Difficulty Does Not Always Indicate Disobedience

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I recently spent some time speaking with a sweet Christian sister who explained she needed godly counsel, as she and her husband were facing extreme health and financial difficulties.

After quite some time, she got around to asking a very common question – a question we have all likely asked while facing difficulties.

“Have I done something to cause God to bring this on me?” she asked through tears.

Now I did not know her personally, but even if I had, I would not have been able to answer that question definitively.

The truth is, it is possible for us to bring hardship and difficulty upon ourselves because of our poor decisions and disobedience to God. Look no further than Jonah as an example of that reality.

However, it is not necessarily the case that difficulty in our lives is any indication of disobedience, nor proof that we are outside of God’s will.

In fact, Scripture teaches us that often the greatest trials and difficulties come, not in seasons of rebellion, but during times of our greatest faithfulness.

I tried to encourage her with this reminder and shared a specific example from Scripture that I had taught just a few days prior.

In Acts 27, Luke records the initial movements of the journey to transport Paul the prisoner from Caesarea to Rome.

Luke carefully traces the route of the voyage, and one thing that is quickly brought to our attention is how difficult this journey is shaping up to be from the very beginning.

At Caesarea, Paul and the others boarded a ship from Adramyttium (Acts 27:2), a port city along the coast of Asia Minor. This ship was not on a direct route to Rome; rather, it was the first leg of a much longer journey.

The plan was to transfer later to a larger vessel more suited for the open water that could carry them the rest of the way.

They departed Caesarea, and after a brief stop at Sidon, Scripture reveals that things begin to shift.

Luke tells us in verse 4 that “the winds were contrary.”

They didn’t know it, but those contrary winds were an indication of what the entire trip had in store.

From Sidon, instead of taking the preferred, direct course across open water, those contrary winds forced them to alter course and sail under the shelter, or windbreak, of Cyprus, on the north side.

According to vs 4, they continued past Cilicia and Pamphylia and arrived at Myra, a port city where grain ships from Egypt passed through on their way to Rome.

The centurion tasked with transporting Paul and the other prisoners on board found one of those larger grain ships and transferred those under his care to it.

Though a much larger ship, the weather still proved to be too much, as verse 7 tells of more difficulty.

They sailed “slowly” for “many days” and arrived with difficulty near Cnidus (vs 7), which was only about 130 miles from Myra – a trip that could have been made in a day with favorable conditions, yet turned into many days and difficulty because of the weather.

From there, the trip didn’t get any easier.

While they would have preferred to travel due west from Myra, as they left, Luke explains the wind would not allow them (vs 7), and instead “… we sailed under Crete, over against Salmone.”

If you could see a map of their route, you would notice how much of a detour this was.

Attempting to continue, the wind pushed them south, forcing them, with yet even more difficulty (vs 8), to make their way around the cape of Salmone.

Once there, they were somewhat sheltered from the contrary winds and were able to hug the coast of Crete and eventually reached a place called Fair Havens (vs 8).

Most of you know how the story proceeds and are aware that the next leg of the journey results in a shipwreck.

Aside from merely providing a travel log of this historic voyage, Luke is highlighting that this course is marked by contrary winds, slow progress, great difficulty, and frequent course adjustments.

This is not a smooth, straightforward trip. It is a constant struggle against conditions they cannot control.

This offers a very important reminder to us.

Remember, this was God’s will.

Two years prior, one night while alone in a prison cell, Paul was visited by Jesus Himself. The Lord said, “Be of good cheer, Paul: for as thou hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness also at Rome” (Acts 23:11).

Little did Paul know that multiple unfair and unjust trials and this perilous voyage would be the way God in His sovereignty would accomplish that promise, but so it was.

Paul, just like us, likely would have chosen a much smoother way to get to Rome.

But God did it in His timing and in His way.

This reminds us of the important truth that difficulty does not always mean you are outside of God’s will.

There are some in certain wings of professing Christianity who claim that if there is any difficulty, any resistance, that something is wrong.

They claim that if we have enough faith, God will make the way easy and prosperous – He will part the proverbial seas for us.

Some suggest that obstacles indicate missteps, that resistance signals we’ve somehow missed God’s direction.

Yet, here Paul is exactly where God intends him to be – on his way to Rome – yet the journey is anything but easy.

The course is not direct. It is not efficient. It is not comfortable.

But it is still God’s course.

It’s important for us to remember that sometimes the path God has us on will involve resistance, delays, and detours.

The presence of difficulty is not evidence of God’s absence, nor is it evidence of being outside of God’s will.

And while we should be willing to examine ourselves like the sister I counseled, and ask if we have done anything to bring on our difficulties, we should also consider another possibility.

It is possible that the course we are on, though very difficult, is precisely the course God in His sovereignty has plotted for us.

If so, then in the same way the Lord delivered Paul safely to his next post of service, because He is faithful, He will do the same for us as well.

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