God is in Control
Mar 28 2023 - Eric Buresh
The truth of God’s sovereignty is so important to my daily sanity. The fact that He is in control of every detail is at the core of my confidence in every circumstance I encounter. Joined with the fact that He is always perfectly good in His purposes (Romans 8:28), His sovereignty is my foundation. I trust Him to do the very best thing even when that best thing is far from my sight and understanding. He has been so unbelievably faithful in my life, and He always will be.
When my wife and I were looking at what is now our house, one of the many things we noticed was that the roof was dotted with lightning rods. As the then-current owner was walking us around the house, I asked him about the lightning rods, and he explained that a few years prior the house had been struck by lightning and parts of the upper floor and attic had been damaged. Once bitten, twice shy. The lightning rods made sense.
Recently, I was listening to some worship music and the song “What a Beautiful Name” played. One line in that song confidently proclaims, “Who has shown every lightning bolt where it should go, or seen heavenly storehouses laden with snow?” I can recall many times we’ve sung this song as a body at Grace. This time, as I listened alone in my living room, it made me laugh as I thought, “Would we like that line so much if our house had just got struck by lightning?” We often pay lip service to God’s sovereign control until things don’t go the way we like, when suffering comes in one form or another, and suddenly we tell ourselves that God must not be responsible. We create all kinds of scape goats for God. After all, God couldn’t have just hit MY house with lightning. With every scape goat, we are unwittingly giving up the very confidence that will carry us through the suffering – our faith that God is in control and that He is good and doing good.
The lyrics are true – God tells every lightning bolt where it should go. Jeremiah 10:13; Job 37:5-7. He works every detail according to His will and not even a sparrow will fall to the ground apart from His will. Ephesians 1:11; Matthew 10:29-31. Even the seemingly random is governed by the Lord’s control. Proverbs 16:33. When suffering gets real, all these things remain true. God is still in control. He is still working for our very best good. While we weep and lament the suffering itself, we can simultaneously trust that God is good and doing good. It’s a perspective of faith – depending on God to bring what we can’t see (His good purposes) into perfect reality.
As we approach Easter, consider the suffering of Christ. God was in control of every detail. “For truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.” Acts 4:27-28. Men were committing evil, but they were bringing about God’s plan and will for good. Yet, consider the disciples’ suffering. They were traumatized, hiding, without hope. For three days, their faith failed. They did not appreciate that God was in control and that He was good and doing good. Then, miraculously, God made His good purposes perfectly clear. Resurrection! Death was defeated. Redemption and new life in Christ available for all. Access for His adopted children to the very presence of God where there is fulness of joy and pleasure forevermore! When the lightning bolt comes, (or cancer diagnosis, or evil at the hands man or the enemy), our confidence, our faith, remains in God’s very same resurrection power! He is in control, and He is always good and doing good. This is our hope and our confidence in the troubled waters.