LORD OVER CIRCUMSTANCES

Prior to crossing into the Promised land, the nation of Israel was warned by Moses regarding what they would face in Canaan. Moses knew they would fight many battles and that the enemy would try to create confusion, wear them down, and defeat them.

The same is true today. Using the adverse circumstances of everyday life, Satan will constantly try to wear you down physically, mentally, and spiritually until you are so weary, discouraged, and depressed that you are ready to throw your hands up in defeat. He will try to create havoc in the circumstances in your life — bringing affliction and disease upon your body, attacking your children and loved ones, causing strife in your marriage relationship, binding your finances, and creating problems on your job.

He will try to grab hold of your mind in a vise-like grip through fear, worry and doubt, and try to keep your mind in a constant state of turmoil. His strategy is to get you so tired that you are no longer able to resist his attacks and you are caught in a vicious cycle that hinders you from releasing your faith.

Satan’s objective in attacking you through your circumstances is to steal your health, tear apart families, destroy marriages, bind the minds of your children through alcohol and drugs, and keep you in financial bondage:

The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. (John 10:10)

The Apostle Paul told the Corinthians:

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed. (2 Corinthians 4:8-9, NAS)

Paul faced circumstances that were beyond his strength to endure, even to the point of despairing for his own life, but he knew what to do, and placed his faith and hope in God’s hands. He told the believers in Corinth:

We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us. (2 Corinthians 1:8-10, NIV)

No matter what circumstance you are facing, you do not have to be a victim of those circumstances. There is no situation, trial, or persecution that Satan can bring into your life that can defeat you! Paul knew that, and walked in that knowledge. So can you.