COMMENTARY

Don Atkin

CIRCUMSTANCES AND CAMEL HUMPS

Many in our circles are enduring new levels of tribulation (trouble).  We can relate to and identify with these trials.  It is one thing to go through troubles. It is another thing to helplessly watch your loved ones in their circumstances.  Actually, we are not totally helpless.  We can pray, and we do pray.

We have learned that it is best not to pray for the removal of or deliverance from the circumstances.  We pray, with great love and caring, that God will have His way in the midst of the circumstances.  For, God is greater than any of these circumstances.

Since we know that He holds us in the palm of His hand, and that nothing can get to us without going through Him (Our lives are hidden in Him!), we pray that our loved ones will see the Father in their circumstances.

Those who live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.  We enter the kingdom through many tribulations.  God causes all of these things to work together for our good, and nothing can separate us from His love.  We all need to see God in our circumstances. 

It is their humps that hinder camels from passing through the eye of a needle.  We should ask God to reveal the humps that hinder us.  Jesus used the example of a rich man.  While riches can be our humps, there may be other humps that hinder us from the kingdom.  God often uses circumstances (which we usually create for ourselves) to reveal our humps. 

We need to dump the lumps and humps that keep us from the kingdom! 

Perhaps we need to die to some things that we have been willing to die for!

We may never understand our circumstances.  But, we can trust God.  He is purifying and perfecting His chosen ones who will manifest sonship by glorifying our Father in all things.  Be encouraged.

We ourselves boast of you among the churches of God for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that you endure, which is manifest evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you also suffer. – II Thessalonians 1:4-5.