God's Sovereignty and Meaningful Human Choice

God’s Sovereignty and Meaningful Human Choice: Why Is This Tough and Controversial Issue Worth Studying and Discussing?

By Randy Alcorn 

What good can come from studying the mysterious and often upsetting subject of God’s sovereignty and human free will?

In small-group Bible studies, at colleges and seminaries, on blogs and radio programs, sovereignty and free will are bantered about. Some recognize these issues as hugely important. Convinced of their position, they look for opportunities to make their case.

Others shrug and say, “These doctrines cause division and are impossible to understand. Why even try?”

I believe one compelling reason to study them is to better understand what we cannot fully understand. And in the case of God’s sovereignty and human choice, while it’s not imperative that I understand everything, it is important that I believe in both. If I don’t believe in God’s sovereignty, I’ll either despair or imagine that I must carve out my own path. If I don’t believe in my freedom to make meaningful choices, I’ll either give up on life or not take responsibility for my decisions.

1. To develop a deeper appreciation for God and His Word, which reveals Him to us.

Following are six other excellent reasons:

When the United States announced its intention to send a man to the moon, it mobilized untold resources. By the time Neil Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface in July 1969, the US space program had done much more than reach its objective. Along the way, countless advances were made in medicine, engineering, chemistry, physics, and numerous other fields. NASA aimed at the moon and got a whole lot more.

Likewise, our pursuit of godly wisdom and understanding will not only deepen our perspective on a specific passage or topic, but will also help us in countless other ways, as we give extra effort to diligently and prayerfully meditate on God’s Word (see Psalm 19:8; 119:30, 105; 2 Peter 1:19).

2. To help us mirror Christ’s humility.

True humility and wisdom consist of recognizing how little we really know. The Bible insists we “know in part” and we “see but a poor reflection as in a mirror” (1 Corinthians 13:9, 12).

True humility and wisdom consist of recognizing how little we really know.

However, God is honored when we go to His Word to learn more about Him and His ways. We’re to bow to the wisdom of Scripture, even when its mysteries are hard to wrap our minds around. Humility requires that we not think more highly of ourselves than we ought (see Romans 12:3) and that we realize how much we have to learn from God.

When the Ethiopian eunuch was puzzling over Scripture, Philip asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” (Acts 8:30). Asking God to enlighten us and give us insight from His Word will go a long way toward benefiting from this study.

Bible study is exciting when we come expecting to learn, to be challenged, and to be transformed.

3. To embrace all of God’s inspired Word, not just parts of it.

“The first to present his case seems right,” says Proverbs 18:17, “till another comes forward and questions him.” Our families and churches and the books we’ve read may have presented their cases first, but that doesn’t mean they are right.

The Message paraphrases Ecclesiastes 7:18: “It’s best to stay in touch with both sides of an issue. A person who fears God deals responsibly with all of reality, not just a piece of it.” God inspired all of His Word, not just parts of it, and He calls us to embrace it all.

We should compare Scripture with Scripture to discern the whole counsel of God.

Large dogs can get two tennis balls in their mouths at the same time. Not our Dalmatian, Moses. He managed to get two in his mouth only momentarily. To his distress, one ball or the other always spurted out. Likewise, we have a hard time handling parallel ideas such as grace and truth, or God’s sovereignty and free or meaningful choice. We need to stretch our undersized minds to hold them both at once.

A paradox is an apparent contradiction, not an actual one. Sovereignty and meaningful choice aren’t contradictory. God has no trouble understanding how they work together. In His infinite mind they coexist in perfect harmony.

A paradox is an apparent contradiction, not an actual one.

As you may have noticed, however, our minds are not infinite. And while our brains can never fully grasp sovereignty and meaningful choice, by affirming what Scripture says about both, we can avoid the mistake of denying one in order to affirm the other.

4. To foster unity in the body of Christ.

In my new book, hand in Hand, I bring a respect for brothers and sisters in Christ who believe God’s Word but understand it differently than I do. I encourage you to carefully examine your own positions and inconsistencies before subjecting fellow Christians to blistering critique. Puritan Thomas Brooks stated, “There are no souls in the world that are so fearful to judge others as those that do most judge themselves, nor so careful to make a righteous judgment of men or things as those that are most careful to judge themselves.”

Let’s bear the fruit of the Spirit, which includes both peace and patience (see Galatians 5:22). Unity has an evangelistic power that needless division undermines (see John 17:20–21). When we seek to become peacemakers among Christ-following Bible believers, we please Jesus (see Matthew 5:9).

Let’s recognize our core areas of agreement, making an honest attempt to understand one another while refusing to let peripheral issues separate us. If we love the same Jesus and believe the same Bible, let’s start and end there.

5. To avoid both fatalism and crushing guilt.

Church history shows us that leaning heavily toward a particular set of verses can result in apathy and passivity: “God is going to do whatever He wants to do anyway, so why bother doing anything ourselves?” Leaning heavily toward another set of verses can result in something close to frenzy and unrelenting guilt: “We have to save the world! It all depends on us!”

What is God’s role and what is mine? Is my life in God’s hands, my hands, or the hands of demons or other people? What we believe about God’s sovereignty and human choice has a significant impact on how we live.

6. To prevent us from becoming trivial people in a shallow age.

The times we live in are in no danger of going down in history as “The Era of Deep Thought.” In our world, feelings overshadow thinking, and sizzle triumphs over substance.

Taking their cues from the culture, Christians who hear about the paradox of sovereignty and free will might say, “It’s a mystery; we’re never going to solve it.” But this can just be laziness, a spiritual-sounding way of saying, “I don’t want to think too hard. Let’s watch a movie instead.”

How can we keep the shallowness of our culture from turning us into trivial Christians? “Reflect on what I am saying,” Paul writes, “for the Lord will give you insight into all this” (2 Timothy 2:7).

Though surrounded with sweeping superficiality and slavery to what’s trending on Twitter, we must learn to think deeply. Paul warned, “The time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths” (2 Timothy 4:3–4, NIV2011).

If we devote our lives to dealing only with trivial issues, we can’t help but become trivial people.

If you want truth and depth, you have to spend time in God’s Word, allowing it to make the crucial sixteen-inch journey from your head to your heart. Yes, the question of how human choice and divine sovereignty can coexist is big and difficult, but it’s also vitally important. If we devote our lives to dealing only with trivial issues, we can’t help but become trivial people.

The relationship of God’s sovereignty and our meaningful choice is both intriguing and beautiful.

Of all the dilemmas we confront in life, none is more enigmatic than God’s sovereignty and human choice. So why do I find the perplexing question of God’s sovereignty and human choice beautiful rather than frustrating?

It all depends on perspective.

When astronomers gaze into deep space they’re confronted with the universe’s puzzles. One of them is dark energy, which is “thought to be the enigmatic force that is pulling the cosmos apart at ever-increasing speeds.” How and why is it doing this? Another unknown is how dark matter, “thought to make up about 23 percent of the universe,” somehow has “mass but cannot be seen”; its existence is deduced by the “gravitational pull it exerts on regular matter.” What exactly is it?

Cosmic rays are highly energetic particles that flow into our solar system from deep in outer space, but where do they actually come from? It’s been a mystery for fifty years. The sun’s corona, its ultrahot outer atmosphere, has a temperature of “a staggering 10.8 million degrees Fahrenheit.” Solar physicists still don’t understand how the sun reheats itself.

These mysteries and countless others have not so much frustrated scientists as fascinated them. Watch their interviews and read their articles; their wonder about things they don’t comprehend is palpable. You don’t have to be able to wrap your mind around something in order to see its beauty.

This is how I view the conundrum of God remaining sovereign while still granting His creatures the gift of choice. The immensity of the marvel itself should move God’s children to worship.

Human beings are capable of inventing nonliving machines, including computers they program to do complex tasks. But God goes far beyond that by creating complex beings with choice-making capacity, including the freedom to worship or revolt.

For God to fully know in advance what billions of human beings could and would do under certain circumstances, and to govern our world in such a way as to accomplish His eternal plan—is this not stunning?

If we can gaze at the night sky or a waterfall or the ocean with hearts moved at their sheer beauty, should we not be able study the metaphysical wonders of God’s universe with equal or even greater awe?

Surely our lives are greatly enriched when we recognize the mysterious beauty of the interplay between God’s ways and ours.

God’s choices come first, and ours second.

I do think it’s reasonable to look at God’s choices as being more foundational than our own. Why? Because we’re made in His image, and His choice-making precedes and empowers ours. The universe is first and foremost about the purposes, plan, and glory of God. Because He is infinite, His choices naturally hold more sway than those of His creatures. As His power exceeds ours, so does the power of His choices.

That doesn’t mean our choices don’t matter—they certainly do. He gives us room to make choices according to the prevailing disposition of our will and within the limits He imposes in his sovereign plan. My perspective is simply that everything about God, including His choices, is greater than everything about us.

A. W. Tozer said, “Every soul belongs to God and exists by His pleasure. God being Who and What He is, and we being who and what we are, the only thinkable relation between us is one of full lordship on His part and complete submission on ours.”

That’s the spirit in which I’m approaching this subject in hand in Hand: eager to acknowledge His lordship and willing to submit to whatever He has revealed in His Word. I invite you to join me in exploring this fascinating topic…and experiencing the joy of discovery.

Posted at: https://www.epm.org/resources/2014/Nov/11/gods-sovereignty-and-meaningful-human-choice-why-t/

Evaluate Your Day Before It Begins

Article by Matthew Westerholm

“Was today a good day?” I crawled into bed and prepared to sleep, my mind anxiously evaluating the previous 24 hours. Using a haphazard set of metrics, I interrogated myself, “Was today a success? Did I accomplish my goals and get what I wanted?”

I never fall asleep quickly when my thoughts spiral like this. And any sleep that I get is not particularly restful. My problem is that I tend to overanalyze my day once it has ended.

Instead of this end-of-the-day anxious spiral, the psalmist provides believers with a confident prayer that flips worry on its head. Psalm 90:14 says, “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.” It is easy to read these nineteen words quickly, but this verse contains glorious truths that enable us to evaluate our day before it even begins.

Our Ultimate Request: Satisfy Us

That first word, satisfy, might be the most important word in this verse. At the start, the psalmist asks God to satisfy him, giving us both an example and permission to ask God to make us happy.

While our long lists of dissatisfactions often cause sleepless nights, our neediness and dependence unmistakably reveal the truth that we are not meant to achieve satisfaction on our own. In every circumstance, this psalm calls us to turn to the Lord and ask him to satisfy us.

What might a prayer for satisfaction in God look like in different circumstances? If we are disinterested or lethargic, we should ask God to fascinate and animate us. If we are bored or distracted, we should ask God to delight and captivate us. When we are lonely or miserable, we can ask God to accompany and comfort us.

Morning by Morning

While the others spend the entire day searching for satisfaction, God satisfies his children at the start of their day. Having received satisfaction from God in the morning, believers are liberated each day to glorify God.

This satisfaction of God sets us free to navigate our lives in faith. The world uses work to chase satisfaction through personal accomplishments. We are freed by God’s satisfaction, liberated to glorify God with our work and provide for our families.

The world uses recreation to chase satisfaction through the pursuit of pleasure. We are freed by God’s satisfaction, liberated to find joy whatever the circumstances. The world uses people to chase satisfaction through approval. We are freed by God’s satisfaction, liberated to glorify God by loving people — genuinely interacting and caring for them.

God’s love helps us receive and interpret our circumstances instead of having our hearts controlled by them. Rather than looking at our schedules and hoping for a good day, or creating a plan to make a good day, we look to the satisfying love of God that he generously offers each morning.

Steadfast and New

And we don’t need to wonder whether God’s love for us is going to fade or fail; God’s love is just as steadfast as he is. As Jeremiah wrote, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end.” God’s love and mercy, the prophet tells us, are “new every morning.”

We describe God’s love as both “steadfast” and “new” — a confusing pair of adjectives. But because God’s eternal nature never changes, his love toward his children is steadfast. And because God upholds the universe through new, creative energies that he inexhaustibly sustains (his gloriously plural, “mercies”), his love for his children is new every morning.

“The Lord is my portion,” the prophet concludes, so we can “hope in him.” (Lamentations 3:22–24). God gives us his merciful love each day; this is our daily baseline for hope.

Daily Satisfaction, Eternal Happiness

Normally, Hebrew poetry uses parallelism. That means that the Psalms make their point by using two (or more) closely corresponding lines. A strictly parallel reading leads us to expect the verse to say something like, “Satisfy us in the morning, that we may be glad till the evening.” If God satisfies us at the start of the day, we expect to remain happy until the day’s end.

Here, however, the psalmist surprises us. In a twist of gospel math, a daily(“in the morning”) prayer for satisfaction is answered by a lifetime (“all our days”) of joy and gladness.

How can one morning’s worth of satisfaction provide a lifetime of joy? Certainly some of the answer rests directly in the verse — God’s steadfast lovewill last our entire lives.

On Easter Morning

But the rest of the Bible explains this equation even more fully. One morning, the Lord Jesus Christ walked out of his grave, conquering sin and defeating death. And the resurrection power of the Son of God has been given to all God’s sons and daughters (Romans 8:11). So, now, because of that greatest morning of all, we can rejoice and be glad all of our days.

We don’t need to wait until an evening of anxious evaluation to determine whether today was a good day. God loves us with a steadfast love. The Lord Jesus conquered sin and death on Easter morning. And because we belong to him, today is a very good day.

Matthew Westerholm (@mwesterholm) is the pastor for worship and music at Bethlehem Baptist Church and assistant professor of music and worship at Bethlehem College & Seminary. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife and three sons.

Posted at:  https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/evaluate-your-day-before-it-begins

Get Your Eternal Vision Checked

Article by Alex Tunnicliff

Humans are eternity-forgetters.

In the everyday throes of life, eternity can so easily fade into the background. Eternity shrinks, and we forget—or almost deny—our mortality.

If you are a church-planting pastor, beware this deadly reality. If we don’t intentionally bring eternity to the forefront of our minds, we may lose the weight of it altogether. When eternity is forgotten, we become enamored with what is temporary.

And for all our efforts, we’ll be left with temporary churches filled with temporary preaching of a temporary word that will, at best, push people to temporary change. In the meantime, we’re left to build temporary kingdoms that quickly crumble, all the while accumulating for ourselves a temporary following who will celebrate us only to eventually turn to the next Twitter feed once ours grows cold.

Ministry is hard, and church planting can feel impossible. Motivation and adrenaline rooted in the temporal will only get us so far.

Ministry is hard, and church planting can feel impossible. Motivation and adrenaline rooted in the temporal will only get us so far.

If we want to make it in church planting, we must have eyes to see beyond the temporary to the horizon of eternity.

Eternity Changed

More than 2,000 years ago, a cosmic battle was waged and won. Eternal destinies were changed. Christ’s death and resurrection paved the way to eternity. God’s people will one day joyfully celebrate his glory for all eternity. This is why we plant churches.

This may seem like a strange reminder, but it’s a necessary one. The everyday stuff of church planting can be overwhelming: raising money, training up elders, counseling the hurting, looking for a location, shaping vision, and forecasting financial viability.

These temporal realities can blur our vision, making us lose sight of the fact that planting churches is an eternal endeavor. Ten thousand years from now, your church—Christ’s bride—will only have begun to magnify his glory. For now we see the shadows, but the fullness is coming.

If we want to make it in church planting, we must have eyes to see beyond the temporary to the horizon of eternity.

In light of this reality, there is a certain glory that shines even in the mundane. Monday morning has eternal implications. And when the weight of eternity meets with the mundane of Monday, it will transform all that is menial in church planting.

After all, we’re heading toward a wedding where we’ll enjoy a feast with our King. No more dimly-lit mirrors, no more broken shadows, no more sin. We will look across the table and see him as he is.

Therefore, what you do today actually matters, and it will still matter a few million years from now. The church you are planting is headed toward eternity.

But eternity will not only shape your motivations, it will anchor your soul.

Eternity Gained

It was Easter Sunday, and I’d just preached on the resurrection. I got a text message from my brother-in-law waiting for me after the second service.

We’d just hired him and his wife to plant a church. They’d moved to the Upper Peninsula to plant in one of the area’s most difficult places. It took months of planning, praying, and searching to find someone willing to embark on this mission.

But I noticed that he and my sister were not at either service that morning, and his text provided the explanation: Anne was in the emergency room, and it was cancer.

Eight short days later, the Good Shepherd ushered her home. He led her through the valley of shadows and death. That valley is not foreign to him; he’s been there before. And because Jesus lives, so does she.

Anne was a faith-filled lover of the gospel who’d come to the middle of nowhere to help plant a church in a place few know about.

And now she’s gone.

In these moments, how fast our church is or isn’t growing, how many people like my sermons, or how strategic my five-year plan appears fall to the periphery. In these moments, eternity takes center stage; it magnifies what’s important and reveals what’s not.

Eternal Anchor

So while eternity will shape your motivation, it will also anchor your soul when the billows roll.

Eternity reminds us what’s at stake. We’re planting eternal churches made of eternal image bearers; we proclaim an eternal gospel; Jesus Christ will usher in an eternal kingdom; we will worship full of eternal joy; and our eternally worthy King will be praised forever.

Ten thousand years from now, your church—Christ’s bride—will only have begun to magnify his glory.

We, as church-planting pastors, are privileged to play a role in this work of wonder God is doing. We’re wrapped up in the greatest story in all the world. And it’s a story that doesn’t end.

So look to the horizon. The King is there. Eternity is with him. Crushed enemies lie strewn at his feet. There’s a smile on his face as he comes for his bride.

Alex Tunnicliff is the lead pastor for preaching and teaching at Redemption Hill in Kingsford, Michigan. He and his wife, Melissa, have two children and another due in early July. They live in Iron Mountain, Michigan.

Article posted at:  https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/get-eternal-vision-checked/

3 Tear-Wrought Lessons on Suffering

 Justin Huffman   

If you haven’t experienced pain or sorrow or loss, you’re either young or dead.

We’re all faced at some point with the fallenness of our world and brokenness of our own hearts. A parent buries a child, a family is ripped apart by divorce, a spouse is shattered by a diagnosis. It seems we might break under the weight of such pain.

When the pain gets so heavy we don’t think we can bear it, we ask the inevitable question, “Is this worth it?”

Paul has a startling answer to that question in Romans 8:18: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”

Is this some kind of Christian pep talk? No, Paul is not sharing a limp-wristed inducement, but tear-wrought lessons from his considerable suffering (see 2 Cor. 11:23-28). He shares three lessons we can all learn from as we face a world that’s not as it ought to be.

LESSON 1: SUFFERING HURTS

Paul first acknowledges suffering by calling it suffering. He doesn’t diminish the reality of sorrow and loss and sin. He calls it what it is—suffering. And sometimes considerable suffering, at that.

We often run from or ignore sorrow and disappointment. Or we try to somehow minimize it, numbing our pain. These coping methods won’t really help us cope at all, not in the long run, because we’re running to ourselves to fix our problems instead of running to God. But when we run to God and his Word with our pain, we discover a Father who acknowledges our pain and a Son who experienced it.

God knows our pain. He is not lounging in a La-Z-Boy in heaven while we’re struggling to keep our heads above water. Hebrews 4:15 reminds us “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”

When we lose a loved one, when we cry until we can’t cry anymore, when we suffer abuse at the hands of others, when we endure chronic pain, we can run to a Savior who in every way knows what we’re experiencing and sympathizes with us.

Suffering hurts. And Jesus knows it. Run to him and listen as he validates your pain and acknowledges your suffering.

LESSON 2: GLORY HEALS

Paul’s second lesson is that our suffering—considerable as it is—is hardly worth comparing to the weightiness of the glory that is to be. Elsewhere he says that “this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Cor. 4:17). Light affliction?! Is Paul invalidating his first lesson that our suffering is truly terrible? No. He’s saying that relative to eternal glory with Christ, our afflictions, no matter how unbearable, will seem momentary.

Paul says our glory will not only be eternal, but it will be weighty. This seems like a strange combination of words. We know suffering can be weighty, but glory?

Though it sounds foreign, when we think about the joys of a lifetime of marriage, of raising children from infancy to adulthood, or of deep and long-lasting friendships, the word weighty seems fitting. Or consider even a moment of happiness—when your new spouse says “I do,” or you hold your newborn or newly adopted child for the first time or enjoy a meaningful conversation with a close friend. Certainly words like fluffy, light, insignificant, or faint don’t describe these pleasures.

No, the joy we experience in such blessings is real, substantial, significant, and large. Real joy is weighty. And it is precisely the weightiness of such joys that make our grief so weighty. Yet it seems like the weight of pain always outweighs joy, doesn’t it? Can the weight of joy or glory really outweigh the heaviness of our trials, like Paul says?

If a glory this heavy seems impossible, consider this. The same God who provided the joy you’ve experienced with your spouse or parent or child or friendship is the same God who knows what eternal glory awaits you—and he says they can’t be compared! The glory that God has prepared for every one of his children is that heavy.

Eternal joy is greater than our suffering in length of time and in quality. Christian, catch God’s perspective. See that eternal joy is weightier than even our greatest sufferings here and now.

LESSON 3: FAITH HELPS

What is it that makes this eternal, heavenly glory so transcendently, seriously glorious? That it is centered on Christ (Col. 3:4; 2 Thess. 2:13; 1 John 3:2). Admittedly, to the skeptic, this may sound more anticlimactic than floating around on clouds and playing harps. But for anyone who has seriously considered the character of Jesus Christ, and especially for those who have found in Christ the only perfection that will satisfy a truly good God, this resonates. The joy of a consummated relationship with Christ is weightier than any suffering on earth will ever be.

The joy of heaven is not just that there will be “no more death or pain or tears.” The joy of heaven is that there is no more sin to keep us from living with and being like Jesus Christ completely and forever. Unhindered and uninterrupted fellowship with Jesus is the greatest joy heaven has to offer.

Suffering will exist, for now, no matter what your worldview. But if you don’t believe in God, then you will just be looking for another solution to the suffering, another way through the suffering.

The eternal glory Paul speaks of will also happen no matter what we think about God. One day this world and our suffering will come to an end, and one day believers in Christ will be enabled to live with him forever. No one can keep this from happening.

Faith in Jesus Christ is not only the means of salvation; it is also the means by which we enjoy salvation’s promises and assurances even now. Faith is the umbilical cord that connects our infant-like perspective on suffering to the nourishment available from a God who knows what it’s like to suffer as we do.

Recognizing the bigness of God, and of his grace through Jesus Christ, will feed our souls in the midst of this momentary suffering by granting us assurance of a glory infinitely weightier than even the most crushing pain.

IS YOUR SUFFERING WORTH IT?

Is your pain and suffering worth it? Is your crippling anxiety and grief worth it?

Yes. Your suffering is truly suffering. Your pain is truly heavy. But if you’re in Christ, you have a Savior who has experienced everything you have and more. He knows exactly how you feel and precisely what you need. He knows your suffocating at the hands of suffering, and he wants you to set your eyes on the eternal weight of glory he’s preparing for you.

May the weighty joy of the Christian faith be yours, now and for all eternity.

Justin Huffman has pastored in the States for over 15 years, authored the “Daily Devotion” app (iTunes/Android) which now has over half a million downloads, and recently published a book with Day One: Grow: the Command to Ever-Expanding Joy. He has also written articles for For the Church, Servants of Grace, and Fathom Magazine. He blogs at justinhuffman.org.

Article Posted at: http://gcdiscipleship.com/2018/06/12/3-tear-wrought-lessons-on-suffering/

Every Hard Day Will Be Beautiful Someday

Article by  Christine Hoover

I hadn’t opened the old shoebox in a decade, but lifting the frayed lid, I laughed in delight at the faces of dear friends and family staring back at me. For hours afterward, I sat on my closet floor, poring over stacks of these pictures that held constant vigil for happy college years, newlywed days, long-ago ministry events, and first days home with babies.

My heart filled with wonder at being able to see so clearly in the present as I peered into the past. A friendship that began in college through a chance meeting has, in time, grown into one of deep joy and importance. The man who’d become my husband, pictured still very much as a boy, whom I’ve seen grow more and more into who God’s made him to be. The little baby, the object of several lifetimes of my worry, who’s now matured and overcome.

Looking at time past, I marveled at how the pictures gave me the gift of sight, and how this sight affirmed the truth of Ecclesiastes 3:11, “He has made everything beautiful in its time.” Even in what I could never have imagined becoming beautiful, God had proven himself good.

You Don’t See the Whole Picture Now

But then I turned back to my present moment, the very day I was going through old pictures, and I tried to wrap my mind around that day’s gifts: the already teenager and the almost teenagers, taking up more space in my home and heart, eating their way through life. I tried to squeeze every ounce of thankfulness from my heart regarding my husband and the state of our union, and I ticked through the church we planted, friends, extended family, our health, the opportunities and influence God’s given.

“Even in what I could never have imagined becoming beautiful, God had proven himself good.”

I couldn’t enjoy today’s moments like I could the past, because the present was so difficult to see without fear creeping in. What if my beloved is taken from me? What if this boy of mine never learns from his mistakes? What if God asks us to say a gospel goodbye to the church we love? It’s as if my heart wanted to protect itself, belying the deeper question at the core of my fear: What if God isn’t actually at work, bringing all things to the beautiful end he’s promised?

We’re told by our culture, seemingly on repeat, to live in the moment, to be present. And I know there is good in this charge, but living in the present and especially grasping what God is doing in the current moment is like looking through a glass darkly (1 Corinthians 13:12). We cannot fully see nor can we comprehend the shape of what God is making and the tools he’s using to bring all things to the beautiful end of redemption. We “cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end” (Ecclesiastes 3:11), and on a smaller scale, we can’t grab hold of a present moment with joy unadulterated by sin and darkness. We must not chide ourselves over missing the moments if we can’t grab hold of their fullness as they pass.

There is a better way to live in the present. The box of old pictures helps us understand how.

What We See in Old Pictures

Why are we often more moved by old pictures than new? One reason is that when we look back, those memories are informed by a longer and wider perspective. We’re able to view them through the filter of God’s goodness, without the fear or uncertainty we might have experienced in the moment.

We see this same phenomenon in Scripture. In the Old Testament, God repetitiously required his people to build altars, recall stories of his acts to their children, and celebrate feasts that marked the miracles he’d done on their behalf. Over and over, he said to them, “Remember.” They were to remember how God made freedom from slavery and provision from lack so they’d trust him in their present darkness.

And then, through the prophets, God’s refrain became, “Look forward.” They were to look forward to a perfect deliverer and forever rescue, when God would make beauty from their ashes — so that they might trust him with those ashes in their present state.

The Goal for Our Present

We also see this in the New Testament. In the moment of Christ’s crucifixion, everything appeared horribly bleak. Now we’re able to look back on his death and resurrection and see unparalleled beauty, the kind that fills us with joy. This perspective fuels our hope as we look forward to seeing the promise of his second coming.

“One day we will see the scope and beauty of our redemption in full.”

Looking back at the past and forward to the future helps us walk by faith in a promise-keeping God in this present darkness. For many of us, both the past and the present are pockmarked with pain. Our hope in this life is set on God’s ever-present help, and on the reality awaiting us when Jesus sets all things right and all our pain is transformed into glory. Beauty awaits everyone in Christ.

The goal for our present, then, is not grasping the moment as it passes or trying to see clearly now what God is doing at every turn. The goal for our present moment, though seen dimly for what it is, is faith — believing that the God who was and will be is also the God who is with us, helping us, working in us, and hurtling us toward a beautiful end.

What You Can’t See Today

God has designed us to comprehend and value the true beauty of his work most significantly over time. As an artist pulls the cover off a portrait in dramatic reveal, as the hiker’s perspective of where she’s traveled comes into view as she steps onto the mountain peak, one day we will see the scope and beauty of our redemption in full.

More importantly, we’ll see God, and in our first awestruck glimpse we’ll see beauty that John, in his Revelation vision, struggled to compare with anything we currently call beautiful. As we take him in, and as we take in a broader horizon of time and God’s work in time, our understanding of his beauty will come into far greater focus.

Perhaps then too we will follow the pattern Scripture gives: looking back with eternal eyes, seeing God’s goodness in every point of history. A heavenly shoebox of joy waiting for our unending discovery. And what will we look forward to in the future? In heaven, the future is one of joy’s eternal increase, every discovery of God’s handiwork a new facet of his beauty.

We do not need to see or understand all that God is doing on our hardest days. We just need to know that God is behind this, and in this, and that he will make it beautiful in time.

Christine Hoover (@ChristineHoover) is the author of Searching for Spring: How God Makes All Things Beautiful in Time, Messy Beautiful Friendship, From Good to Grace, and The Church Planting Wife. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, with her husband Kyle and their three boys. Find her at her website.

God Will Give You More than You Can Handle

Article by Mitch Chase

Christians can make the strangest claims when comforting those who are suffering. What do you say to someone whose life is falling apart? If you have but few precious minutes with a person who’s lost a job, home, spouse, child, or all sense of purpose, what comfort do you give?

We might turn to conventional wisdom instead of Scripture and end up saying something like, “Don’t worry, this wouldn’t happen in your life if God didn’t think you could bear it.” The sufferer may object, head shaking and hands up. But you insist, “Look, seriously, the Bible promises God won’t ever give you more in life than you can handle.” There it is—conventional wisdom masquerading as biblical truth. You’ve promised what the Bible never does.

Temptations Versus Trials

In 1 Corinthians 10, the apostle Paul writes, “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” His discussion is specific: he’s writing about “temptation,” a snare that breaks a sweat trying to drag us into sin. Using a predator metaphor, God warned Cain that “sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it” (Gen. 4:7). Sin stalks us, but God is faithful. Sin desires to overcome us, but there is a merciful way of escape. Sin sets the bait, but for the believer—praise God!—sin is not irresistible.

Now if people apply Paul’s words about temptation to general sufferings, you can see where the line “God will never give you more than you can handle” comes from. I don’t doubt the sincerity and good intentions of those who use this phrase, but sincerity isn’t enough. Even Job’s friends meant well.

The Twin Errors

There are at least two errors in the unbiblical notion of “God will never give you more than you can handle.” First, it plays on the cultural virtue of fairness. Second, it points the sufferer inward instead of Godward.

1. Trials that Are . . . Fair?

If you give your children boxes to load into the car, you make visual and weight assessments that factor in their ages and strength. You don’t overload their arms and watch them crash to the ground with stuff splayed everywhere. That would be unfair. The saying “God will never give you more than you can handle” strikes a tone of fairness we instinctually like. There’s something pleasing about the idea that the scales are in balance, that God has assessed what we can handle and permits trials accordingly.

But there is a glaring problem with the “fairness” that undergirds this conventional wisdom: God has been unfair already, because he has not dealt with us as our sins deserve. He has been longsuffering, forbearing, gracious, and abounding in love. The sun shines and rain falls even on the unjust (Matt. 5:45). God transcends the categories of fair and unfair to such a degree that we have no position to evaluate his actions or weigh his will. His ways aren’t subject to our culture’s standard of fairness.

2. The Power . . . Within?

Suffering doesn’t ask if you’re ready. It may come slowly or with a vengeance, but it doesn’t ask permission, and it doesn’t care about convenience. There’s never a good time for your life to be wrecked. But the saying “God will never give you more than you can handle” tells me I have what it takes. It tells me I can bear whatever comes my way. It tells me God permits trials according to my ability to endure. Think about what this conventional wisdom does: it points people inward.

Yet the Bible points us Godward. As the psalmist says, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling” (Ps. 46:1–3). When our strength is failing under crushing burdens, the answer is not within. God gives power to the faint and increases the strength of the weak (Isa. 40:29). The power comes from him to those who wait on him.

Where Trials Direct Us

Trials come in all shapes and sizes, but they don’t come to show how much we can take or how we have it all together. Overwhelming suffering will come our way because we live in a broken world with broken people. And when it comes, let’s be clear ahead of time that we don’t have what it takes. God will give us more than we can handle—but not more than he can

The psalmist asks, “Where does my help come from?” (Ps. 121:1), and we must be able to answer like he did. We must know and believe, deep in our bones, that “My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth” (121:2). When trials come, trust that the Lord’s help will come. This news is helpful to sufferers since we’re saying something true about God instead of something false about ourselves.

Paul recalled a time when God gave him more than he could bear. In a letter to the Corinthians, he wrote, “For we do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself” (2 Cor. 1:8). Paul and his associates had been in circumstances that transcended their strength to endure: “Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death” (1:9).

Then he provides a crucial insight into his despair. Why were he and his companions given more than they could handle? To “make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead” (2 Cor. 1:9). God will give you more than you can handle so that his great power might be displayed in your life. Indeed, a greater weight of glory is still to come: “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Cor. 4:17).

You might not consider overwhelming sufferings to be “light” and “momentary,” but think of your trials in terms of a trillion years from now. In the middle of affliction, sometimes the most difficult thing to hold onto is an eternal vision. Paul isn’t trying to minimize your affliction; he’s trying to maximize your perspective.

Suffering doesn’t get the last line in the script. In this life, God will give you more than you can handle, but the coming weight of glory will be greater than you can imagine.

Mitch Chase (PhD, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is the pastor at Kosmosdale Baptist Church and an adjunct professor at Boyce College in Louisville, Kentucky. He’s the author of Behold Our Sovereign God and The Gospel Is for Christians. He is married to Stacie, and they have four boys. You can follow him on Twitter.

Article originally posted at: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/god-will-give-you-more-than-you-can-handle/

How Does God's Sovereignty Not Violate Our Decision-Making?

Podcast by John Piper

Audio Transcript

How does God’s sovereignty over every life not make each of us robots? Where is the place for human willpower and decision-making? And how does God govern over it all? Great questions from a listener named Max in Lincoln, Nebraska.

“Pastor John, thank you for all your episodes over the years. This podcast nourishes my soul. But I am also thickheaded, and a lot of important theological points come to me very slowly. Can you explain again how God’s sovereignty over human decisions and actions comes through his control over our affections, such that we are not robots responding moment by moment to individual commands and prompts in situations, but he is in control of our decisions as we freely choose what we want? I think I’m on the verge of understanding you and Edwards and the Reformed tradition on this, but can you make this all clear in ten minutes (so Tony doesn’t scold you for going long again!)?”

Well, the likelihood that I could put in ten minutes what two thousand years of church history has not succeeded in completely clarifying for the best of minds is not very likely. But there aren’t many things more important than the sovereignty of God in our personal lives and how we make choices.

The way we think about this does have implications for how we worship and serve and persevere as Christians, so let’s make a stab at it. I’m going to lay out seven points in what I think is a biblical view of the relationship between the human will and God’s sovereignty. Each one could have a book written about it, so these are simply pointers with biblical passages to think about.

1. Devastating Bondage

Until someone is born again by the power of God’s Spirit, all human beings, ever since Adam, are spiritually blind (2 Corinthians 4:4). They are darkened in their understanding, hardened in their hearts (Ephesians 4:18).

“This deep evil in all human hearts does not limit the complete sovereignty of God over all things.”TweetShare on Facebook

They cannot grasp spiritual truth (1 Corinthians 2:14). They are rebellious against God (Romans 8:7), spiritually dead in trespasses (Ephesians 2:1), enslaved to sin (Romans 6:6), and unable to please God (Romans 8:8). That’s point one. Pretty devastating bondage.

2. Loving Darkness

All people are still responsible in that condition — accountable to God. They are liable to judgment because this darkness that they are in, this slavery, holds them and has its power over them not against their will or against their desires, but precisely because of their will and because of their desires. In other words, they love sin.

Jesus said in John 3:19, “The light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works for evil.”

The problem is not that we lack light, but that we love darkness. This is not a bondage against people’s will. This is a bondage because of their will.

3. Unhindered Sovereignty

This deep evil in all human hearts does not limit the complete sovereignty of God over all things, including the fallen human will.

• “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hands of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will” (Proverbs 21:1).

• “The Lord had made them joyful and had turned the heart of the king of Assyria to them, so that he aided them in the work of the house of God” (Ezra 6:22).

• In Genesis 20:6, God said to Abimelech, the pagan king who had not committed adultery with Sarah, “It was I who kept you from sinning against me.” In other words, God was ruling in the will of a pagan king.

• “The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord” (Proverbs 16:1).

• “In this city [Jerusalem], Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, [gathered together] to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place” (Acts 4:27–28).

God is profoundly, thoroughly in control of the fallen will of man.

4. A New Will

By the sovereign, regenerating, life-giving, blindness-removing, hardness-replacing, light-shining work of the Holy Spirit, God replaces blindness with the light of reality. He breaks the deceptive bondage of sin and sets people free.

“We are not controlled or coerced against our desire or against our will, but by means of new and powerful desires.”TweetShare on Facebook

That’s what it means to be saved; that’s what it means to be converted or born again. Second Corinthians 4:6 reads, “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” That’s the meaning of conversion.

Romans 6:20–22 says it this way: “For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.”

This slavery to God — now in the regenerate, in the born again — is the same kind of slavery that we had to sin, in this sense: It’s not a slavery contrary to our will. We were enslaved to sin because sin looked so good and desirable to us. Our will was all in with sin. Now, we are enslaved to God because God looks so good and so desirable to us. Our will is all in with God. That’s what happened in the new birth.

5. True Freedom

This new slavery to God is true freedom for three reasons.

• Like slavery to sin, it is completely willing. We are not controlled or coerced against our desire or against our will, but by means of new and powerful desires.

• These new desires, unlike the desires for sin, accord with — agree with, are in harmony with — what is true and beautiful and lasting: God’s righteousness. They align with God’s way. According to John 8:32, we’re not being deceived. We have been set free from deception.

• This new slavery to God is true freedom because our former so-called “freedom” ended in everlasting death. Our new freedom, our slavery to God, ends in eternal joy. You’re not really free if you’re doing what you want to do, and you are miserable because of it for all eternity. You’re free if you do what you want to do and don’t regret it a million years.

6. According to Plan

This new freedom does not limit the complete sovereignty of God over all things, including the redeemed human will. God is working in us that which is pleasing in his sight. God is doing this through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory (Hebrews 13:21). Yes, not to us, but glory to him forever and ever.

This doesn’t mean we can’t grieve the Spirit of God (Ephesians 4:30). But it does mean that God lets himself be grieved as part of his larger purpose, which always comes to pass. It says in Ephesians 1:11 that he works all things according to the counsel of his will. In this new freedom, God is still sovereign over our wills.

7. Mystery Remains

God’s way of ruling the redeemed will not compromise our responsibility or nullify the freedom which is true freedom. How can this be? That’s probably the nub of the question that’s being asked: How can this be?

“When you see Christ, it awakens such an authentic savoring of Christ that the Bible says, ‘There is freedom.’”TweetShare on Facebook

I doubt that we will fully understand that until we get to heaven. There is a glimpse of how it might be in 2 Corinthians 3:17–18: “Now the Lord is the Spirit [Jesus is the Spirit], and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed [this is what freedom looks like] into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” Then he adds again, “For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”

He begins with, “The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” That’s where he begins in verse 17. Then he ends, “This comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” In other words, it seems like he’s saying this: when the Spirit of God transforms us to God’s will — to love God’s will and to conform to God’s will and thus reflect the glory of God — this is true freedom.

The reason it is true freedom is that this transformation is happening through beholding the glory of the Lord, not by any kind of coercion, but by beholding the glory of the Lord. We’re compelled by savoring Christ. That compelling savor is awakened by seeing Christ. That seems to be at the heart of what freedom is in Paul’s understanding.

When you see Christ for who he is, it awakens such an authentic, freeing, savoring of Christ that he says, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”

Of course, there are many more questions. For some of them, I doubt that we will have answers until we see Jesus face to face. But I think these seven points are biblical and crucial for enjoying our freedom in Christ and living worshipfully under the glorious sovereignty of God.

Plunge Your Mind into the Ocean of God’s Sovereignty

Article by John Piper

Sometimes we need to plunge our minds into the ocean of God’s sovereignty. We need to feel the weight of it, like deep and heavy water pressing in against every pore, the deeper we go. A billion rivers of providence pour into this ocean. And God himself gathers up all his countless deeds — from eternity to eternity — and pours them into the currents of his infallible revelation. He speaks, and explains, and promises, and makes his awesome, sovereign providence the place we feel most reverent, most secure, most free.

Sometimes we need to be reminded by God himself that there are no limits to his rule. We need to hear from him that he is sovereign over the whole world, and everything that happens in it. We need his own reminder that he is never helpless, never frustrated, never at a loss. We need his assurance that he reigns over ISIS, terrorism, Syria, Russia, China, India, Nigeria, France, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, and the United States of America — every nation, every people, every language, every tribe, every chief, president, king, premier, prime minister, politician, great or small.

Sometimes we need to hear specific statements from God himself about his own authority. We need God’s own words. It is the very words of God that have unusual power to settle our nerves, and make us stable, wise, and courageous.

On the one hand hearing the voice of God is like a frightened child who hears the voice downstairs, and realizes that daddy’s home. Whatever those other sounds were, it’s okay. Daddy’s home.

On the other hand it feels like the seasoned troops, dug in at the front line of battle, and about to be overrun by the enemy. But then they get word that a thousand impenetrable tanks are rushing to their aid. They are only one mile away. You will be saved and the enemy will not stand.

Vague generalizations about the power of God do not have the same effect as the very voice of God telling us specifically how strong he is, how pervasive his power, how universal his authority, how unlimited his sovereignty. And that our times are in his hands.

So let’s listen. Let’s treat the Bible as the voice of God. Let’s turn what the Bible says about God into what God says about God — which is what the Bible really is — God speaking about God.

And as we listen, let us praise him. There is no other fitting way to listen to God’s exaltation of God. This is what happens to the human soul when we plunge into the ocean of God’s sovereignty.

We praise you, O God, that all authority in the universe belongs to you.

“There is no authority except from me, and those that exist have been instituted by me.” (Romans 13:1)

“You, Pilate, would have no authority over my Son at all unless it had been given you from me.” (John 19:11)

We stand in awe, O God, that in your freedom you do all that you please and all that you plan.

“Whatever I please, I do, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps.” (Psalm 135:6)

“I work all things according to the counsel of my will.” (Ephesians 1:11)

“I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.’” (Isaiah 46:9–10)

We marvel, O God, that you share this total authority and rule completely with your Son.

“I have given all authority in heaven and on earth to my Son, Jesus.” (Matthew 28:18)

“I love my Son and have given all things into his hand.” (John 3:35)

“I have given my Son authority over all flesh.” (John 17:2)

“I have put all things in subjection under my Son’s feet — all things except myself.” (1 Corinthians 15:27)

“I raised my Son from the dead and seated him at my right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion. . . . I put all things under his feet.” (Ephesians 1:20–22)

“I welcomed my Son into heaven. He is at my right hand, with angels, authorities, and powers subject to him.” (1 Peter 3:22)

We submit with reverence to you, O God, because, through your Son, you remove and install the rulers of the world.

“Wisdom and might belong to me. I change times and seasons; I remove kings and set up kings.” (Daniel 2:20–21)

“I loose the bonds of kings and bind a waistcloth on their hips.” (Job 12:18)

“I sent my angel and struck Herod down, because he did not give me glory, and he was eaten by worms and breathed his last.” (Acts 12:23)

Indeed, O God, you not only raise rulers and put them down; you govern all their deeds in every age.

“The king’s heart is a stream of water in my hand, says the LORD; I turn it wherever I will.” (Proverbs 21:1)

“I will put an end to the wealth of Egypt, by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. . . . I will break the yoke of Egypt, and her proud might shall come to an end. . . . I will strengthen the arms of the king of Babylon and put my sword in his hand, but I will break the arms of Pharaoh.” (Ezekiel 30:10, 18, 24)

“I have given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my servant, and I have given him also the beasts of the field to serve him. All the nations shall serve him and his son and his grandson, until the time of his own land comes. Then many nations and great kings shall make him their slave.” (Jeremiah 27:6–7)

“As I have planned, so shall it be, and as I have purposed, so shall it stand. I will break the Assyrian in my land; and his yoke shall depart from my people.” (Isaiah 14:24–25)

“I will make the nations the inheritance of my Son, and the ends of the earth will be his possession. He shall break them with a rod of iron.” (Psalm 2:8–9)

We acknowledge with wonder, O God, that no plan of man succeeds but those which you, in unfathomable wisdom, permit.

“I bring the counsel of the nations to nothing; I frustrate the plans of the peoples.” (Psalm 33:10)

“No wisdom, no understanding, no counsel can avail against me.” (Proverbs 21:30)

And how mighty and wise you are, O God, that no man, no nation, force of nature can thwart your holy plans.

“No purpose of mine can be thwarted.” (Job 42:2)

“I do according to my will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay my hand or say to me, ‘What have you done?’” (Daniel 4:35)

“There is none who can deliver from my hand; I work, and who can turn it back?” (Isaiah 43:13)

So, we bow, as dust in the scales, O God, and confess with joy, that we are as nothing compared to your greatness.

“Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the dust on the scales. . . . All the nations are as nothing before me, they are accounted as less than nothing and emptiness.” (Isaiah 40:15, 17)

“I sit above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers. I stretch out the heavens like a curtain, and spread them like a tent to dwell in. I bring princes to nothing, and make the rulers of the earth as emptiness.” (Isaiah 40:22–23)

The joy of our hope, O God, is that you magnify your greatness by lifting up the low, and putting down the proud.

“Who but me can say to a king, ‘Worthless one,’ and to nobles, ‘Wicked man’? I show no partiality to princes, nor regard the rich more than the poor, for they are all the work of my hands.” (Job 34:18–19)

“I shatter the mighty without investigation and set others in their place.” (Job 34:24)

“I look on everyone who is proud and bring him low and tread down the wicked where they stand.” (Job 40:12)

“I the LORD kill and bring to life; I bring down to Sheol and raise up. I make poor and make rich; I bring low and I exalt.” (1 Samuel 2:6–7)

“I have scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; I have brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate.” (Luke 1:51–52)

And so it will be forever, O God. You rule over all, with an everlasting rule, for the sake of the lowly who trust your Son.

“I live forever, for my dominion is an everlasting dominion, and my kingdom endures from generation to generation.” (Daniel 4:34)

“My dominion shall not pass away, and my kingdom shall not be destroyed.” (Daniel 7:14)

“My Son will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” (Luke 1:33)

Therefore, overflowing with praise and thanks, O precious and holy God, we rest in your absolute sovereignty over our lives. And rejoice to hear you say,

“Your times are in my hand.” (Psalm 31:15)

36 Purposes of God in Our Suffering

by Paul Tautges

Joni Eareckson Tada has given us many books on the subject of God’s tender care for His children in times of suffering. Joni strikes the chord of authenticity with us so well because suffering is the world she lives in 24/7. My personal favorite is When God Weeps: Why Our Sufferings Matter to the Almighty, co-authored with Steve Estes, a pastor in Pennsylvania. The following list of God’s purposes in our suffering is from one of the appendices in that book.

Take some time to meditate on the wisdom of God as He works out His perfect will through our suffering. No wonder James, the brother of our Lord, commanded us to “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials” (James 1:2)!

1. Suffering is used to increase our awareness of the sustaining power of God to whom we owe our sustenance (Ps 68:19).
2. God uses suffering to refine, perfect, strengthen, and keep us from falling (Ps 66:8-9; Heb 2:10).
3. Suffering allows the life of Christ to be manifested in our mortal flesh (2 Cor 4:7-11).
4. Suffering bankrupts us, making us dependent upon God (2 Cor 12:9).
5. Suffering teaches us humility (2 Cor 12:7).
6. Suffering imparts the mind of Christ (Phil 2:1-11).
7. Suffering teaches us that God is more concerned about character than comfort (Rom 5:3-4; Heb 12:10-11).
8. Suffering teaches us that the greatest good of the Christian life is not absence of pain, but Christlikeness (2 Cor 4:8-10; Rom 8:28-29).
9. Suffering can be a chastisement from God for sin and rebellion (Ps 107:17).
10. Obedience and self-control are from suffering (Heb 5:8; Ps 119:67; Rom 5:1-5; James 1:2-8; Phil 3:10).
11. Voluntary suffering is one way to demonstrate the love of God (2 Cor 8:1-2, 9).
12. Suffering is part of the struggle against sin (Heb 12:4-13).
13. Suffering is part of the struggle against evil men (Ps 27:12; 37:14-15).
14. Suffering is part of the struggle for the kingdom of God (2 Thess 1:5).
15. Suffering is part of the struggle for the gospel (2 Tim 2:8-9).
16. Suffering is part of the struggle against injustice (1 Pet 2:19).
17. Suffering is part of the struggle for the name of Christ (Acts 5:41; 1 Pet 4:14).
18. Suffering indicates how the righteous become sharers in Christ’s suffering (2 Cor 1:5; 1 Pet 4:12-13).
19. Endurance of suffering is given as a cause for reward (2 Cor 4:17; 2 Tim 2:12).
20. Suffering forces community and the administration of the gifts for the common good (Phil 4:12-15).
21. Suffering binds Christians together into a common or joint purpose (Rev 1:9).
22. Suffering produces discernment, knowledge, and teaches us God’s statutes (Ps 119:66-67, 71).
23. Through suffering God is able to obtain our broken and contrite spirit which He desires (Ps 51:16-17).
24. Suffering causes us to discipline our minds by making us focus our hope on the grace to be revealed at the revelation of Jesus Christ (1 Pet 1:6, 13).
25. God uses suffering to humble us so He can exalt us at the proper time (1 Pet 5:6-7).
26. Suffering teaches us to number our days so we can present to God a heart of wisdom (Ps 90:7-12).
27. Suffering is sometimes necessary to win the lost (2 Tim 2:8-10; 4:5-6).
28. Suffering strengthens and allows us to comfort others who are weak (2 Cor 1:3-11).
29. Suffering is small compared to the surpassing value of knowing Christ (Phil 3:8).
30. God desires truth in our innermost being and one way He does it is through suffering (Ps 51:6; 119:17).
31. The equity for suffering will be found in the next life (Ps 58:10-11).
32. Suffering is always coupled with a greater source of grace (2 Tim 1:7-8; 4:16-18).
33. Suffering teaches us to give thanks in times of sorrow (1 Thess 5:17; 2 Cor 1:11).
34. Suffering increases faith (Jer 29:11).
35. Suffering allows God to manifest His care (Ps 56:8).
36. Suffering stretches our hope (Job 13:14-15).

Out of His deep love for us, God is more interested in making His children like Christ than He is in making us comfortable. The glory He receives from redeeming depraved sinners like us and remaking us into His image will be the song that fills the halls of heaven for all eternity (Rev 5:9-10). Since that will be the case in the future, let us pursue joy in the Lord here in the present.

[The above list makes a great personal Bible study or the basis for small group discussion.]

Do Not Consume One Another

Article by Howard Eyrich

Galatians 5:15 "Do not consume one another".

The same Scriptures that provide us with the positive protocols about which we have written also delineates five practices that we should avoid in order to glorify God in our marriages and enhance a joyful relationship.

In this essay we will consider the protocol found in Galatians 5:15. It says this: “Do not consume one another.”  Let me suggest six ways that couples typical say or do that contributes to consuming one another. The first one is angry outbursts. Angry outbursts have a deleterious impact in several ways. They provoke anger in your mate. The anger may be a defensive anger, an anger of disgust or a retaliatory anger.  For example, Jim and Sally sat in the counselor’s office attempting to provide their counselor an understanding of how their marriage demise had spiraled. As Jim was reporting an incident for the sake of illustration, Sally responded with defensive anger. Immediately Jim shut down and withdrew.  Angry outbursts diminish affection, cooperation and hope that things can ever change.

A second way we consume one another is by an attitude of demandingness. Demandingness is often the outgrowth of unmet expectations. It is not unusual to hear in the counseling office an accusation that sounds something like this. “You are supposed to be the provider for this family (which often means I expect you to enable us to live at the level of our peers) and I am not to put up with your feeble attempts.” Or, a husband may say, “I thought when I married you that you were supposed to be available for my sexual needs. I did not see where the Bible limits that to once a week and if we are going to make it you will have to get with the program.” Now these illustrations may be simplified and overstated, but they are examples (and will be heard at times in counseling).

A third way of consuming one another is by sheer selfishness. Yes, demandingness is a form of selfishness, but this is more pervasive. What is in view here is a self-centeredness that touches all of life. Sometimes this is a malady of which the individual is totally unaware. For example, a person who was raised with the proverbial “silver spoon” in the mouth may well develop a self-centeredness that not only impacts the mate directly, but also impacts every other relationship. This person’s mate finds him/herself energy drained in attempts to manage the collateral damage with the children, the Sunday School class and even with his/her friends. The mate is consumed in the process.

Yet another practice that is consuming is sulking. The mate of a sulker finds him/herself consumed with the task of figuring out what is generating the displeasure of the mate this time. Often these attempts elicit some the anger response discussed above further exasperating the consuming of the mate.

No one appreciates being manipulated. But when manipulation is characteristic of a mate, it becomes consuming. If this trait is a character trait, it will often go unnoticed in courtship, but once engaged in living intimately it will surface. I once had a young couple in counseling where this is exactly what happened. The wife said, “If I had caught on to this when we were dating I would have broken the relationship. It takes all my effort to be alert to your tricks.

Lastly, we can consume one another by distrusting. In a relationship in which trust is absent, mates find themselves consumed with being self-protective. If I am not trustworthy, my mate is consumed by me. Her/his conscious energy is poured into the action of discernment.

So, when Paul writes, “Do not consume one another”, we once again have instruction from the hand of God as to how to live within the church and especially within the marriage in a manner that contributes to our happiness as an outgrowth of glorifying God.