What Is God Up To In The World?
Do you know that some of the most perplexing and complicated problems have been solved simply by a person’s focused observation when their thoughts are separated from and untainted by prevailing cultural opinions and influences?
Let’s take for example what a simple observation by a single individual with an unbiased mind can accomplish. Between 1831 and 1854, tens of thousands of people in England alone died of Cholera. In 1854, Doctor John Snow discovered that London’s well water was contaminated and was causing a thirteen year long epidemic of cholera. His discovery at first was discounted by nearly all physicians who at that time held the belief that cholera was caused by miasma (tainted air in the atmosphere).
Countering the skeptics, Snow discovered by collecting simple data that during a large breakout of the disease in the Soho district of London that over 500 people died that lived within 250 yards the Broad Street Water Pump and used it for their drinking water. As a result of this observation it was undeniably proven that polluted water was the cause of cholera. The end result was that millions of lives were saved throughout the world.
Like Doctor Snow, we as Christians are called to clear our minds of faulty, unenlightened opinions that are contrary to God’s truth as revealed in His Word. Our minds are to be enlightened so that at all times our stand and our beliefs are on a strong foundation.
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Romans 12:2, New International Version (NIV)
The world is currently experiencing a historical event like none other in all of human history. In a sense, the entire world has been shut down and no one is untouched by the reality of what is taking place, no matter the race, nationality, Christian or not. No one can say when this cataclysmic event will end or what its ultimate toll in lives and suffering will be.
It is imperative that we acquire God’s understanding that will sustain us during the trials that lay before us. Locking onto God’s viewpoint will also motivate and help us to fulfill our part in what He is doing during this historical occurrence.
We must find rest in the fact that God is not distant or passive nor allowing man to control destiny or history. He is the one who makes history. He never loses control, never wavers, never changes His mind. You can rest assured that what is going on in the world is totally under His complete and total control.
I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things.
Isaiah 45:7, NIV, Emphasis by author
As Doctor Snow did, we too need to stop listening to the skeptics and the noise of the multitude. We can and must rise above the situation in which we find ourselves. As spouses, we must stabilize our home environment so there is an atmosphere of harmony, peace, and a sense of God’s presence. There is only one way that this can be accomplished. For the past nine years of marriage ministry, Esther and I have encouraged and now plead for couples to conduct what we have called “couples’ prayer.” This subject is so important that I allocated an entire chapter in The Fulfilled Marriage: The Three Doors to this topic.
Through praying together, Jesus will actually come into your home to visit you each day and give you assurance of His personal love for you and your family. Once you make praying together a daily habit, He will not only be with you, but you will know beyond a doubt that He is really there. What on earth could be better than that?
For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.
Matthew 18:20, NIV
In this troubled time, God is calling out to His children to pray earnestly, to recommit their life, marriage, and family to His purposes and, most importantly, to stop being influenced by the loud multitude that has no conception of why or even what is taking place on God’s created planet. If Jesus is Lord – and He is – then we must embrace Him and His will in these times. This is both a stressful and troubling time but one that can have great promise for the entire world if we pray!
“When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
2 Chronicles 7:13-14, NIV, Emphasis by author
May God bless and protect you and yours!
Ted and Esther Dean
