Right place, right time. Providence. God-thing. Sovereignty.
All words we use to describe God’s hand in something, usually in a way favorable to ourselves. You know, when you head out to lunch only to realize you forgot your wallet. Yet at the same instant you have your brief panic attack on paying for lunch you see a friend from church, who upon seeing your stricken face and determining the issue offers to pay for your lunch.
Or, bills are due and despite your best efforts there is not enough money this time around. Out of the blue you get a refund from some source or another for roughly the amount you need. Overjoyed, you share your “God-thing” story among your family and friends.
This isn’t a bad thing. It’s helpful to think in this way. We should indeed thank God for all our blessings and realize that every good and perfect gift is from above. (James 1:17)
However, how many of us blame the Devil if anything goes wrong? By wrong I mean not the way we planned it. Didn’t get a promotion. Forgot the wallet and had to return to the office without lunch. No money arrives and you have to be late on a bill or cancel something. Sickness. Death.
Orlando Saer in his book “Big God” calls this the cruise control God. That is, God is like a cruise control driver, able to intervene if he should decided, and also quite capable of letting things go at the same speed. Yet I have to ask, how do we get from Genesis 1:1 to the meddlesome match maker of occasional involvement?
Widen The Lens
God is either in control, or he is not. There is no in between. Reading through Job 36-38 should disabuse us of any notion that God is the divine clockmaker who has made the machine, set it in motion, and walked away. No, he is very much involved. Job realizes the error of his demands for a trial before God for his suffering and seeks only to repent and hide himself under a rock. I feel for the guy, I’ve said similar things at times.
God never answers why Job suffered as he did. He never gives him a reason for what has happened, whether it was punishment or discipline, or not Him at all. He instead fully and completely asserts that he is in control. Of everything.
Job had a narrow angle view, which we can understand. He lost much and suffered greatly. God forced upon him a wider angle view, that Job is not all there is. But why?
God Is Good, All The Time
God asserted to Job that he is both in control and by not answering Job’s demands. that he does not answer to anyone. He does what he wills. Not only that, but he is good. He is always good. Everything he does is therefore ultimately good. However, my intention here is not to develop a deep and convincing defense of the goodness of God. It is to point out that he is always in control.
This causes a lot of heartburn for many folks when they consider the terrible things that happen the world over. Suffering in exponential amounts. Yet, didn’t he say “I make well-being and create calamity” in his word? (Isaiah 45:7) If God is all-powerful and completely omniscient, how can he not be in control of everything?
Are only king’s hearts like water in the hands of the Lord (Proverbs 21:1), or are ours also turned whatever way he wills? God does not operate on potentiality. He operates sovereignly. He doesn’t wait for any number of potential outcomes to occur. If he did so he would be beholden to the decision of man. That places man squarely above God. This cannot be.
He decrees, and it happens. He speaks and light appears. He breathes, and man has life. He dies, and man has atonement. He elects, and man is saved. There is no room for sovereign man, only sovereign God.
Wallets and Debts and God
So then, whether God delivers you from a situation or places you squarely in it, he is still good and still firmly in control. God is not surprised over earthquakes, sickness, jobs, births, or deaths. He is sovereign over all. God doesn’t flick the cruise control off from time to time to for certain things only to idly cruise by, refusing to intervene in others.
God upholds the universe by the word of his power. (Hebrews 1:3) He also upholds your life by the word of his power. He upholds you. Whatever happens to you, God specifically permits. Far from causing you to distrust him, this should drive you to trust him deeply. All things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose. (romans 8:28)
Whether you are blessed in some awesome way, or wake up with the diagnosis of cancer, it is for your good, Christian. Whether you lose your job or get promoted, it is for your good. All these things are “god-things.” It is all providence. God loves his children and will have their best for them.
What we think is best and what God knows is best often do not align. Trust the one who knows everything to provide for you in all things.
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:31-39 ESV)
