Being led by circumstances

“During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’ After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to sail for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.” Acts 16:9-10
Here in the book of Acts, we see one of the most common ways God guides us – through circumstnaces. Paul was eager to preach the gospel to the unreached and tried several possible avenues – Asia and Bithynia – but were kept from entering by the Holy Spirit (Acts 16:6-7). What this means, exactly, we don’t know; but they must have faced some sort of opposition. Then one night Paul saw a vision encouraging him to go to Macedonia. It’s interesting to consider what happened next. Paul went ahead, and travelled to the capital city of Macedonia: Philippi (Acts 16:12). Now usually when Paul arrived at a city, he would seek out the Jewish synagogue there, if there was one. But we see no mention of Paul going to a synagogue in Philippi, so we conclude that there wasn’t one. A synagogue was founded when there were ten Jewish men, so we conclude there were fewer than ten Jewish men. If there was no synagogue, the Jews would meet together for prayer, often by a river, so this was Paul’s second stop (Acts 16:13). Even there, we don’t read of any men being present, only women, including Lydia (Acts 16:14).
But after this initial discouragement, things got worse: Paul and Silas were flogged and put in prison (Acts 16:22-23). If I was Paul, I would probably be wondering if the vision had really been from God. But these events all led to the jailer and his whole family coming to salvation. Later Paul wrote to the church at Philippi: it is one of the most encouraging, joyous letters among the epistles.
There’s a lesson here for us: sometimes God will lead us, through circumstances, into tight situations. But He doesn’t just lead us into them, He leads us through them. It’s all for His glory. We just need to stick close to Him, persevere, and keep doing what He has called us to do.