Chapter Three: The Sovereignty of God
THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD
The LORD foils the plans of the nations;
he thwarts the purposes of the peoples.
But the plans of the LORD stand firm forever,
the purposes of his heart through all generations.
PSALM 33:10-11
In the year 1902, a young English boy came down to breakfast to find his father reading the newspaper, which carried news of preparations for the first coronation in Britain in sixty-four years. In the middle of breakfast the father turned to his wife and said, “Oh, I am sorry to see this worded like that.” She said, “What is it?” “Why,” he replied, “here is a proclamation that on a certain date Prince Edward will be crowned king at Westminster and there is no Deo volente, God willing.” The words stuck in the young boy’s mind for the very reason that on the appointed date the future Edward VII was ill with appendicitis and the coronation had to be postponed.[1]
At this time, at the end of Queen Victoria’s reign, the political, economic, and military power of the British Empire was at its zenith. Yet for all its great might, Great Britain could not carry out its planned coronation on the appointed date.
Was the omission of “God willing” from the proclamation and the subsequent postponement of the coronation merely a coincidence, two events without any relation to one another? Or did God cause Prince Edward to have appendicitis to show that He was “in control”? We don’t know why the situation occurred as it did. One thing we do know, however: whether we acknowledge it with Deo volente or not, we cannot carry out any plan apart from God’s will. The Bible leaves no doubt about that fact. James says it so clearly in the following passage:
Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”
JAMES 4:13-15, EMPHASIS ADDED
GOD’S ABSOLUTE CONTROL
God is in control; He is sovereign. He does whatever pleases Him and determines whether we can do what we have planned. This is the essence of God’s sovereignty: His absolute independence to do as He pleases and His absolute control over the actions of all His creatures. No creature, person, or empire can either thwart His will or act outside the bounds of His will.
In chapter 1 I stated that, for us to trust God in times of adversity, we must believe in God’s sovereignty, His love, and His wisdom. Of these three truths, the sovereignty of God seems to be questioned the most frequently and most stridently. It seems we will allow God to be anywhere except upon His throne ruling His universe according to His good pleasure and His sovereign will.
Even godly Christian writers whose books are helpful to many can, in their writings, take God off His throne. One of their most common statements is that God has voluntarily limited Himself to the actions of men in order to give man his freedom. For example, Andrew Murray wrote, “In creating man with a free will and making him a partner in the rule of the earth, God limited himself. He made himself dependent on what man would do. Man by his prayer would hold the measure of what God could do in blessing” (emphasis added).[2]
Other Christian writers fail to acknowledge the controlling hand of God—either directing or permitting—in every event of our lives. One writer, for example, speaks of suffering sometimes coming because of misfortune or accident, things “just happening,” and pain coming our way, “due to circumstances beyond our control.”
Our response to such statements is more than mere theological discussion. Confidence in the sovereignty of God in all that affects us is crucial to our trusting Him. If there is a single event in all of the universe that can occur outside of God’s sovereign control, then we cannot trust Him. His love may be infinite, but if His power is limited and His purpose can be thwarted, we cannot trust Him. You may entrust to me your most valuable possessions. I may love you and my aim to honor your trust may be sincere, but if I do not have the power or ability to guard your valuables, you cannot truly entrust them to me.
Paul, however, said we can entrust our most valuable possession to the Lord. In 2 Timothy 1:12, he said, “That is why I am suffering as I am. Yet I am not ashamed, because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day” (emphasis added). “But,” someone says, “Paul is speaking there of eternal life. Without question, we can entrust our eternal destiny to God, but what about our problems in this life? They make me wonder about the sovereignty of God.”
It should be evident, however, that God’s sovereignty does not begin at death. As we will see in a later chapter, His sovereign direction in our lives even precedes our births. God rules as surely on earth as He does in heaven. He permits, for reasons known only to Himself, people to act contrary to and in defiance of His revealed will. But He never permits them to act contrary to His sovereign will.
In support of the statement I have just made—God never permits people to act contrary to His sovereign will—consider the following passages of Scripture:
In his heart a man plans his course,
but the LORD determines his steps.
PROVERBS 16:9
Many are the plans in a man’s heart,
but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails.
PROVERBS 19:21
There is no wisdom, no insight, no plan
that can succeed against the LORD.
PROVERBS 21:30
Consider what God has done:
Who can straighten
what he has made crooked?
ECCLESIASTES 7:13
Who can speak and have it happen
if the LORD has not decreed it?
LAMENTATIONS 3:37
You ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”
JAMES 4:15
To the angel of the church in Philadelphia write:
These are the words of him who is holy and true, who holds the key of David. What he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open.
REVELATION 3:7
We make plans, but those plans can succeed only when they are consistent with God’s purpose. No plan can succeed against Him. No one can straighten what He makes crooked or make crooked what He has made straight. No emperor, king, supervisor, teacher, or coach can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not first decreed to either make it happen or permit it to happen. No one can say, “I will do this or that,” and have it happen if it is not part of God’s sovereign will.
What an encouragement, what a stimulus to trusting God this aspect of God’s sovereignty should be to us. Is someone “out to get you”? That person absolutely cannot execute his malicious plan unless God has first decreed it. I spoke with a military chaplain who had a confrontation with a more senior chaplain over an illegal act the senior chaplain proposed to do. As a result the senior chaplain wrote a very critical letter to the chief of chaplains that has seriously jeopardized my friend’s career. Is my friend merely a victim of a cruel act of revenge? Not according to Scripture. The ungodly chaplain may write a dozen critical letters, but he absolutely cannot end my friend’s military career unless God permits it. And if God permits it, it is because the ungodly action is part of God’s plan for him. No one can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it (see Lamentations 3:37).
My friend’s experience is not unique. Thousands of Christians have experienced similar injustices at the hands of teachers, coaches, fellow workers, and supervisors at work. Perhaps you have, too. When these events occur, they always hurt. We cannot dismiss them with the glib expression, “God is in control.” God is in control, but in His control He allows us to experience pain. The pain is very real. We hurt, we suffer. But in the midst of our suffering we must believe that God is in control, that He is sovereign.
As author Margaret Clarkson again so beautifully has written,
The sovereignty of God is the one impregnable rock to which the suffering human heart must cling. The circumstances surrounding our lives are no accident: they may be the work of evil, but that evil is held firmly within the mighty hand of our sovereign God. . . . All evil is subject to Him, and evil cannot touch His children unless He permits it. God is the Lord of human history and of the personal history of every member of His redeemed family.[3]
Not only are the willful malevolent acts of other people under God’s sovereign control, so also are the mistakes and failures of other people. Did another driver go through a red light, strike your car, and send you to the hospital with multiple fractures? Did a physician fail to detect your cancer in its early stages, when it would have been treatable? Did you end up with an incompetent instructor in a very important course in college, or an inept supervisor who blocked your career in business? All of these circumstances are under the controlling hand of our sovereign God, who is working them out in our lives for our good.
Neither the willful malicious acts nor the unintended mistakes of people can thwart God’s purpose for us. “There is no wisdom, no insight, no plan that can succeed against the LORD” (Proverbs 21:30). The Roman governor Felix left Paul in prison for over two years. Felix committed a totally unjust act because he wanted to grant a favor to the Jews (see Acts 24:27). Joseph was left in prison for two years because Pharaoh’s cupbearer forgot him (see Genesis 40:14, 23; 41:1). These two godly men were left to languish in prison—one because of deliberate injustice and the other because of inexcusable forgetfulness—but both of their predicaments were under the sovereign control of an infinitely wise and loving God.
Nothing is so small or trivial as to escape the attention of God’s sovereign control; nothing is so great as to be beyond His power to control it. The insignificant sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His will; the mighty Roman empire cannot crucify Jesus Christ unless that power is given to it by God (see Matthew 10:29; John 19:10-11). And what is true for the sparrow and for Jesus is true for you and me. No detail of your life is too insignificant for your heavenly Father’s attention; no circumstance is so big that He cannot control it.
Within two days I received word of calamitous events in the lives of two of my friends. The wife of one friend was killed instantly when her car apparently stalled at a railroad crossing in the path of an oncoming train. The other friend is an independent over-the-road truck driver, struggling to get established in that business. On a recent trip, his truck broke down, necessitating expensive repairs on the road. The cost of the repairs completely wiped out the income he would have made from that trip.
The consequences of these two events, of course, cannot be compared. The struggling truck driver would agree that no amount of lost income can be compared with the loss of a precious wife. But what do we say to either of these men, each grappling with his own unique set of circumstances, about the sovereignty of God? Do we just speak to the one of a “tragic accident” and to the other about his “bad luck”?
Are we truly left to the mercy of stalled cars, of trucks that break down, of people who are in a position to do us harm and are intent on doing it? No, a thousand times no! We are in the hands of a sovereign God who controls every circumstance of our lives and who rejoices in doing us good (see Jeremiah 32:41).
GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY IS NOT ALWAYS APPARENT
One of our problems with the sovereignty of God is that it frequently does not appear that God is in control of the circumstances of our lives. We see unjust or uncaring or even clearly wicked people doing things that adversely affect us. We experience the consequences of other people’s mistakes and failures. We even do foolish and sinful things ourselves and suffer the often bitter fruit of our actions. It is difficult to see God working through secondary causes and frail, sinful human beings. But it is the ability of God to so arrange diverse human actions to fulfill His purpose that makes His sovereignty marvelous and yet mysterious. No Bible-believing Christian has any difficulty believing that God can and has worked miracles—instances of His sovereign but direct intervention into the affairs of people. Regardless of our theological position regarding miracles occurring today, we all accept without question the validity of the miracles recorded in Scripture. But to believe in the sovereignty of God when we do not see His direct intervention—when God is, so to speak, working entirely behind the scenes through ordinary circumstances and ordinary actions of people—is even more important because that is the way God usually works.
A nineteenth-century writer, Alexander Carson, in his book, Confidence in God in Times of Danger, says, “For the wisdom of man cannot see how the providence of God can arrange human actions to fulfill his purpose without any miracle.”[4] For example, one writer, commenting on an accident in which her car was struck by another that went through a red light, supposed that for God to have protected her, He would have made the other driver’s car suddenly sprout wings so that it could fly over her car without impacting. What is implied in such a statement is the idea that God is suddenly confronted with a crisis in the life of one of His children and has no recourse but to work a miracle or let the crisis occur.
God did allow the crisis to occur in her situation, but it was not because He could not prevent it. In His sovereignty He could have changed the timing of either driver’s arrival at the intersection, or even diverted one of them along another route had He chosen to do so. None of us knows of such events in our own lives (perhaps hundreds) when we have been unknowingly spared from adversity or tragedy by the unseen sovereign hand of God. As the psalmist said,
He will not let your foot slip—
he who watches over you will not slumber;
indeed, he who watches over Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
PSALM 121:3-4
Undoubtedly, one of the reasons the book of Esther is included in Scripture is to help us see the sovereign hand of God at work behind the scenes, caring for His people. One of the more arresting things about the book is that the name of God is never once mentioned. Yet the observant reader sees God’s hand in every circumstance, bringing about the deliverance of His people just as surely as He brought about their deliverance from Egypt through mighty miracles centuries before. God was as sovereignly at work through ordinary circumstances in the time of Esther as He was through miracles in the time of Moses.
The pivot point of the book of Esther is chapter 6. Prior to the events of the night recorded in that chapter, the lives of all the Jews in the entire realm of the Persian King Xerxes were in danger due to the diabolical scheme of one wicked man, Haman, who had recently been elevated to a position higher than that of all the other nobles in the kingdom. But in chapter 6, events begin to turn, leading ultimately to the downfall and death of wicked Haman, the physical salvation of the Jews, and the elevation of Mordecai (the hero of the story) to the second highest position in the kingdom.
Because the series of events recorded in Esther chapter 6 reveals in a remarkable way how God sovereignly uses the most ordinary circumstances to accomplish His purpose, we will look at those circumstances in some detail.
On the fateful night, King Xerxes could not sleep, so he ordered the book of the chronicles of his reign to be brought in and read to him. In the course of the reading, it came to light that Mordecai, who was in danger of being hanged the next morning, had on an earlier occasion reported a plot to assassinate the king. The king asked what recognition had been given Mordecai and found that nothing had been done. So the king decided on the spot to honor Mordecai, and, as it turned out, the very man who had determined to hang Mordecai ended up carrying out the king’s edict to publicly honor him.
Consider what had to happen to save Mordecai from the gallows. Why could the king not sleep that fateful night? Why, then, did he ask for a dry register of facts to be read to him rather than soothing music to lull him to sleep? And when the book of the chronicles of his reign was read, why did the reader happen to read from the particular section of the book where Mordecai’s actions were recorded? Were there not a thousand chances that the reader would have selected some other portion of the annals of the Persian empire to read?
The king heard about Mordecai’s service and asked how he was rewarded. Why had the king not rewarded Mordecai at the time he had saved the king’s life? Why did he suddenly determine to do something? And why did wicked Haman appear at that moment to ask the king’s permission to hang Mordecai? Why did Xerxes ask Haman what should be done to honor the man in such a way as to conceal the object of his favor, causing Haman to think he himself was the one to be honored?[5]
The answer to all of these questions was that God was sovereignly orchestrating the events of that night to save His people. The question naturally arises, however, “Does God always orchestrate the events of my life for my good?” If we grant that the unusual outworking of events in Esther was due to the sovereign hand of God, are we justified in concluding that God always orchestrates the events of our lives to fulfill His purpose? According to Romans 8:28, the answer is a solid yes. That verse says, “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (emphasis added). It is this assurance that God works in all events of our lives that gives sense to Paul’s exhortation elsewhere to “give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Thessalonians 5:18, emphasis added). How could we possibly give thanks to God for all the circumstances of our lives if He were not at work in them for our good?
GOD DOES AS HE PLEASES
So no one can act and no circumstances can occur outside the bounds of God’s sovereign will. But this is only one side of His sovereignty. The other side, which is just as important to our trusting Him, is that no plan of God’s can be thwarted. God does as He pleases, and only as He pleases, and no one can frustrate His plans or hinder His purposes.
Again, since this is such a difficult concept to accept, and one which is so frequently disputed, it will be helpful to consider a number of Scripture passages on this subject.
I know that you can do all things;
no plan of yours can be thwarted.
JOB 42:2
Our God is in heaven;
he does whatever pleases him.
PSALM 115:3
For the LORD Almighty has purposed, and who can thwart him?
His hand is stretched out, and who can turn it back?
ISAIAH 14:27
Yes, and from ancient days I am he.
No one can deliver out of my hand.
When I act, who can reverse it?
ISAIAH 43:13
I make known the end from the beginning,
from ancient times, what is still to come.
I say: My purpose will stand,
and I will do all that I please.
ISAIAH 46:10
All the peoples of the earth
are regarded as nothing.
He does as he pleases
with the powers of heaven
and the peoples of the earth.
or say to him: “What have you done?”
DANIEL 4:35
In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.
EPHESIANS 1:11
No plan of God’s can be thwarted; when He acts, no one can reverse it; no one can hold back His hand or bring Him to account for His actions. God does as He pleases, only as He pleases, and works out every event to bring about the accomplishment of His will. Such a bare unqualified statement of the sovereignty of God would terrify us if that were all we knew about God. But God is not only sovereign, He is perfect in love and infinite in wisdom.
As we saw in chapter 2, Rabbi Kushner ascribed a sort of bare sovereignty to nature. He said, “Nature is morally blind, without values. It churns along, following its own laws, not caring who or what gets in its way.” But God does care. God exercises His sovereignty for His glory and the good of His people.
But how does this aspect of God’s sovereignty (specifically, God does as He pleases) relate to our trusting Him? Why is this any more than merely an abstract statement about God to be debated by the theologians, a statement that has little relevance to our day-to-day lives?
The answer is that God does have a purpose and a plan for you, and God has the power to carry out that plan. It is one thing to know that no person or circumstance can touch us outside of God’s sovereign control; it is still another to realize that no person or circumstances can frustrate God’s purpose for our lives.
God has an over-arching purpose for all believers: to conform us to the likeness of His Son, Jesus Christ (see Romans 8:29). He also has a specific purpose for each of us that is His unique, tailor-made plan for our individual life (see Ephesians 2:10). And God will fulfill that purpose. As Psalm 138:8 says, “The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me.” Because we know God is directing our lives to an ultimate end and because we know He is sovereignly able to orchestrate the events of our lives toward that end, we can trust Him. We can commit to Him not only the ultimate outcome of our lives, but also all the intermediate events and circumstances that will bring us to that outcome.
Again it is difficult for us to appreciate the reality of God sovereignly doing as He pleases in our lives because we do not see God doing anything. Instead we see ourselves or other people acting and events occurring, and we evaluate those actions and events according to our own preferences and plans. We see ourselves influencing or perhaps even controlling or being controlled by the actions of other people, but we do not see God at work. But over all the actions and events of our lives, God is in control doing as He pleases—not apart from those events, or in spite of them, but through them. Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery—a malicious act in and of itself—but in due time Joseph recognized that through his brothers’ actions God was acting. He could say to them, “So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God” (Genesis 45:8). Joseph recognized the hand of God in his life sovereignly directing all the events to bring about God’s plan for him.
You and I may never have the privilege in this life of seeing an obvious outcome of God’s plan for us, as Joseph did. But God’s plan for us is no less firm and its outcome is no less certain than was God’s plan for Joseph. God did not give us the story of Joseph’s life just to inform us but to encourage us. “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Romans 15:4, emphasis added). What God did for Joseph, He will do for us. But to derive the comfort and encouragement from this truth that God has provided, we must learn to trust God. We must learn to live, as Paul said, “by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7).
One of the passages of Scripture that has been very meaningful to me for several years is Jeremiah 29:11, “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” Although those words were directed to the nation of Judah in its captivity, they express a principle about God, a principle affirmed elsewhere throughout the Bible: God has a plan for you. Because He has a plan for you, and because no one can thwart that plan, you too can have hope and courage. You, too, can trust God.
From our limited vantage point, our lives are marked by an endless series of contingencies. We frequently find ourselves, instead of acting as we planned, reacting to an unexpected turn of events. We make plans but are often forced to change those plans. But there are no contingencies with God. Our unexpected, forced change of plans is a part of His plan. God is never surprised; never caught off guard; never frustrated by unexpected developments. God does as He pleases, and that which pleases Him is always for His glory and our good.
Our lives are also cluttered with a lot of “if onlys.” “If only I had done this,” or “if only that had not happened.” But again, God has no “if onlys.” God never makes a mistake; God has no regrets. “As for God, his way is perfect” (Psalm 18:30). We can trust God. He is trustworthy.
Just as the book of Esther showed us God’s sovereign care for His people, so the short book of Ruth shows us God at work to fulfill His plan for one of His people. In one sense, Ruth is more instructive than Esther because it gives us an insight into the sovereign working of God in more ordinary circumstances than those depicted in the book of Esther.
Ruth, you will recall, was the widowed daughter-in-law of Naomi who uttered those familiar words, “Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God” (Ruth 1:16). To help us see God at work in Ruth’s life, we need to read Ruth 2:1-10:
Now Naomi had a relative on her husband’s side, from the clan of Elimelech, a man of standing, whose name was Boaz.
And Ruth the Moabitess said to Naomi, “Let me go to the fields and pick up the leftover grain behind anyone in whose eyes I find favor.”
Naomi said to her, “Go ahead, my daughter.” So she went out and began to glean in the fields behind the harvesters. As it turned out, she found herself working in a field belonging to Boaz, who was from the clan of Elimelech.
Just then Boaz arrived from Bethlehem and greeted the harvesters, “The LORD be with you!” . . .
Boaz asked the foreman of his harvesters, “Whose young woman is that?”
The foreman replied, “She is the Moabitess who came back from Moab with Naomi. She said, ‘Please let me glean and gather among the sheaves behind the harvesters.’ She went into the field and has worked steadily from morning till now, except for a short rest in the shelter.”
So Boaz said to Ruth, “My daughter, listen to me. Don’t go and glean in another field and don’t go away from here. Stay here with my servant girls. Watch the field where the men are harvesting, and follow along after the girls. I have told the men not to touch you. And whenever you are thirsty, go and get a drink from the water jars the men have filled.”
At this, she bowed down with her face to the ground. She exclaimed, “Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me—a foreigner?”
To quickly conclude the story, Ruth marries Boaz and becomes the great-grandmother of King David and one of the four women listed in Matthew’s record of the genealogy of our Lord (see Matthew 1:1-16).
Notice in the passage quoted, four key events that all had to come together to begin the process of Ruth’s becoming Boaz’s wife. As Ruth went out to glean in the fields, she could have ended up in anyone’s field. Verse 3 says, “As it turned out, she found herself working in a field belonging to Boaz.” God guided her to the right field. But she still must meet Boaz, so verse 4 says, “Just then Boaz arrived from Bethlehem.” God, who controlled Ruth’s direction so that she happened to go to Boaz’s field, controlled Boaz’s timing so that he happened to go to check on his harvest at just the time Ruth was there.
But still Ruth must gain Boaz’s attention and favor.
Undoubtedly many of the poor gathered from Boaz’s field since leaving the leftover grain was part of the Mosaic law (see Leviticus 19:9-10), and hence a common event in the life of Israel. We would suppose that a landowner such as Boaz would not normally notice one poor woman gathering up leftover grain. But Boaz notices Ruth, verse 5: “Boaz asked the foreman of his harvesters, ‘Whose young woman is that?’” Finally we see Boaz responding favorably to Ruth, verses 8-10.
The right location, the right timing, being noticed, and gaining Boaz’s favor were all key links in the chain of events that eventually resulted in Ruth’s marriage to Boaz. None of the events were extraordinary, and all give the appearance of “just happening,” nothing more than a coincidence in a romantic story. But the reverent reader of Scripture cannot fail to see the sovereign hand of God arranging those ordinary circumstances to accomplish His purpose. Naomi herself, though not at the time aware of God’s future plan for Ruth and Boaz, ascribes the events to the hand of God (see Ruth 2:20).
The stories of Esther and Mordecai and of Ruth and Boaz both had happy endings. We can see God’s hand at work in those events. But what about when the story does not have a happy ending? Is God sovereign then also? This is the crucial question. It’s easy to trust God when a process of events turns out as we would desire, though even here our faith often falters during the process until we know the outcome.
Consider, for example, the stories of two apostles, James and Peter, as recorded in Acts 12. The close relationship of these two men predated their apostleship because they were partners in the fishing business (see Luke 5:10). They were called by Jesus to leave their business and to follow Him at the same time (see Matthew 4:18-22). Both were part of Jesus’ inner circle—Peter, James, and John. But in Acts 12, radically different events happen to them. James is put to death, and Peter is miraculously spared the same fate.
Put yourself in the shoes of James’s wife and then Peter’s. One is grieving over the murder of her husband; the other rejoices over the miraculous deliverance of hers. Peter’s wife rejoices in the sovereignty of God, but what does James’s wife do? Was God any less sovereign in the death of James than He was in the deliverance of Peter? Is God sovereign only in the “good” circumstances of our lives? Is He not also sovereign in the difficult times, the times when our hearts ache with pain?
The Bible teaches us that God is sovereign over both the “good” and the “bad.” Consider the following:
When times are good, be happy;
but when times are bad, consider:
God has made the one
as well as the other.
Therefore, a man cannot discover
anything about his future.
ECCLESIASTES 7:14
I form the light and create darkness,
I bring prosperity and create disaster;
I, the LORD, do all these things.
ISAIAH 45:7
Is it not from the mouth of the Most High
that both calamities and good things come?
LAMENTATIONS 3:38
These three passages clearly state what is taught in principle throughout the rest of the Bible. God controls both the good and the bad. God has not looked the other way or been caught by surprise when adversity strikes us. He is in control of that adversity, directing it to His glory and our good.
So let’s go back to James’s wife. She, too, must trust in God and in His sovereign control over her life and the death of her husband. Trusting in God does not mean she does not suffer grief, that her heart does not ache. It means that in the midst of her heartache and grief she can say something to the effect of, “Lord, I know You were in control of this dreadful event. I do not understand why You allowed it to happen, but I trust You.”
I readily admit it is difficult to believe God is in control when we are in the midst of anxiety, heartache, or grief. I have struggled with this many times myself. Because of my schedule, most of my writing is done on an intermittent basis, a “few hours here and a few hours there.” Because of that, this particular chapter was written and rewritten over a period of six weeks or more. During that time I had to work through God’s sovereignty on two occasions myself. In each instance I realized I knew the truth regarding God’s sovereignty. What I had to do was to decide if I would trust Him, even when my heart ached.
I realized anew that, just as we must learn to obey God one choice at a time, we must also learn to trust God one circumstance at a time. Trusting God is not a matter of my feelings but of my will. I never feel like trusting God when adversity strikes, but I can choose to do so even when I don’t feel like it. That act of the will, though, must be based on belief, and belief must be based on truth.
The truth we must believe is that God is sovereign. He carries out His own good purposes without ever being thwarted, and He so directs and controls all events and all actions of His creatures that they never act outside of His sovereign will. We must believe this and cling to this in the face of adversity and tragedy, if we are to glorify God by trusting Him.
I will say this next statement as gently and compassionately as I know how. Our first priority in times of adversity is to honor and glorify God by trusting Him. We tend to make our first priority the gaining of relief from our feelings of heartache or disappointment or frustration. This is a natural desire, and God has promised to give us grace sufficient for our trials and peace for our anxieties (see 2 Corinthians 12:9; Philippians 4:6-7). But just as God’s will is to take precedence over our will (in Matthew 26:39 Jesus Himself said, “Yet not as I will, but as you will”), so God’s honor is to take precedence over our feelings. We honor God by choosing to trust Him when we don’t understand what He is doing or why He has allowed some adverse circumstance to occur. As we seek God’s glory, we may be sure that He has purposed our good and that He will not be frustrated in fulfilling that purpose.
A WORD OF CAUTION
The material in this chapter is “tough stuff.” It should be read, studied, and prayed about when life is more or less routine. It should be stored up or hidden in our hearts (see Psalm 119:11) for the time of adversity when we must draw upon its truth.
Above all, we need to be very sensitive about instructing someone else in the sovereignty of God and encouraging that person to trust God when he or she is in the midst of adversity or pain. It is much easier to trust in the sovereignty of God when it is the other person who is hurting. We need to be like Jesus, of whom it was said, “A bruised reed he will not break” (Matthew 12:20). Let us not be guilty of breaking a bruised reed (a heavy heart) by insensitive treatment of the heavy doctrine of the sovereignty of God.