘that by me the preaching might be fully known, and that all the Gentiles might hear: and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion’ (2 Timothy 4.17).
Significant interventions give assurance
As we asserted at the beginning of this article, a selective, trivialising view of God’s providential dealings with us profoundly affects our approach to guidance, distorting our Christian perspectives, and causing us to read all the wrong messages into God’s providences. From earliest times God’s people were taught to take a far higher view of God’s conspicuous providential overrulings showing that they were given for spiritual purposes.
. . . to be continued