Trusting God

by Jerry Bridges

Adversity is difficult even when we know God is in control of our circumstances.

God is completely sovereign. God is infinite in wisdom. God is perfect in love.

God is completely sovereign. God is infinite in wisdom. God is perfect in love.

“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.”

“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.”

In order to trust God we must know Him in an intimate, personal way.

Bible teaches us we do have it both ways.

all of His creation at all times.

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.

If we are going to learn to trust God in adversity, we must believe that just as certainly as God will allow nothing to subvert His glory, so He will allow nothing to spoil the good He is working out in us and for us.

The so-called laws of nature are nothing more than the physical expression of the steady will of Christ.

God did not simply create and then walk away. He constantly sustains that which He created.

He constantly sustains, provides for and cares for us every moment of every day.

God’s moment-by-moment sustaining of His universe and everything in it leaves me no choice

If we are to trust God, we must learn to see that He is continuously at work in every aspect and every moment of our lives.

No one can act outside of God’s sovereign will or against it.

The sovereignty of God is often questioned because man does not understand what God is doing. Because He does not act as we think He should, we conclude He cannot act as we think He would.

God does not walk away and leave us to the mercy of uncontrolled random or chance events.

but we believe that, although we often do not understand God’s ways, He is sovereignly at work in all of our circumstances.

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.

Confidence in the sovereignty of God in all that affects us is crucial to our trusting Him.

In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps.

We make plans, but those plans can succeed only when they are consistent with God’s purpose.

The sovereignty of God is the one impregnable rock to which the suffering human heart must cling.

All of these circumstances are under the controlling hand of our sovereign God, who is working them out in our lives for our good.

Neither the willful malicious acts nor the unintended mistakes of people can thwart God’s purpose for us.

Nothing is so small or trivial as to escape the attention of God’s sovereign control; nothing is so great as to be beyond His power to control it.

No plan of God’s can be thwarted; when He acts, no one can reverse it; no one can hold back His hand or bring Him to account for His actions. God does as He pleases, only as He pleases, and works out every event to bring about the accomplishment of His will.

We can commit to Him not only the ultimate outcome of our lives, but also all the intermediate events and circumstances that will bring us to that outcome.

But over all the actions and events of our lives, God is in control doing as He pleases—not apart from those events, or in spite of them, but through them.

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God has not looked the other way or been caught by surprise when adversity strikes us. He is in control of that adversity, directing it to His glory and our good.

husband. Trusting in God does not mean she does not suffer grief, that her heart does not ache. It means that in the midst of her heartache and grief she can say something to the effect of, “Lord, I know You were in control of this dreadful event. I do not understand why You allowed it to happen, but I trust You.”

we must also learn to trust God one circumstance at a time.

matter of my feelings but of my will. I never feel like trusting God when adversity strikes, but I can choose to do so even when I don’t feel like it.

Our first priority in times of adversity is to honor and glorify God by trusting Him.

God does move people to accomplish His purpose.

in His

The best possible end of all

of God’s actions is ultimately His glory.

That is, all that God does or allows in all of His creation will ultimately serve His glory. As John Piper says in his book Desiring God, “The chief end of God is ...

The good that God works for in our lives is conformity to the likeness of His Son.