A young man with a heart for God attends seminary, dreaming of the day he can serve the Lord in pastoral ministry. Three months before graduation, however, his wife announces she’s leaving, saying, “I don’t want to be a pastor’s wife.” She divorces him and walks out of his life.
In a war-torn African country, bands of guerrilla soldiers with machetes and guns sweep into a small village and kill hundreds of fleeing Christians. Said one man who made it to safety, “They were slaughtering us like chickens.”
Sensing God’s call, a young couple and their preschool son move to Libya so he can teach in the International School there. When tensions erupt between the countries, he sends his wife and son home while he stays behind to help his students finish the semester. One day while jogging near his home, men in a black vehicle pull up and start shooting. They drive away, leaving his lifeless body in the street. He was 33 years old.
A youth group returns from a week of summer camp. About a mile from home, the bus crashes as it exits the freeway—hitting a concrete abutment and rolling over. Dozens are injured, and the youth pastor, his wife, and their unborn baby are killed along with one of the adult sponsors—a mother of five.
Each of these stories is true. None of them was made up. I’m sure many of you could probably add similar ones. But as you think about them, think about this:
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)
How do we explain and justify these kinds of events as somehow “working together for good”? How are we to make sense of these kinds of happenings? Are we really to believe what that verse says in light of these kinds of circumstances?
Joseph’s story is an illustration a theological concept many of us have heard about but struggle to understand—the idea of God’s providence. The word “providence” comes from the etymological roots ‘pro’ (before) and ‘video’ (to see). Put together, the meaning of the word is “to see before.” In other words, the providence of God speaks to His ongoing guidance and care of everything … that He not only created it, but continues to sustain, guide, and govern everything that happens according to His divine will and purpose. God is involved in both the major events as well as the small details of everyday life, and His will works in and through our actions to insure that, even in the face of uncertainty and suffering, everything fulfills His plan for the good of His people and the glory of His name.
Please understand—to say God works in all life’s circumstances doesn’t mean He instigates or causes them. It means He makes use of them … that He’s creative and resourceful enough to where they can serve His purpose. Nor does it mean these terrible things aren’t really bad but are somehow good. They’re still bad! But God is ingenious and inventive enough to where He can through them to bring about good. It’s as if God says, “We can do this the easy way or we can do it the hard way, but in the end my will is going to be accomplished. Make your choices! Be responsible for them! But regardless of what you choose, know that I’m going to use them to serve the objectives and outcomes I’m trying to accomplish.”
Like I said—the notion of God’s providence is a tough one for us to wrap our minds around. But it seems that when we get to the place where we can embrace it, it changes some things for us. We can more easily deal with whatever comes our way because we know that, even if we don’t understand or like what’s going on, God is able to use it for His good purpose. Granted—that purpose may not be apparent to us. Many things happen in life that don’t seem to have any possible positive outcome attached to them—the death of a child … a terrorist attack … a school shooting … physical or sexual abuse … Alzheimer’s … Parkinson’s … MS. But when we consciously embrace God’s providence, we can know peace even when we find ourselves dealing with these kinds of things. We can live with a sense of expectancy rather than be a captive to despair. We can rise above our circumstances rather than being controlled by them.
When you think about the concept of God’s providence, there are some powerful truths for living that emerge. (1) God cares about the tiniest details of life. As I often say: There’s nothing so big He can’t do something about, and there’s nothing so trivial and inconsequential that He doesn’t care about. In fact—I’m convinced God doesn’t think in terms of “big” or “small”. Matt. 10:29-30 says:
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.
Bottom line: There’s nothing so insignificant and unimportant that it escapes His notice. (2) God uses everything and wastes nothing. With Him, there are no accidents—only incidents. Even those things that seem like senseless tragedies He’s able to somehow utilize and leverage. That doesn’t mean they’re necessarily good or beneficial; it just means He’s creative and resourceful enough to bring good from them. (3) Life is meaningful. Even though at times it may feel like it’s really random, it’s not! God is, and has always been, guiding things. At any given moment, He’s up to more than we can see and discern. (4) God’s ultimate purpose is to shape us into the moral likeness of his Son Jesus. In fact, if we turn back to Romans 8, lets look at the verse immediately after the one I referenced previously:
For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son … (Romans 8:29)
That’s what God is up to. That’s His ultimate objective—to fashion in us a conformity to Jesus. And He often uses the difficult moments—the events we’d classify as tragedies and catastrophes—to accomplish that purpose.
Now—some say that if (a) God is in control of the world and (b) He’s also loving, then why would He allow these kinds of things to happen. They would claim the very existence of evil is an indication He’s coming up short in one of these two areas—that He’s either not loving or not all-powerful. Since bad things happen, either God doesn’t care about what’s happening to us, or He does care but is powerless to stop it. How should we respond to this?
We should respond by saying this is a false dilemma … an either/or option when those aren’t the only options available. For there’s at least one more option out there—namely, that the God who endowed us with the power to choose allows evil for some ultimate good purpose—that God is playing the “long game”. Not that these things are surreptitiously or secretly good, but that a creative and clever God can use these things—whatever they might be—for His good purposes.
With that in mind, lets revisit Joseph one final time. As you recall, his story is full of twists and turns that eventually result in the relocation of his aged father, and his entire family, from Canaan to Egypt. They settled in the region of Goshen and lived in peace there for many years until Jacob died. But now that Jacob is dead and it’s just Joseph and his brothers, they fear that with their father’s passing his nice guy act is going to come to an end and he’ll be free to exact revenge on them:
When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, “What if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrongs we did to him?” So they sent word to Joseph, saying, “Your father left these instructions before he died: ‘This is what you are to say to Joseph: I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly.’ Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father.” When their message came to him, Joseph wept. (Genesis 50:15-17)
Listen to how Joseph responds:
But Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. (Genesis 50:19-20)
He says in essence, “You guys are guilty, but God used your choices to accomplish His purposes. And now that I see what He was up to, how could I strike out against you?”
As you think about Joseph’s response, as yourself this question: What kind of man can talk like that after all that had happened to him? I’ll tell you who can do it—a man who believed in God’s providence. “You meant it for evil but God meant it for good.” Both sides of that statement are true. They meant it for evil. What the brothers did was intentionally and unspeakably evil. They were one hundred percent responsible for their sin and the suffering they put Joseph through. They didn’t get a free pass. They made their choice and were accountable for it. “But God meant it for good.” God was free to use their choice in any way He saw fit, and he used it for a beneficial end. Please understand—for Joseph to make this statement didn’t in any way minimize or downplay the horrific nature of what they’d done. It just meant God was able to take what they did and use it to accomplish His plans. Only an unbelievably creative and resourceful God can do that!
Joseph saw the invisible hand of God at work in his life. He understood that behind his conniving brothers stood a loving Heavenly Father who’d been monitoring the entire affair in order to get him to the right place at the right time so he could save his family. He realized an event He’d thought to be a disaster was actually a doorway to an outcome he never could have imagined. God didn’t violate anyone’s free will in the process. Nor did He insert Himself in a way that overrode anyone’s sense of choice and changed the course of how things played out. But everything happened according to His plan. That’s the providence of God! I can’t explain it or rationally spell out how He was able to pull it off. But I can’t deny it either. I can’t pretend God stood back from the turmoil of Joseph’s life so that what came—the good fortune and serendipity that ultimately came his way—was entirely random and nothing more than the result of blind chance.
At the end of the day, life is really pretty simple. Either we try to run the universe, or we allow God to. Either we’re in charge and assume responsibility for outcomes, or He is and He does. I know a lot of people who are trying to run the universe … who are seeking to control and manage everything. I’ve also noticed that approach typically doesn’t work out very well. We can either attempt to run the universe, or we can bow before God and say, “You’re in charge and I’m not. I’ll trust you with the details.”
My guess is you, or someone you know, is dealing with something where you’re asking God “Why?”. You’re caught up in trying to be responsible for outcomes you deem satisfactory and acceptable. My guess is you’re also experiencing some of the inevitable frustration that comes with that attempt. Here’s what I’ve noticed: It’s one thing to give mental assent to the idea of divine providence—to affirm it as a concept or doctrine—but it’s another thing to unreservedly entrust ourselves to a God whose methods and techniques we’re not able to fully understand. After all—He’s infinite and we’re finite. If I was able to fully understand God, then He’d be no bigger than me and my limited understanding. And a God who’s no bigger than that is not worthy of my life’s devotion. We’re never going to fully understand Him. We should try to get as far down the road as we possibly can, but there will always to be a gap. That’s where faith and trust come in.
For anyone having difficulty trusting God, let me offer this as the ultimate demonstration of His providence. For hundreds—thousands—of years, God had promised a deliverer. His prophets foretold of a day when He’d no longer be a remote, distant being but an accessible, approachable reality. Immanuel—God with us! When the time was right, through a remarkable set of circumstances nobody could have ever anticipated, He entered the world in such a way to where every prediction was met and every forecast was satisfied. People would have no problem determining who He was. This child grew and lived an exemplary life—engaging the hearts of many who were far from God and annoying and exasperating those invested in the status quo. He taught in a way that made God come alive. He performed a number of miracles and signs that authenticated his identity. He demonstrated a deep love for those that were overlooked, forgotten, and unnoticed. But He continued to irritate the religious elite, so they coerced one of His own followers into betraying Him, conducted a sham of a trial to elicit a death sentence, pressured a weak-kneed governmental official into signing off on the deal, and carried out an execution reserved for the worst of the worst—a shameful and demeaning end to a life that was extraordinary and exceptional in every way.
But this awful, dreadful circumstance has become the foundation of our faith … the means by which you and I can be rightly related to Him. Talk about the providence of God? Talk about bringing something beneficial and good out of a situation that was dreadful, horrific, and bleak? You won’t find a clearer demonstration than what you see in the cross. The cross of Jesus Christ stands as the clearest and most unambiguous demonstration of God’s providence … of His uncanny ability to take that which is horrifying, appalling, and unspeakable and use it for a positive, constructive, and beneficial end.
Perhaps it would be good for us to remember that when we are dealing with hurtful and painful things that are causing us to ask “Why?”.