Yesterday I suggested that the reality of our place in God’s kingdom is one of the certainties that allows us to have peace in the midst of suffering, tribulation.
There is another.
It is who we worship and on whom we are dependent, God. Specifically, it is about who God is in actuality.
We read in Psalm 139,several aspects of God’s nature and character that guides His interaction with us and the path of our lives.
First in Psalm 139:1 – 6, we read that there is nothing that God does not know about our lives. He knows our path in detail, He scrutinized it. There is nothing that comes into our lives that is not known by God. His knowing implies as well His sovereignty over those events.
1 Corinthians 10:13 also implies that sovereign control. He limits what comes against us to what He knows we can endure. He knows what we can endure with absolute certainty.
Those truths conspire to suggest that we can trust Him with all that comes into our lives. Trust Him absolutely and completely.
There is more about His sovereignty that I will share tomorrow. It is somewhat of a mind blower.
It is who we worship and on whom we are dependent, God. Specifically, it is about who God is in actuality.
We read in Psalm 139,several aspects of God’s nature and character that guides His interaction with us and the path of our lives.
First in Psalm 139:1 – 6, we read that there is nothing that God does not know about our lives. He knows our path in detail, He scrutinized it. There is nothing that comes into our lives that is not known by God. His knowing implies as well His sovereignty over those events.
1 Corinthians 10:13 also implies that sovereign control. He limits what comes against us to what He knows we can endure. He knows what we can endure with absolute certainty.
Those truths conspire to suggest that we can trust Him with all that comes into our lives. Trust Him absolutely and completely.
There is more about His sovereignty that I will share tomorrow. It is somewhat of a mind blower.
As I have been meditating on your expositions of this issue myself I received a letter, really a written eulogy, of a dear saintly woman, one of "the least of these" who had the hands and feet of Jesus for 101 years. She was a personal mentor and even supporter of Sharon and me, and even after Sharon's death for 50 years.
ReplyDeleteShe was a humble farmer's wife and some years before we met her she and her husband gave up their farm and came to S.E. Bible College where Sharon and I directed a collegiate Navigator training program for the summer.
"Pop" was the maintenance man, and "Mom" (who were just that to all of us) was the housekeeper, whose hands changed hundreds of bed, cleaned countless bathrooms, and anything that needed done - all with great grace, love and kind words of encouragent liberally dispensed. How many future missionaries, pastors and young college students they served for scores of years!
In the letter her daughter-in-law quoted the chorus of a song by Don Wyrtzen, "Finally Home:"
Just think of stepping on shore,
And finding it Heaven!
Of touching a hand,
And finding it God's
Of breathing new air,
And finding it celestial!
Of waking up in Glory,
And finding it Home!"
As I walk this path of God's sovereign blow on my life, I know that all my failures of faith, my anxieties without number, my emptiness and loneliness that just won't let go, He sovereignly holds my hand in His (I couldn't hold His). I might let go. He won't.
All these truths you hold out, Mike, are useless in my experience - unless grasped by faith. So His grace is ever before me, realizing He understands and is working deeper truth in my life. My default is to yield to my feelings.
The words this song (and MANY other poems and Scripture passages) expresses are my solid and growing expectation - that one day my struggle of faith will become sight, and my wavering hope will be fulfilled in eternal reality.
God chose to take the most precious person in my life to Himself. When she awoke from that hospital bed January 11 almost two years ago - she saw Jesus' face! It is of great comfort and constant joy to me that she is with the One she loved more than she loved me, and longed to see more than anything else.
God did it by His inestimable grace though the death of His Son. And will for me, too. By (totally) His grace, which I do not deserve in the very slightest.
It is a VERY good thing He is sovereign....