God's Intervention...

Have you ever had your car stall out when a traffic light turned green and as you go to restart it a truck goes whizzing by you through the intersection where you would have been? Would you consider that to be an act of God intervening in your life or not?
What about the person who's car doesn't stall out and gets hit by the truck running the red light?
If you consider the first to be an act of God intervening in the world is the second a direct act of God as well or just a coincidence?
The notion that you should bless God in the good times and in the bad is something that is hard to swallow for a lot of people. Everybody wants God's blessings on their life but most people would prefer not to go through the tough times and suffer; we would all rather just skip that part and go straight to the good stuff. Especially in this day and age with everything being instantly gratifying; credit on demand, cable TV, any kind of food you can think of right around the corner and the ability to look up anything imaginable on the internet. With the world at our fingertips and at the touch of a button the thought of "waiting on God" or going through the valley to get to the mountaintop isn't something that we are used to having to do. But this idea of having to suffer, to be molded and tested and sifted like wheat in order to become the person that you are intended and destined to be isn't something that we just welcome with open arms. We tend to thank God when things are going well and wonder what we did wrong and why God has deserted us when things are going bad. I can't say that I am good at this myself, I certainly wish I was better at suffering but it's just not something that humans are good at. Back to the story of the driver of the car who didn't stall out and who got hit by the truck. What is that person thinking right now? Praise God for letting me get hit by that truck, Amen thank you lord for letting me suffer I can't wait to see what you are going to do in the days to come. That's not normal to think that way but it is the way that we are supposed to think because the Lord works everything for GOOD for those who love Him and obey His commands.
The point of this is that you never know what God has in store for your life in the future. He is God and He can see the future and He knows what He is doing so you have to trust Him. He can use you getting hit by a truck and injured to speak to thousands of people through your suffering telling them how you survived your storm in your life by trusting in the Lord your God. Obviously this is an extreme example but it makes my point that you can't bless God and thank Him for intervening in one scenario and not another just like it with a different result. Read the book of Job in the bible and see what happened to him for an extreme example of what I am talking about.
He can use you at your office just by you setting an example with dealing with the difficult people who work there. While everybody else is talking bad about them or being mean to them you can befriend that person and be nice to them, giving them some words of encouragement and in turn lifting everyone up. I'm not talking about being self righteous or having a better than thou attitude because that does nothing but make you look like a hypocrite and turn people away from Jesus. I'm talking about truly and genuinely caring for the people around you and loving your neighbor like Jesus commanded us to. No matter what situation you are in you can take it one of two ways; you can thank God for giving you an opportunity to grow your faith and teach you something that will make you stronger or you can blame God or someone else for what is happening to you. Either way you are still going to have to deal with the situation. My thought is that you can either be happy and learn something or miserable; the amount of work is the same. Choose to follow Jesus and take the high road. Be an encouragement to the people around you and always be looking for what God is trying to teach you in every circumstance that you come across. God will never leave you in the valley of pain and suffering; He is always leading you through the valley to the mountaintop but you have to get through the valley in order to reach the mountain and what you learn along the way will help you appreciate being on top that much more.