Precious Providence

How precious is it to know that God sustains all things and orchestrates all things for his purposes, that everything that comes my way today is by his appointment, whether joy or tears?

According to the psalmist, the knowledge of such things is a matter of life and death. And it’s only in God’s word that we find them (Ps 119:89-92).

“If your law had not been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction” (Ps 119:92). In other words, if I didn’t know of God’s orchestrating, loving, good purposes in my agony, I would have died.

Reflecting on James 1:2-4 and the command to count all our trials as joy, Bruce Ware writes,

“What an incredible expectation and command. The only way that any person could find trials and affliction “all joy” is to know that they have been designed for great gain and ultimate joy. Clearly the joy does not reside in the experience of affliction taken by itself. James is not living in denial. He is not trivializing the agony of affliction or the pain often endured in trials. But he encourages all believers to look past the pain to the purpose, i.e., to see what God intends to accomplish through it” (God’s Greater Glory, 173).

Because God has ultimate control over all my sufferings and trials, I find life in the experience of death, joy in the presence of pain. If I didn’t know God’s providence, I would die.

Where are you going?

“Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus answered him, ”Where I am going you cannot follow me now, but you will follow afterward.” Peter said to him, “Lord, why can I not follow you now?” (John 13:36-37). 

When Jesus told the disciples that His time to leave this terrestrial ball had come, it must have shocked them. They were known and identified as followers of Jesus because they were always with Jesus. Now He was leaving. And then the bitter truth that they would all fall away Peter simply could not fathom. 

I can’t fathom it either, how there are times when it seems like I’m on the dark side of the moon—questions about how things will turn out will simply have to wait, and what God has ordained in my life just doesn’t make sense. Like Peter, I wonder, Why not answer now? 

Though there are truths that get close to an answer to Peter’s question about God’s providence and why He times things as He does, it’s ultimately a mystery of His sovereign, gracious, good, will toward His children. “Little children,” Jesus says as He addresses His disciples, showing His compassion, yet leaving the ultimate purpose hidden. 

But it’s the same mysterious will that saved Peter—and me. And while I don’t know why God saved me, I do know, and am profoundly melted with gratefulness, that He did. There are more important questions to be answered than Why God does what He does when He does. Like Will God be my ever-present Refuge and Treasure and Joy, even in the midst of the worst kinds of sufferings? 

Jesus doesn’t tell Peter why it has to be this way, that He has to die and be crucified and the disciples have to not understand—at least not yet. He doesn’t tell me either. But there is a promise here of an “afterward.” There is a day when it’s going to make sense, and when the glory which I’ve been forged like steel to adore is set before me, there will be only joy.

But not only that; there is the promise that right here, right now, Jesus is my shelter in the storm. Not somewhere, someplace deliverance, but right here and right now. Jesus is the Life, Bread, Water, and Blood which is to be partaken of right now. Get grace.