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have written it as a Bible study about God and His sovereignty, wisdom, and love as they bear upon the adversities we all encounter.
what the book is
First, I desire to glorify God by acknowledging His sovereignty and His goodness. Second, I desire to encourage God’s people by demonstrating from Scripture that God is in control of their lives, that He does indeed love them, and that He works out all the circumstances of their lives for their ultimate good.
life is filled with such little events, little frustrations, little anxieties, and little disappointments that tempt us to fret, fume, and worry.
Little events ad to lifes troubles
God had brought a “crooked” event into my life, and I became acutely aware that only He could straighten it. Could I trust God whether or not He straightened my “crook” and relieved my distress?
God brings croked things in our lives
Could I trust Him even if I didn’t understand?
Can I?
Yet, I acknowledge it often seems more difficult to trust God than to obey Him.
Interesting, more difficult to trust God than obey him
God views our distrust of Him as seriously as He views our disobedience.
Mistrust of God is judt as bad as disobeying his law
In order to trust God, we must always view our adverse circumstances through the eyes of faith, not of sense.
seeing circumstances through faith
so the faith to trust God in adversity comes through the Word of God alone. It is only in the Scriptures that we find an adequate view of God’s relationship to and involvement in our painful circumstances.
Faith in God in bad times cones through the bible
God is completely sovereign. • God is infinite in wisdom. • God is perfect in love.
The essential truths to trusy God in bad times
“God in His love always wills what is best for us. In His wisdom He always knows what is best, and in His sovereignty He has the power to bring it about.”
They find it difficult to accept that both calamities and good things come from God.
Good and bad come from God
we tend to overlook that it was for Jesus an excruciating experience beyond all we can imagine.
God’s plan and His ways of working out His plan are frequently beyond our ability to fathom and understand. We must learn to trust when we don’t understand.
In subsequent chapters we will explore these three truths—the sovereignty, love, and wisdom of God—in greater detail. But the primary purpose of this book is not to explore these wonderful truths. The primary purpose is for us to become so convinced of these truths that we appropriate them in our daily circumstances, that we learn to trust God in the midst of our pain, whatever form it may take. It does not matter whether our pain is trivial or traumatic, temporary or interminable. Regardless of the nature of the circumstances, we must learn to trust God if we would glorify God in them.
What the book is about
It is only as we know God in this personal way that we come to trust Him.
so true
God is either good and not all powerful, or He is powerful and not all good. You can’t have it both ways.
For most people it is either one or the other
we reduce God’s control over our lives to a stop-and-go, in-and-out proposition.
God is in control of every aspect of our lives. What do i attribute to God
God’s providence is His constant care for and His absolute rule over all His creation for His own glory and the good of His people.
Defination of Gods rule over creation
He has designed His eternal purpose so that His glory and our good are inextricably bound together.
His glory and our good our bound togather. Neither one trumps the other
The so-called laws of nature are nothing more than the physical expression of the steady will of Christ.
Everything is the will of Jesus, even the natural order
“He himself gives all men life and breath and everything else…. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being’”
He sustains our very being
“Under God, however, all things are without exception fully controlled—despite all appearances to the contrary.”
it may not look like it but God is in control
Nothing is too large or small to escape God’s governing hand. The spider building its web in the corner and Napoleon marching his army across Europe are both under God’s control.
smal to large
The sovereignty of God is often questioned because man does not understand what God is doing. Because
We question God's rule cos we dont understand what he is doing
The sovereignty of God is often questioned because man does not understand what God is doing. Because
dont understand we question
Randomness, luck, chance, fate. This is modern man’s answer to the age-old question, “Why?”
Seventeenth-century deism constructed a God who created a universe and then walked away to leave it running according to its natural laws and man’s devices. Many people today are practical deists.
Listen out for this. Are people diests?
While it is certainly true that God’s love for us does not protect us from pain and sorrow, it is also true that all occasions of pain and sorrow are under the absolute control of God.
Often unwilling to accept the fact that God is working because they don’t understand how He is working, they have chosen to substitute the doctrine of chance for the doctrine of divine providence.
Intersting, many christians trusting in the doctrine of chance cos they dont understand what God is doing
But, as so often has been observed, we are to establish our beliefs by the Bible, not by our experiences.
what do we estblish our belifs on?
But that which should distinguish the suffering of believers from unbelievers is the confidence that our suffering is under the control of an all-powerful and all-loving God; our suffering has meaning and purpose in God’s eternal plan, and He brings or allows to come into our lives only that which is for His glory and our good.
Our suffering has a meaning and a purpose
God is in control; He is sovereign. He does whatever pleases Him and determines whether we can do what we have planned.
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.
We allow God to be anywhere except upon his throne
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
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.
If anything is out of God'scontrol we cannot trust him
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.
God permits people to act against his revealed will nit his secret will
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).
Only if the lord permits it and if it is part of his plan for us
“God is in control.” God is in control, but in His control He allows us to experience pain.
In his control he allows us to experience pain
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
evil in God soverign hand
No detail of your life is too insignificant for your heavenly Father’s attention; no circumstance is so big that He cannot control it.
No detail whether big or small in our lives is out of God's hands
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.
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,
From the bible how God uses normal circumstsnces to accomplish his purpose
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?
Asking questions of the text that answer how they show us God soverignty in this passage
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?”
God does as He pleases, and only as He pleases, and no one can frustrate His plans or hinder His purposes.
Trusting God as nothing can hunder him
But God is not only sovereign, He is perfect in love and infinite in wisdom.
Amen always remember this he is perfect in love wisdom
“Nature is morally blind, without values. It churns along, following its own laws, not caring who or what gets in its way.”
But how does this aspect of God’s sovereignty (specifically, God does as He pleases) relate to our trusting Him?
The answer is that God does have a purpose and a plan for you, and God has the power to carry out that plan.
God has a purpose and a plan and he has the power carry it out
