We will first deal with the negative and then the positive.

I saw some trash posted the other say saying,

“Stop wasting time wishing your circumstances were different. It is God who ordained them. Learn how to be faithful in every circumstance.”

Let us see how this works in bible stories.

Hannah, stop wanting your childless circumstance to be different; be childless.

Hezekiah, stop wishing you weren’t going to die, by the prophecy of Isaiah: just die, and let the grave praise God?

Jacob, stop wanting your circumstances to be blessed; stop this crazy insane charismatic wrestling of God and move on, without God’s blessing.

Canaanite woman, Jesus already gave theologically correct arguments that His ministry is not for you, and that it is morally wrong to take from the Jews and give to you; just accept your circumstances and let your daughter foam at the mouth and roll on the floor. Stop being so man centered.

Unnamed people laying in the street for Peter’s shadow, stop this charismatic man-centered embarrassment, just accept your painful circumstances and moan and cry to the glory for God.

You blind men causing all this loud commotion and public annoyance, just shut up already and accept you are blind and beg for money to the glory of God.

Sinner, stop thinking there might be salvation in Jesus, God ordained you to born as a sinner; accept your drug addiction circumstances and be faithful in this.

Sola empiricism,
Sola suffering,
Sola circumstances,
Sola Satan.

I am not being over-the-top. This person’s theology is a doctrine of demons. It uses circumstances (what God caused) to use as an excuse to invalidate the commandments of God. They use circumstances the ways satanists use a Ouija board to divine what they ought to do. They use metaphysics to divine ethics, like witchdoctors.

It is like soldiers in the batter field saying, “there is fierce fighting, thus we need to leave,” when their commanding officer ordered them to enter the fierce fighting and aid the left flank. They use circumstances to invalidate the commands given them. So-called Christians do this all the time. They use circumstances to negate the revealed commands of God. They do not want to obey God, and use circumstances to argue their way out from underneath them.  However, they will give an account for such rebellion.

Circumstance are not the revealed commands of God. If you want to know what you ought to do with the circumstances God has given you, then you go the Scripture and find the commands and precepts related to that subject and obey them.  We are children of God, and we obey our Father’s command, and not circumstances. As Christians we get knowledge (subject and predicate combination about “oughts”) of ethics from God’s command, and not circumstances.

Luke 18:1-8 NLT

One day Jesus told his disciples a story to show that they should always pray and never give up. 
“There was a judge in a certain city,” he said, “who neither feared God nor cared about people. A widow of that city came to him repeatedly, saying, ‘Give me justice in this dispute with my enemy.’ The judge ignored her for a while, but finally he said to himself, ‘I don’t fear God or care about people,  but this woman is driving me crazy. I’m going to see that she gets justice, because she is wearing me out with her constant requests!’”

Then the Lord said, “Learn a lesson from this unjust judge. Even he rendered a just decision in the end. So don’t you think God will surely give justice to his chosen people who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off?  I tell you, he will grant justice to them quickly!

But when the Son of Man returns, how many will he find on the earth who have faith?”

This is an explicit command. Jesus as our master does not merely give suggestions like some yoga guru. He is our commanding officer, our Master, our God. God is sovereign, and so the circumstance of this lady is caused God ordaining it. Yet, Jesus’ command is to not accept the ordained circumstance that we dislike, but ask God to stop what He ordained and make it go away. Jesus commands us to not stop praying until God gives us what we want, and what we want is the circumstance God ordained to vanish.  

The last statement is Jesus asking if He will find faith on earth. This is said in context of a person having a bad circumstance (that God ordained) and praying for God’ to make it go away, and the certainty that God will come quickly and make it go away.  This is the kind of faith Jesus was talking about when He said, “Will the son of man find faith on earth?” He was not talking about faith for the forgiveness of sins, but faith to change your circumstances. Faith that changes the material world around you, to be a blessing for you. This is the true test of faith, therefore; this is the true test of orthodoxy.

The command of God is to not accept bad circumstances that He ordained, but to have enough perseverance and faith to make them go away. He commands you to have faith to make circumstances favorable for you.

Romans 5

(12) Because of this, just as sin entered into the world through (Adam), and death through sin, so also death spread to all people because all sinned…
(15) by the trespass of the one, the many died…
(19) For just as through the disobedience of the one man, the many were made sinners.”

Acts 17:30

“God now commands all people everywhere to repent.”

God in His absolute and direct sovereignty over all things has ordained all men to be born sinful and dead, and made sinners in their behavior. Therefore, according to some Christians who divine ethics from circumstances, we ought to accept being born sinners and stay that way, not wanting to change what God ordained. LOL!!!

At this point, some who have said such dumb things might realize their teaching contradicts the scripture, at least on this point of forgiveness.  They will say Acts 17 says we are commanded to repent and so we “ought” to do this, rather than divine an ethic from our sinful circumstance. But they might not want to do this with things such as healing, for example. However, you cannot turn the commands of God “off and on,” like a light switch. You will be judged by them, even if you give dumb excuses to avoid them. Christian ethics is from God’s command, and there is no other option.

God has commanded that we should not be happy with the sinful circumstance that He has ordained for us. He commands us to repent and cause God to remove the sinful circumstance. He commands us to repent so that we can be blessed with reconciliation and forgiveness so that times of refreshing will flood our lives. 

Acts 10:38

And you know that God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. Then Jesus went around doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.

James 5:13-15

Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. 
Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. 
Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. 
And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven.

Because God is sovereign, then all the sick people in the gospels that Jesus healed were sick by God’s ordained will. Also, it is by God’s ordained will that relative from created object to created object, it was the devil (not God) who made all these victimized people sick, as Act 10:38 indicates.

Thus, according to some, we are to let Satan and sickness stream-role over us and be their victims for enter lifetimes, because “God ordained it.” Those who suggest such things teach a doctrine of demons. Their doctrines increase the kingdom of Satan and his dominion of victimizing human beings.

However, for us with faith in God, we view the world differently. We see the command of God as our foundation for how we behaver, rather than divining it from circumstances. We read the commands to be healed and to heal others. Thus, this is how we behave.

Jesus healed all who came to Him and in Acts whose with faith and filled with the power of the baptism of the Spirit, healed those who came to them. In fact, the Spirit so empowered them that their shadows and handkerchiefs would heal people. This proves the critques of the health and wealth preachers who teach “name it and claim it” are wrong, but wrong for opposite reason. The “name it and claim it,” does not go far enough in being radical. Peter did not even speak, his shadow had enough spiritual physics to heal. Thus, you do not need to even “name it” to “claim it.” All you need is a shadow. All you need is to be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit.  Jesus healed all those under the kingdom and torment of Satan. Holy Spirit empowered church, even table bearers, did the same. Jesus commanded them to be filled with power and continue His work. They did this that.  

Jesus who understood God’s sovereignty better than any, did not accept His Father’s ordained circumstances of all these sick people. Rather He went against His Father’s ordained circumstance and healed all who asked. In the book of Acts, the entire church, filled with power, did the same. They went on a campaign of war against the ordained circumstance of their Father, by healing all who asked.

James says if you are happy then give a praise to God. This is not a suggestion. If you truly have been blessed by God and are happy, you are commanded to praise God. And why wouldn’t you?  As Jesus said, if these did not praise God the stones will cry out. God deserves our praises. However, James does not end his commandments there. He says if you are sick, then the elders are to come together and pray, and then you will be healed. The command is NOT to merely pray for healing, and then see what happens. The command is to pray and be healed. You are to pray and have absolute certainty you are healed, and through this faith, to be healed. The same certainty that you pray for forgiveness and know you are forgiven, you are to pray for healing and be healed.  Anything less than receiving the healing is disobedience. God is patience and will sanctify us to have this level of faith, but God’s patience and compassion does not change an act of disobedience into its opposite.  

How wonderful is our God. How kind He must be. For His children, what he commands, He also grants. What He has commanded is for us to ask for healing. He will grant both the faith and the fulfillment of this. He truly loves us. One way to consider God’s commands and promises are to see them as a definition. To be healed and victorious over everyday troubles is God’s definition of His children. He truly loves us.

Bread

Joshua 14:9 LSB

“Do not rebel against Yahweh; and do not fear the people of the land, for they are our bread. Their protection has been removed from them, and Yahweh is with us; do not fear them.”

Mark 7:27

“First let the children eat all they want,” he told her, “for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”

Jesus, in context of being asked for healing and a demon being cast out, says this “bread” belongs to Jews, and it is “not right” to take this healing that “belongs to the children” and give to non-family members.  Jesus is correct.

The point relevant for our discussion is how Jesus refers to healing and casting out demons as bread on His Father’s table, and it is meant to be freely eaten by the children at that table.

Those who use God’s ordained circumstances to deny God’s children their RIGHT to freely eat the bread of healing and casting out devils on their Father’s table, are themselves children of Satan, twice dead, foaming at the mouth and perverted stars. How dare anyone, seeing a child of God reaching for some delicious buttery bread of healing on their Father’s table, slap their hand away. They will receive their just reward.

For us who are seated in the heavenly places with Christ, and seated at God’s table of gospel benefits, see the world differently from those without faith. We see the world as Joshua did. We do not see sickness, political troubles and finances as painful things to bear under our shoulders, but bread for us to eat. God did not ordain the high walls of Jericho to hinder Israel, but an opportunity for faith to turn them into bread. God did ordain the sickness the people whom James was referring in his letter to hinder them, but an opportunity for faith to turn cancer into bread of healing and praise.

John says our faith overcomes the world. Our faith is victorious even over the bad circumstances God ordained in this world. Faith is the answer. It is the answer to all the troubles of the world and even God’s ordain circumstance. Faith in God will turn them into delicious bread. Are you seated at God’s table or not? If you are, reach for the bread. Just one crumb can cast out a demon and heal. What would happen if you had enough faith to take a big bite from it? What would happen if by faith you ate the whole loaf? If you want this, you have free access to grab it. God is the power and salvation for all your troubles. He will deliver. And when He does, do not forget to praise Him, for you are command to do so.

Do not fear. Only reach out in faith and grab that bread of healing that is right in front of your face.