Sometimes God has to let you get down long enough before he makes himself locatable. Dr. Tony Evans talks about God's purpose behind our problems.
He wants to know that you want him and not just want his stuff. This is the alternative broadcast featuring the timeless biblical teachings from the archives of Dr. Tony Evans. When your only options are bad ones and there doesn't seem to be any way out of the circumstances you're facing, that could be exactly where God wants you.
Why? Let's find out as we hear from Dr. Evans in this classic message. In 2nd Chronicles 15, we're told in verse 3, For many days Israel was without the true God, without a teaching priest, and without law. Verse 5 says, In those times there was no peace to him who went out or to him who came in, for many disturbances afflicted all the inhabitants of the lands. Nation was crushed by nation and city by city, for God troubled them with every kind of distress. It says there was no peace to him who went in or to him who came out. No peace means they were living in conflict. There was conflict.
It says, first of all, there was personal conflict, no peace to him. You see, for many of us, the problem of us getting along with other people is our inability to get along with ourself. Many of the problems of coping today are people unable to live with themselves.
That's why they often go to devices to help them to cope. That's why they become dependent, because they can't live with themselves, and so they are dealing with inner conflict. But not only was there no peace to him, it says there was no peace to him who came out or who went in.
That is, when he left home and when he came back home. So there was conflict in the family. When you look at the amount of divorces, when you look at how many times people have been divorced, when you look at the way people talk about each other, the way couples curse at each other, the way they demean one another, then you see the parent-child conflict, and it goes on and on while the mops keep slinging and swinging. And there was conflict not only when the individual left, but he says when he came back in, when he entered back into his home, there was more conflict or disturbances. It says city rose up against city and nation rose up against nation. There was cultural conflict. We'll say city, urban conflict, racial conflict, community and police conflict, on and on in our cities where safety is a big issue, there's conflict.
Then it says nation rose up against nation. International conflict. Right now, Washington can't get along with Washington. There is conflict and it just subsides for a while and it bounces back on and on and on. Personal conflict, family conflict, cultural conflict, on and on and on and on and on. And many disturbances, it says, affected all the inhabitants of the land. You and I are affected by not only what's happening with us, but what happens to others that affect us. Many disturbances. That was the situation.
Ah, but here's where it gets interesting. The end of verse 6 says, for God troubled them. For God troubled them with their distresses. The end of verse 6.
Now, wait a minute. I would have thought with all that chaos, it would have said the devil troubled them. I would have thought with all this confusion, verse 6 would end by saying the devil troubled them with every kind of distress, but it says God troubled them.
So now we're going to mess with your thinking a little bit. Because a lot of things you're blaming on the devil is God. There was no peace, the family disintegration, conflict, urban conflict, international conflict, and God says, if you're going to blame somebody, blame me. See, a lot of us are blaming the wrong person.
Because here's how it works in the world. If God is your problem, only God is your solution. If God is the cause, only God is the cure.
You say, but wait a minute. How can all this evil be given over to God? Because God uses the devil to carry out his dirty work. Because even the devil is not the devil, the devil is God's devil, because the devil can only do what God allows him to do. So even if the devil is messing with you, it's by divine permission. For God troubled them with every kind of distress.
Let me put it another way. The spiritual always precedes the natural. The spiritual governs the natural. The heavenly determines the earthly. So if you have an issue on earth that has been caused by heaven, trying to solve it on earth is a waste of time. If it's an issue on earth caused by heaven, God troubled them, then you need heaven to come to earth to fix the issue on earth that heaven is responsible for, even if it's a problem because they were living in distress.
What most people do is spend all their time on earth trying to fix earth when the problem didn't originate in earth or on earth. For God troubled them with every kind of distress. Or as I like to say, everything visible and physical is preceded by something invisible and spiritual.
So if you want to fix the visible and physical, you must address the invisible and spiritual that is the root of the visible and physical that you are needing to address. For God troubled them with every kind of distress. He gives three reasons in verse three for this calamity. For many days, that is for an extended period of time, Israel was without the true God.
Okay, problem number one. For many days, an extended period of time, Israel was without the true God. Israel was not without religion. Israel was not without church attendance. Israel was not without choir singing. Israel was not without religious programming. It says Israel was without the true God.
The key word is the word true. They kept the name of God. They kept praying to God.
They kept religious activity. They were doing all of that without the true God. So evidently you can have church without God. Evidently you can have choirs without God, preachers without God, programs without God. Because they carried on their religious activity, but without the true God. Everybody attended church but God.
Well now, watch this. If you don't have the true God, that means you have a false God. Because true, the opposite of true is false. The biblical word for a false God is idol. That's the biblical word for a false God. An idol is any noun, person, place, thing, or thought that you look to as your source. An idol is any person, place, thing, or thought that becomes your source.
You look to it first for your solutions. Then that thing you look to first as your source is now your God. Now in third world countries we would condemn their idolatry. They may worship trees or rocks or nature or the sun.
We would condemn that. But in the West we have designer idols. We don't worship trees and rocks.
We have American idols. Let me look at some of the idols that we have that have replaced the true God. We got the idol of, oh let's see, race. Where my color trumps God. Where people get offended when you correct their blackness with the Bible. Where folk get offended when you correct their whiteness with the Bible. Because their race is more important than God's rules. Where they wind up worshipping black being beautiful or white being right rather than both having to be biblical. Whenever your race is your source of your ultimate identity, your race is an idol and you are a false worshiper. There is nothing wrong with being proud of your race.
There is everything being wrong with being so proud of your race that when God speaks into it, God has to adjust to your color scheme. And then that makes your race an idol. Oh, let's look at another designer idol. Politics is a designer idol. Where you think God rides the backs of a donkey or an elephant. Politics is a designer idol when you're more Democrat than God. When you're more Republican than God. When God says one thing but you're still talking about what your party says. In Ezekiel 43, God says, how dare you bring the throne of your king and set it next to my throne.
Like we are equals. When God speaks, elephants got to sit down and donkeys got to back up. It's okay to be a Democrat. It's okay to be a Republican as long as the Bible can overrule either or both.
God has spoken on this issue and the party must adjust, not the kingdom of God. Why were they worshipping a false god? Well, verse 3 tells us, because the second thing it tells us is there was not a teaching priest.
There was no teaching priest. It didn't say there were no preachers. He just said they weren't talking about nothing.
They were talking smack. It says because the priests weren't teaching, they didn't know who the true God was. The purpose of the declaration of God's word is to tell you what God says, not endorse what you think. The worst thing in the world is to tell somebody what God says and then have them say, but I think. You don't know enough to think when God has spoken. When God has spoken, you adjusted what he says, not what you think. You have people who are tampering with the word of God and ultimately it's because there are not enough people in the pulpit who are declaring, thus say I'm the Lord.
They're giving you human opinions. My opinion, nobody's opinion when it conflicts with God is to be considered as truth. The Bible says let God be true and every man a liar. But because the pulpits got raggedy when it came to proclaiming the word of God, the people were raggedy when it came to their view of God. God has been dumbed down in the culture because he's dumbed down in the church. A lot of these problems that we have in our culture is because the church, Christians have not risen to the occasion to be what God has called us to be just showing up in the public square.
So what is our responsibility as leaders or even friends? We'll find out in just a moment as we continue this first lesson from a classic sermon series called Igniting Kingdom Prayer. Be sure to tune in each day as we explore how to pray with the power that can move mountains, how to solve problems, heal relationships, and even change God's mind. And if you contact us soon, you can get your own copy of this complete two-volume, 12-message audio series on CD or instantly downloadable MP3s, along with a copy of a powerful companion book, Kingdom Prayer.
Together, these resources will give you a practical, comprehensive overview of prayer, teaching you how to pray productively, touching heaven to change earth. Get this special Kingdom Prayer bundle along with our thanks when you make a contribution to help keep the alternative broadcast coming your way on this station. Just visit tonyevans.org or reach out to our Resource Center for some in-person help at 1-800-800-3222. That's 1-800-800-3222 or online at tonyevans.org.
Well, let's get back to today's message. If your life is falling apart and you're in personal distress, then my responsibility, a leader's responsibility, even another believer's responsibility, is to take the Word, show you what God says about whatever you're dealing with, then give you practical steps to apply what God said, then ask the Holy Spirit to take your practical steps of obedience based on what God said to bring change in your life. If you came to me with your family and your family's falling apart, I'm supposed to take the Word, another leader or believer is supposed to take the Word, show you what God says about what you're dealing with in your family, give you practical steps to implement what God said about what you're dealing with, then ask the Holy Spirit to take your obedience to what God says and bring about change in your home. If a group of church leaders come to me and say, My church is falling apart, I'm supposed to take the Bible, show what God says about whatever the cause of the church falling apart, give practical steps for applying the Word of God to whatever the situation is, then ask the Holy Spirit to take the obedience based on His Word and bring about unity, harmony, and benefit to the church.
What happens if your nation is falling apart? You don't change books. You take the same book, since the Bible says God created government, and you show them the cause based on the Word of God of what the nation is. By the way, all these issues, immigration and all these issues we deal with, the Bible has answers to all of them. All of those issues we're dealing with, the Bible, and the thing is, the Bible has simple answers to them, answers you can do quickly, answers that don't cost an arm and a leg.
The Bible's got all these answers, but because folks change books, they have to have all these long meetings to try to come up with solutions. But no, you don't change books. You show them what God says about what's wrong in the nation. You give them practical steps to implement what God says in the nation. You ask the Holy Spirit to take their obedience and to bring about change in the nation, because God knows how to do that in a whole nation when folks pay attention to what He says and begin to implement that. But what we got is a generation of folk who change books. They use this book for some things. They use human understanding for other things. They use popular opinion for other things, and they wind up living in distress. And trust me, God's not going to skip the church house to fix the White House.
If He can't even get His people to pay attention. And then, sometimes, it's not that we deny the word, it's just that we mix it. The Bible says, you do nullify my word with your tradition. When you start adding stuff that I didn't add, or taking away stuff, in fact, the book of Revelation closes with a curse.
Cursed is anyone who adds to this word or who takes away from it. When we try to mix human opinion with divine revelation, you just invited a curse. So I'm trying to help you understand how the word works. The third thing it says is there was no law. You see, when there's no true God, no teaching priests, there are no rules. People make up their own rules.
You see? They either have no rules, or they have their own made-up rules. You know, they walk around saying, I know my truth. You know your truth. No, it's either truth, or it's not truth. One and one equals two. One and one equals two when you feel it, and when you don't feel it. One and one equals two.
One and one equals two when you like it, and one and one equals two when you don't like it. We want to adjust truth. We want to make truth relevant. It's okay to be relevant as long as you're not changing truth. And truth is whatever God says on any subject about what he speaks. That's truth. So if God says it, that is the word about it. Science just has to catch up.
Was there a solution? Now that you understand how the world works, the spiritual governs it. If God has caused it, you don't know anybody who can fix it.
Unless it's God using that person. Verse four gives us a solution. Because verse four says, But in their distress they turned to the Lord God of Israel, they sought him, and he let them find him.
Ah, key word, distress. In their distress they turned to the Lord God of Israel. That's the same word of verse six. God caused their distress.
Verse four says, But in their distress they turned to the Lord God. Which means God will let it get bad enough long enough till you wake up. He'll let us get addicted. He'll let us get into all the consequences of our sin. He won't let you go down and down and down and down till the only way you can look is up.
He won't let anybody fix it, any money be able to get you out of it. He will let the distress go down. But in their distress, when things got deep enough, bad enough, long enough, it says they called on, here it is, the Lord God.
Oh, watch this now. Elohim is power. That's, in the beginning, Elohim created the heavens and the earth.
That's power. Yahweh, or Jehovah, is relationship. See, everybody wants Elohim. See, we're going to be praying all year for Elohim.
Show us your power, show us your power. But not everybody wants Jehovah. See, everybody wants God's power, but not everybody wants God's relationship. And you can't get the power if you don't want the relationship. You don't want intimacy, but you want deliverance. You don't want closeness, but you want blessing financially. You don't want closeness, but you want God to get you out of this situation.
When they wanted a relationship drawn near, then they got access to power. So don't just think you can go to God and say, show me your power while you do not pursue a relationship. Sometimes God has to let you get down long enough before he makes himself locatable. So you say, I'm struggling and I can't find him. Oh, God wants you to look a little harder.
But I'm struggling, I can't find him. That's because he wants you to go a little deeper. Because he wants to know that you want him and not just want his stuff. See, a lot of folks go to church to get God's stuff, but who don't want the God who gives it. So if you're in distress, don't let that drive you away, draw you near, closer.
So that you're like Jacob and say, I'm not going to let you go until you answer me. When you do that, when you get close and want to live for him, want to please him, want to honor him, want to exalt him, want to draw near to him, then heaven opens up and he lets you find him. And as a special bonus, if you contact us right away, we'll even include the companion book, Kingdom Prayer, along with the two-volume audio series. Just give us a call at 1-800-800-3222 or visit TonyEvans.org where you can browse through our huge collection of helpful books and other biblical resources. That's TonyEvans.org or by phone at 1-800-800-3222. In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy eventually learned that she already possessed what she needed to solve her problems. Next time, we'll learn why Christians often have a hard time making that same discovery. I hope you'll join us.
