Letter To Our Children
by Pastor Joe | December 29, 2021 | Letters To Our Children
December 29, 2021
Your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me were written in Your book
before one of them came to be.
Just then someone, without aiming, shot an arrow randomly into the crowd and hit the king of Israel in the chink of his armor. The King told his charioteer, “Turn back! Get me out of here—I’m wounded.”
Hello friends!
I am writing to you from an undisclosed location that will be disclosed sometime during this letter :).
Over the past 36 hours, I have had several first times. For the first time, while driving to Minneapolis during the winter, I actually drove the speed limit and not under the speed limit! For the first time, I spent the night at an airport because, for the first time, I got on an airplane that eventually did not take off but had to taxi back to the gate. For the first time, I heard a pilot say, I am sorry everyone, we will not be taking off. We have received word from the Seattle airport that we cannot land as things stand. So, for the first time, a flight I had a ticket for was canceled. For the first time, I received a refund for the ticket which was canceled. But there is more!
For the first time while at the airport:
I saw a snack machine filled with Subway sandwiches!
I saw a man punch a garbage can because he was angry about the flight being canceled.
I couldn’t help my son move into his new home. (Every other move he’s made, I’ve been there to help him - but not this time.)
I spent a night in my daughter’s apartment without her being there.
I am writing you a letter from my daughter's apartment.
Here is the thing about all those first times. None of them were random. None of them surprised God. All of them were part and parcel of God’s ordained days for me. They were all written in His book before one of them came to be. (vs.16)
God’s Sovereignty
God’s sovereignty is a very real part of who God is. It means God is in supreme command. It means that everything happens according to His plan and intention. It means He has an eternal plan for all of nature and history which goes exactly as He wants. (Eph. 1:9–11)
God’s sovereignty is not superstition. Nothing happens by chance. God's sovereignty is not God trying His best to help us. He is Almighty.
This is the essence of God’s sovereignty; His absolute independence to do as He pleases and His absolute control over the actions of all His creatures. No creature, person, or empire can either (stop) His will or act outside the bounds of His will. When He acts, no one can reverse it; no one can hold back His hand or bring Him to account for His actions. God does as He pleases, only as He pleases, and works out every event to bring about the accomplishment of His will. Such a bare unqualified statement of the sovereignty of God would terrify us if that were all we knew about God. But God is not only sovereign, He is also perfect in love and infinite in wisdom.
Jerry Bridges.
If God is not sovereign over the decisions and actions of other people as they would affect us, then there is a huge part of our lives where we could not trust God; where we are left, so to speak, to protect ourselves.
If God was not sovereign then when we pray, our prayers would be left to chance, and we would have no assurance He can answer our prayers. Our prayers would be nothing more than wishes. God’s throne of grace and power would only be a throne of some power and not all-power if He were not sovereign.
The text I quoted from 1 Kings 22 has a big backstory. Micaiah was a prophet of God who always told the truth. Other prophets at the time would lie to King Ahab and tell him things that would make him like them. Micaiah simply said what God said, and he said Ahab would die in battle. However, Ahab did not believe him. But just to be safe, he disguised himself and went to the battle. Several things happened, but the big thing that happen was this: a warrior randomly released an arrow from his bow, an arrow he wasn’t aiming at anyone, the arrow pierced King Ahab’s armor, and in time the king would bleed to death and die.
Think of it, a random arrow, shot by a random soldier, foretelling a specific truth from God through His mouthpiece Micaiah. The Bible writes of both God’s sovereignty and people’s freedom and moral responsibility, but it never attempts to explain their relationship. It simply reveals the truth.
Last week I was listening to a podcast about my favorite professional tennis player Serena Williams. In it, the host was describing all that he called “random” events which helped lead to her greatness as a tennis player. He then asks the question, If those events did not take place in Serena’s life, would she still be one of the greatest tennis players to play the game? Then he goes science on His listeners and says,
The idea that there are multiple versions of you, existing across worlds too numerous to count…It sure looks and feels like each of us is just one person living just one life, waking up every day in the same, one-and-only world. But according to an increasingly popular analysis of quantum mechanics known as the “many-worlds interpretation” every fundamental event that has multiple possible outcomes — whether it’s a particle of light hitting Mars or a molecule in the flame bouncing off your teapot — splits the world into alternate realities.
In other words, this theory says, every time a person makes a choice a different outcome takes place in another universe. It is as if we have tons of others’ lives, being lived in some other reality. Yikes!
Nevertheless, the Bible does not theorize about God’s sovereignty. It teaches God is sovereign over every atom, proton, neutron, everything– Including weather (Jer.10:13, Psalm 147:8; 148:8, Amos 4:7, Zechariah 10; space and time (Isaiah 44:24; Colossians 1:17, Hebrews 1:2, Psalm 31:15).
Therefore, we know this “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!” –Abraham Kuyper
This means many things, but the one thing it means is your life is safely in His hands.
God bless you on these final days of the year of our Lord 2021 and remember all the days of 2022 ordained for (you) were written in (God’s) book before one of them came to be. Psalm 139:16
Your friend,
Pastor Joe
P.S. The above picture is a cup of hot chocolate I made from some of the ingredients from Lindsey’s refrigerator and cupboard!