Thank you for coming to Part II to learn more about God’s Sovereignty and how understanding it can give us confidence as we move forward in life, even in those hard moments. He is in all of life, and can use events in our lives to our benefit—whether those moments/events are happy or sad, whether they bring us joy or pain.
In Part I of this series, I shared a story about a life event that caused me great pain, but how through that pain God has shaped me into the man I am today. You see, when tragedy occurs, we have two choices. We can become bitter, or we can become better. We can run away from God, or we can run to Him. I chose to run to Him, and it is my prayer that I can convince you to do the same by sharing another story.
As a young man, a friend of mine suffered third degree burns on his leg. It took many skin grafts to repair the disfiguration and many months of physical therapy to overcome the damage to his leg muscles. In that difficult process, my friend was introduced to “Burn Camps” for children and young adults who were burn victims. These camps offered a chance to feel “normal,” to not stand out, and to be able to relate with other young people struggling with the same issues. Most of all though, it was the opportunity to just be normal, playing and enjoying the opportunities offered at the camp. It was something my friend did yearly, and the experience gave him confidence to face his world. Still, deep inside he continued to wonder why God allowed him to suffer such an injury.
My friend grew up, married and became a father three times over. When his youngest daughter was seven or eight, the family went on a camping trip. As they were traveling, one of the tow chains came loose and bounced up, hitting the propane tank on the trailer causing a huge explosion that wrecked the car and trailer. In the explosion, his daughter suffered third degree burns on both her hands and arms.
Had this friend been any other father, the grief and the emotional pain would have been overwhelming. However, being a burn victim himself, he knew. He knew the pain his daughter would have to bear and the hard road she would have to travel. More importantly, and he emphasized, his daughter knew that her father knew. Her dad’s scars gave her hope for healing, as she went through several surgeries of skin grafts and the difficult physical therapy that would follow. She could have hope and see that healing would follow pain.
My friend could have questioned God again. Yet as he matured, he had learned to trust God and lean upon Him rather than his own understanding. Now, as he faced this new crisis, he saw how God had prepared him to be able to draw from his own experience to bring hope to his daughter. In tears, he said: “My scars became my praise and thanks to God, precious marks of God’s Sovereignty, for because of them I now can relate, comfort and strengthen my daughter.”
God’s Sovereignty is sometimes described as a tapestry that He weaves from above. Mostly, we see only the underside of that tapestry. We can’t see the glorious patterns. All we see is what looks like a tangle of knots and dangling threads. But every once in a while, we have a “top of the tapestry” moment, when we can see God’s purpose in something that was very difficult. That’s what happened to my friend. He finally saw the top of the tapestry for his own life, and could see how his own tragedy was being used by God to help his daughter.
In the same way, I can look back on the loss of my brother and how I held myself responsible and see how God has used that pain to draw me closer to Him. You see, from that time till now, death has always been part of life for me. It sounds strange I know, but sadly the news reports prove me right. Tragedy is all around us. Still, that realization brought perspective to my life, causing me to live a life of faith, spending time learning God’s Word (The Bible) and finding strength and hope in spite of my “jarred” view of life. For me, death brought me closer to Life. And when I became a dad, I knew there were no guarantees. I only asked the Lord that my girls could live long enough to comprehend a life of faith. That may sound like a strange prayer coming from a parent, but the awareness of the brevity of this life causes me to put all my eggs in the basket of faith and in a personal God. He has become my closest companion, my best friend, and my Lord and I feel extremely privileged to know Him. And most importantly, very secure in that He knows me and has truly worked all the events of my life to create in me a man that I am pleased to be. A man I would have never become without Him.
Just as God used pain to “wake me up,” the Bible is full of stories in which God uses hardships to get our attention. We are so self-absorbed, so earth-bound that we have no thoughts towards God. We are like the frog in chemistry class which is placed in a beaker of water with the water being slowly heated. As the water is heated the frog acclimates to the temperature until it is cooked. We acclimate to a life without God, doing things our way, not understanding that the longer we stay in that state the more the burdens in this life kill the innocence and the joy that knowing a Sovereign God would give back to us. We burden ourselves and “cook ourselves” needlessly because we chose to have a life apart from Him. There is a spirit inside us that is made for God, it lies dormant, meaning that we are only living two thirds of our life. We are spirit, soul and flesh and most of our lives are lived being governed by our flesh, fears and insecurities. Knowing God starts the process of changing that as we become alive in our spirit. And, over time, there comes a change of “ownership.” Instead of operating by flesh, fears and insecurities we start to operate from our spirit with confidence in a Sovereign God who loves us. Knowing God and being confident in His Sovereignty brings hope. A soul without hope has nothing to live for because life holds no meaning. I don’t want you to live like that and, more importantly, God does not want you to live like that.
The Hope that we find in God is more than that He will see us through our pain. As we come to know Him more and more, we also realize that He uses our struggles to build real character into us. In essence, God uses hard life experiences to free us from our self-absorbed thinking and grows a faith that says “with God all things are possible” (Mark 10:27). As we learn to live life from that perspective, the trials become the means that God uses to “dig a deeper well” of faith in us. Painful yes, but fruitful, causing us to live for Eternity, not for the temporal. To live just for this life, is like investing all your interest and hope in the Titanic. The Bible says it this way: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal…” (Matthew 6:19).
If you are dealing with tragedy now, or have never come to peace with a tragedy in your past, I urge you to hear me and turn to the Lord. Start by reading the Book of John. Pray before you read, asking the Lord to give you understanding. The more time you can spend in prayer and reading the Scriptures the sooner a life of faith will make sense to you. For now, rest in this: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
It is my abiding prayer that you would know this love and so find rest in Him.