When Trouble Knocks on Your Door
Being a follower of Christ does not exempt a person from the difficulties of life. This can be easily confirmed by doing a little research into the lives of the first disciples of Jesus. Every one of the twelve apostles (with the exception of the traitor, Judas) faced many hardships while following the Lord, and were eventually martyred for their faith. Jesus had forewarned them, “Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33b NLT) So we should not be surprised or angry when we face difficulties, but instead ask the Lord for the strategy to deal wisely with each situation.
The Bible promises that those who pursue God, His word and His ways, will receive wisdom, grace and God’s help to handle whatever the world and the devil may throw at them. As darkness increases in the earth, it is critical that Christians understand this and know how to access and operate the “weapons of our warfare” (2 Cor. 10:4) that God has provided.
Isaiah prophesied about the coming darkness when he wrote: For behold, darkness will cover the earth And deep darkness the peoples…(Isaiah 60:2 NASB) If we are ignorant of the spiritual weapons that God has made available to His followers, we will be swallowed up in the darkness that will soon overtake the earth, and will react to the coming crises in the same manner as those who have no relationship with God.
The first weapon I will cover in this series will seem like a simple one. Yet it is not easy to employ because it is NOT the NATURAL RESPONSE of human beings when trouble knocks on their door.
What is the NATURAL RESPONSE to a crisis?
- Shock (What is happening to me???)
- Fear/Anxiety (This is terrible but what if this gets worse???)
- Anger (Why is this happening???)
- Finding someone to BLAME (Who caused this???)
- Using the natural mind to try to find a way out
Though these five responses to crisis are very common, God has called His followers to walk in the Spirit and not in the natural manner that is common to unbelievers. We are to use spiritual weapons as we face difficulties. What spiritual weapon can we use in our time of crisis?
The first weapon I am recommending is the weapon of PRAISE to GOD. What is praise? It is simply verbally acknowledging the goodness and power of God in prayer or song. This is NOT the first response of most people to trouble or crisis. But if you will undertake to persistently practice using this weapon until it is your FIRST response to trouble, you can have the same results we see in the Bible!
We can find examples of the use of this spiritual weapon in both the Old and New Testaments. In both cases, the results were the same - supernatural victories were won.
If you will choose to praise God the moment trouble knocks on your door, you will discover that doing so moves you into a position where God can undertake on your behalf. The key is to understand that you are not praising God FOR the problem – you are praising Him because He is well able to deliver you FROM the problem!
In Second Chronicles 20:1-27, we find the account of King Jehoshaphat and the people of Judah being confronted by a coalition of three enemy armies who were ready to invade their land. Their military resources were clearly outnumbered, and they faced an impossible situation. Are you in an impossible situation in your life? Then you need to consider the unusual response to a national crisis that King Jehoshaphat chose.
First, the king had everyone pray and seek the Lord for direction. Then God told them to start singing and praising Him. So, the king ordered that the singers be sent ahead of the army. The Bible tells us “When they began to sing and to praise, the Lord set ambushes against the three armies who had come against Judah, and they were defeated!” (2 CHRON. 20:22) The only military strategy that was employed in that huge battle was the weapon of praise! And that brought supernatural victory over an insurmountable problem. That strategy required faith. Praising God in the face of your crisis and refusing to use fleshly efforts to try to fix it will require great faith on your part. But it will release the power of God over your problem!
The apostle Paul and his companion Silas also found themselves in deep trouble. They were attacked by a mob, falsely accused and dragged to prison where they were chained in leg irons just for preaching the Gospel. They had no way of getting themselves out of that painful situation. Only God and the jailer even knew where they were. In that damp, dark, rat-infested cell, they employed the same spiritual strategy that King Jehoshaphat had used centuries earlier. They began singing praises to God in the midst of trouble.
Acts chapter 16 records this amazing story. Both their fellow prisoners and the jailer heard them singing praises to God. They were bruised, battered and bleeding yet they chose praising God over weeping, whining or complaining. God’s response was to send an earthquake that opened the prison doors and caused their chains to fall off! But that miracle wasn’t the only result. Their jailer was so amazed by what he saw – he begged Paul to tell him how he could be saved. In the end, the jailer and his household were saved and baptized that same night.
Your godly response to trouble and difficulties will not only bring God’s power on the scene to work on your behalf – but it can be used by God to bring others to the Lord.
As the End-times grow worse and worse, people will be watching your life closely. If you, as a Christian, respond the same way the rest of the world responds to the hardships coming on the earth, unbelievers will conclude there is nothing of value to your religious beliefs. Sadly, your life will look just like theirs and no help from heaven will appear on the scene. In addition, the state of the world will continue to deteriorate into a selfish environment characterized by the attitude ”every man for himself.”
While watching the gymnasts who competed in the last Olympic games, I thought about how they practiced for hours each day to train their bodies to do what was unnatural for them. Vaulting off a balance beam while twisting in mid-air before landing on two feet is not natural! It requires incredible focus, desire and perseverance to accomplish that feat. And so it is with our use of the spiritual weapon of praise when faced with trouble that would more naturally elicit a response of fear.
Using the “unnatural” spiritual weapon of praise when trouble knocks on your door takes both faith (an intentional choice to focus on the promises of God’s Word) and perseverance. But doing so will change everything!
Lord, I thank you for loving me and promising to never leave me. I choose to praise you today because you possess all wisdom and knowledge of the situation I am facing, and I believe you are more than able to rescue me from this trouble. Thank you for moving mountains on my behalf and giving me a testimony to share with others of “the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living” according to Psalm 27:13.
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