3. All Things Are Yours
Three
All Things Are Yours
The longer I live, the more fully I become convinced that the Lord is in charge of everything on this complicated Earth and that nothing happens without His permission. It’s one of the great advantages of old age to be so completely sure of that. God Almighty is sovereign. He is the One who is paramount, autonomous, unlimited, supreme, all-loving, the absolute ruler of everything.
It seems to me that our modern church life, with its emphasis on cozy friendship with God, has deprived us somewhat of an awe-filled appreciation for His sovereignty. It’s not that we take issue with it, exactly. We recognize His hand at work at startling or spectacular moments. We extol His power to save when He has just protected us from a car accident, we marvel at His glory when we visit the Grand Canyon, and we remember the mysteries of His ways when somebody dies. However, as we plod through the ordinary middle ground of our lives, the long distances between the punctuation marks of exultation and desolation, we fail to appreciate God’s sovereignty. We find it particularly hard to comprehend, much less believe, that a good God could still be in charge when our ordinary life is a relentless string of difficulties or when disasters strike.
He is “Most High over all the earth” (Ps. 83:18, NASB). He is most high over our ordinary muddles and He is most high over what may seem to be catastrophes. He is most high over international affairs and global warming and all the human squabbles that have ever cropped up. He is in charge of destruction and He is in charge of salvation.
Notice verse 28 in the fourth chapter of the Book of Acts (in italics below):
On their release, Peter and John went back to their own people and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said to them. When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God. “Sovereign Lord,” they said, “you made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David:
“‘Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth take their stand
and the rulers gather together
against the Lord
and against his Anointed One.’
Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen.”
Acts 4:23–28, NIV, emphasis mine
Those wicked men—Herod and Pontius Pilate and the others who had raged against Jesus and who were now trying to eliminate His followers—how could they be doing only what God’s “power and will had decided beforehand should happen”? Does that mean that God was in favor of such things?
Were Jesus’s followers in favor of these things? How were they praying about them? They didn’t try to fathom the fine points, it seems. They simply wanted to cooperate with the rest of God’s plan. Instead of saying, “Lord, please make them quit acting like this,” they were so certain of God’s involvement that their only prayer was, “Consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness” (v. 29). That must have been the right prayer for the situation because “after they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly” (v. 31).
Most of the time, we cannot figure out what good thing God is going to bring out of what happens. His plan is bigger. He may or He may not adjust it for our personal comfort. Evelyn Underhill said, “If God were small enough to be understood, He wouldn’t be big enough to be worshipped.”
If you were God, would you have asked the good man Noah to spend years building a ship on dry land, making him the laughingstock of the neighborhood? Would you have created a Goliath? Would you, without reassuring him that he would not be harmed, have allowed your dedicated servant Daniel to be thrown into a pit full of ravenous lions? Even with the benefit of hindsight, it’s difficult to articulate the justification for such plans.
“All the paths of the LORD are lovingkindness and truth to those who keep His covenant and His testimonies” (Ps. 25:10, NASB). About this passage, Amy Carmichael once wrote in a note to a coworker, “All does not mean ‘all but these paths we are in now’ or ‘nearly all, but perhaps not just this specially difficult painful one.’ All must mean all.”
Caused or Allowed?
“This man” (speaking of Jesus) “was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross” (Acts 2:23, NIV). This was the worst thing that had ever happened in human history and God didn’t stop it. Instead, He transfigured it into the best thing that ever happened, securing the salvation of the human race. Having planned it all ahead of time, the sovereign God used the hands and whips of wicked men to punish and kill His own Son.
God was not asleep when John the Baptist got his head chopped off. His attention was not deflected when Stephen was stoned to death. God was still in heaven when His Son was nailed to the cross. Jesus Himself knew what was going to happen to Him. He agonized in the garden over His approaching death. He had not, however, worked His way through the five stages of grief. Instead, He showed us the shortcut to peace, which is acceptance. He acquiesced, trustingly, to the will of His Father.
To those of us who are not theologians, does it matter whether a thing is ordained or merely allowed? Are events that seem to be out of control caused by God? Or does He allow them to occur at the hands of human beings? You can spend a lot of time pondering that one and end up pretty much where you started. In either case, the purpose remains the same—our sanctification. God is in the business of making us walking, breathing examples of the invisible reality of the presence of Christ in us.
From the very beginning God decided that those who came to him—and all along he knew who would—should become like his Son, so that his Son would be the First, with many brothers. And having chosen us, he called us to come to him; and when we came, he declared us “not guilty,” filled us with Christ’s goodness, gave us right standing with himself, and promised us his glory.
Romans 8:29–30, LB
We who have given ourselves to Him have given up our “right” to call the shots. It wasn’t much of a right in the first place, since we are incapable of effecting very many changes to our life situation. We have also given up our right to squawk about difficulties. Paul realized early on that his “thorn in the flesh” was not going to go away even if he asked nicely. He didn’t object to the idea that God, in order to keep him humble, would allow the devil himself to send an affliction.
Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me—to keep me from exalting myself! Concerning this I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.
2 Corinthians 12:7–9, NASB, emphasis mine
Our Response
I need frequent reminders that God does not allow anything to occur that will prevent me from doing His will. Absolutely nothing can interfere with His plans, and what may look to me like Plan B (or Z) is Plan A all along. When Paul and Peter were imprisoned, did that prevent them from doing the will of God? Peter wrote to God’s elect, who were still God’s elect even though they were in exile:
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who reside as aliens, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia. Asia, and Bithynia, who are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, that you may obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with His blood: May grace and peace be yours in the fullest measure. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
1 Peter 1:1–5, NIV
Peter wanted the recipients of his letter to remember what’s important, namely that they have been claimed by the sovereign God, who will be sure to see them through thick and thin, and that their true inheritance cannot be wrested away from them as their earthly possessions probably were.
Although our tests and trials may be different ones, we have the same inheritance that they did. The plan of God for our lives includes all of our circumstances, our entire heredity, every detail of our environment, each decision we make, all the decisions of others, absolutely everything. He can make even the wrath of man to praise Him—or any discomfiting circumstance.
For Mark Twain in the winter of 1887, it was bad weather. He had anticipated a getaway with his wife Livy, who would come to him in New York from Hartford, Connecticut and then go with him for a brief holiday in Washington:
And so, after all my labor and persuasion to get you to at last promise to take a week’s holiday and go off with me on a lark, this is what Providence has gone and done about it. A mere simple request to you to stay at home would have been entirely sufficient: but no, that is not big enough, picturesque enough—a blizzard’s the idea: pour down all the snow in stock, turn loose all the winds, bring a whole continent to a stand-still: that is Providence’s idea of the correct way to trump a person’s trick. Dear me, if I had known it was going to make all this trouble and cost all these millions, I never would have said anything about your going to Washington.*
Our perspective is so limited. We keep forgetting that God’s love does not show itself only in protection from suffering. It is of a different nature altogether. His love does not hate tragedy. It never denies reality. It stands firm in the teeth of suffering. The love of God did not protect His own Son from death on a cross. That was the proof of His love, though “legions of angels” might have rescued Him. He will not necessarily protect us—not from anything it takes to make us like Jesus. A lot of hammering and chiseling and purifying by fire will have to go into the process. Through it all, we learn to trust Him in every little thing.
Waiting on God
Sometimes the deepest level of trust has the appearance of doing nothing. This does not go down well with our busy souls.
I have a collection of books written by my grandfather. In one of them, When Days Seem Dark, I came across these words:
Standing still, on some occasions, is the paramount duty of the follower of Christ. There are times when we must be merely onlookers, when the flesh and the brain refuse to work, hopes shrivel like autumn leaves and we simply do not know which way to turn. It may be just then that we shall learn for the first time how to stand still in perfect peace and quietness of soul, not idling away our time, not hopelessly limp and heedless of the outcome, but working on in such ways as may be given to us, observing with eager joy the way in which God will work it all out to a perfectly glorious ending.
All our little fussiness and haste, all our strong anxiety and warping care are as futile as the tugging of a little child’s hand at the great iron knob of a closed and barred gate through which his loving father does not care to have him go just then.
One of my favorite verses, one that my mother gave me many years ago, was Naomi’s answer to Ruth, “Sit still, my daughter, until thou know how the matter will fall” (Ruth 3:18, KJV). The Lord had given my mother that verse when she was worried about the possibility of being a foreign missionary. She thought it would be perfectly dreadful if the Lord should call her to be a missionary. But she obeyed. She “sat still” and she found His peace, which made her equally willing to go to Belgium as a missionary for a few years, and then to return to the United States to live out her life as a housewife, a friend of missionaries, and a mother of missionaries.
Our response is what matters. A quiet heart is content with what God gives. It is enough. All is grace. One morning my computer simply would not obey me. What a nuisance. I had my work laid out, my timing figured, my mind all set. My work was delayed, my timing thrown off, my thinking interrupted. Then I remembered. It was not for nothing. This was part of the Plan (not mine, His). “Lord, You have assigned me my portion and my cup.”
Now if the interruption had been a human being instead of an infuriating mechanism, it would not have been so hard to see it as the most important part of the work of the day. But all is under my Father’s control: yes, recalcitrant computers, faulty transmissions, drawbridges that happen to be up when I am in a hurry. My portion. My cup. My lot is secure. My heart can be at peace. My Father is in charge. How simple!
My assignment entails my willing acceptance of my portion in matters far beyond comparison with the trivialities just mentioned, such as the death of a precious baby. A mother wrote to me of losing her son when he was just one month old. A widow wrote of the long agony of watching her husband die. The number of years given them in marriage seemed too few. We can know only that Eternal Love is wiser than we, and we bow in adoration of that loving wisdom.
Response is what matters. All events serve His will. Remember that our forefathers all were guided by the pillar of cloud, all passed through the sea, all ate and drank the same spiritual food and drink, but God was not pleased with most of them. Their responses were wrong. Bitter about the portions allotted to them, they indulged in idolatry, gluttony, and sexual sin. The same almighty God apportioned their experiences. Some responded in faith. Most did not.
God came down and lived in this world as a man. He showed us how to live in this world, subject to its vicissitudes and necessities, that we might be changed, not into angels or storybook princesses, not wafted into another world, but changed into saints in this world. The secret is Christ in me, not in a different set of circumstances.
*Edith Colgate Salabury, Susy and Mark Twain (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), 249–50.