In God We Trust

"Sovereignty" is a big church word that I don't often use on this blog.  (A quick search yields only six times where I used the word, out of 3,000+ posts.)  But the concept is a central one to my belief system, the notion that God is in charge and truly does know best.

A powerful example of faith in this belief is the late James Montgomery Boice, who passed away from cancer in 2000.  Here is an excerpt from his last sermon, in which he muses about God's sovereignty in light of his terminal illness (emphasis is mine):

If I were to reflect on what goes on theologically here, there are two things I would stress. One is the sovereignty of God. That’s not novel. We have talked about the sovereignty of God here forever. God is in charge. When things like this come into our lives, they are not accidental. It’s not as if God somehow forgot what was going on, and something bad slipped by. It’s not the answer that Harold Kushner gave in his book, Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. God does everything according to his will. We’ve always said that. 

But what I’ve been impressed with mostly is something in addition to that. It’s possible, isn’t it, to conceive of God as sovereign and yet indifferent? God’s in charge, but he doesn’t care. But it’s not that. God is not only the one who is in charge; God is also good. Everything he does is good. And what Romans 12:1-2 says is that we have the opportunity by the renewal of our minds—that is, how we think about these things—actually to prove what God’s will is. And then it says, “His good, pleasing, and perfect will.” Is that good, pleasing, and perfect to God? Yes, of course, but the point of it is that it’s good, pleasing, and perfect to us. If God does something in your life, would you change it? If you’d change it, you’d make it worse. It wouldn’t be as good. So that’s the way we want to accept it and move forward, and who knows what God will do?

 God's sovereignty isn't cause for fatalism or recklessness or apathy, of course.   But it is a bedrock upon which to stand when life throws storms at you.  Think about it: even if you could change things, you wouldn't want to, because it would be less than the best that God has planned for you.

The process of adopting Asher has been, to put it mildly, tumultuous.  Unpredictable.  Heart-wrenching, at times.  Deflating and discouraging, a lot.  But, ultimately, we are in the hands of a God who is both in control and acting in our interests.  What a mighty truth to be rooted in.  I am still feeling shaky.  But at least I am aware of how close I am to solid.