Trusting God: Even When Life Hurts

by Jerry Bridges

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

Nothing can FRUSTRATE God's plan

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

God's ultimate plan for us

specific purpose for each of us that is His unique, tailor-made plan for our individual ...

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.

Difficult to see it as we do nit see anything

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 God’s plan for us is no less firm and its outcome is no less certain than was God’s plan for Joseph.

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”

“by faith, not by sight”

Learn to live by faith not by sight

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.’”

words were directed to the nation of Judah in...

principle abou...

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...

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 ...

But the reverent reader of Scripture cannot fail to see the sovereign hand of God arranging those ordinary circumstances to accomplish His purpose.

God arranging circumstances

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.

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?

God is in control of both the good and bad outcomes

God controls both the good and the bad.

He is in control of that adversity, directing it to His glory and our good.

“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.”

We can say we dont understand but trust that God is good and wise knows what he is doing

it is difficult to believe God is in control when we are in the midst of anxiety, heartache, or grief. I

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

Ee can know God is in control, we need to ask the question are we going to trust him.

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

Trusting God is not a matter if my feelings but my will

That act of the will, though, must be based on belief, and belief must be based on truth.

Will must be based on truth and faith

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

Our first prioty is to trust God in times of adversity

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).

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.

feeling vs trusting in God in those feeling

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.

pastoral sensitivity is the key

They did this because God had made them favorably disposed toward the Israelites. How did

The iseralites plundered the egyptians cos God made the favourable disposed to them

God sovereignly intervened in the hearts—the desires and wills—of the Egyptians to accomplish His purpose for the Israelites.

We are, from a human point of view, often at the mercy of other people and their decisions or actions.

Yet God does this in such a way that these people make their decisions and carry out their plans by their own free and voluntary choices.

Does God cause people to make decisions that favor us, and does God restrain people from making decisions that would harm us?

Yet God controls the king’s heart. The stubborn will of the most powerful monarch on earth is directed by God as easily as the farmer directs the flow of water in his irrigation canals.

God controls all hearts even the most stubborn. This means all descions will work out for our good and God's glory, even if it does not seem like it

LORD moved the heart of Cyrus

Paul said of his colaborer Titus, “I thank God, who put into the heart of Titus the same concern I have for you. For Titus not only welcomed our appeal, but he is coming to you with much enthusiasm and on his own initiative” (2 Corinthians 8:16-17).

Titus, who acted with enthusiasm and on his own initiative. Titus acted freely, yet under the mysterious sovereign impulse of God.

have seen that God can and does move in the hearts of people to show favor to us when that favor will accomplish His purpose.

God restrains people from decisions or actions that would harm us.

protected the moral purity of Sarah, who was to be the mother of the promised son of Abraham.

God did not excuse Abraham’s sin, but He did not let that stop Him from intervening in Abimelech’s mind to prevent the serious consequences of the sin.

There was no reason why the Canaanites should not have swooped down upon Jacob and his family to avenge the crime of Jacob’s sons except that God restrained them through a fear that could not be rationally explained.

Yet God said that no other nation would covet the land of the Israelites, even during their vulnerable and defenseless times. God can restrain not only people’s actions, but even their most deeply rooted desires. No part of the human heart is impervious to God’s sovereign but mysterious control.

No part of the evil human heart is unable to be restrain by God

Too often, however, we tend to read these accounts merely as biblical history without relating them to our lives and our situations. But,

These stories are meant to teach us that God is sovereign over people and to encourage us by the knowledge that God exercises His sovereignty for our good.

God does not always restrain the wicked and harmful actions of others toward His people.

It is enough to know that God can and does restrain the harmful acts of others toward us when that is His sovereign will. Furthermore, God, in His infinite wisdom and love, intends that good ultimately comes from those harmful acts.

Ultimate good come out of these harmful acts done to us

Sometimes, according to the Bible, God even moves in the hearts of some people to act stubbornly.

For the LORD your God had made his spirit stubborn and his heart obstinate in order to give him into your hands, as he has now done” (Deuteronomy 2:30).