Friday, June 05, 2015

A number of years ago I was faced with an important decision. I thought about it and prayed about it for a long time. I worked out some solutions but they never seemed to fully settle the issue. One night I woke up and the decision crystallized in my mind and my heart concurred. When I shared it with my wife in the morning she responded “I like that!” I immediately took steps to implement it. My wife and I even celebrated the decision with a nice dinner out! This nighttime experience reminded me of Paul’s seeming frustration at trying to carry out a mission that God kept thwarting. It’s described in Acts 16. He traveled through a number of provinces of what is now Turkey, wanting to preach the Good News to the residents, but the Holy Spirit would not allow him to do so. Finally he came to the seaside city of Troas. At night he went to the shore, no doubt to pray. All of a sudden “Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us’” (verse 9). He immediately responded and through this response God opened the door for the gospel to be taken to Europe. God often answers prayer and does special things in the night. We tend to think of night in negative terms, but God can work miracles just as readily at night as in the day—and often does. Trust Him in the night! I wrote a book on this subject: Light in the Night for Living in the Day. You can request a copy by going to my website, gettinggodsmessage.org, and click on the contact link to get the information to email or write me.