Trusting God in a Hard Providence

Introduction


We live in a world where rough things happen. Despite all our advances in technology, everyone reading this will still at some point die. We still get sick. We still have financial challenges. We have the heartbreak of wayward children. We still have to deal with the perversity of sin that we can still find stirring under our own breastbone. In other words, as it says in Job, man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. How are we to respond? If we want to avoid the cold comfort of platitudes, tough times demand tough thinking.

As we have previously dealt with anxiety, where nothing bad has happened yet, but we are worked up over the fact that it might happen soon, we now need to deal with the challenge of trusting God when the things we have feared have actually started to come to pass. We are not yet through the trial, but we are certainly into it. We are past the point of worrying about the possibility of a bad diagnosis . . . we have already received the bad diagnosis. Now what?

The context of the exhortation in Thessalonians is this. Paul is in the midst of delivering a rapid-fire series of exhortations to them, including esteeming your leaders, being at peace with one another, warning the unruly, comforting the feeble, and so on. He then tells them to pray without ceasing, and then comes to deliver our text. And then right afterwards, he says not to quench the Spirit.

Now this cluster of exhortations shows that Paul is not assuming that the Thessalonians are somehow living in a la-la land, where it is quite easy to “give thanks in everything.” There are tough challenges in the same breath. This is not an exhortation only for those who live under marshmallow clouds and glittery rainbows, and who are allowed to cavort in the meadow with sparkly unicorns.
 
And in Ephesians, we find something similar. Right after a warning that the “days are evil” (Eph. 5:16), leading on to a caution about drunkenness (v. 18), Paul tells them to fill up on psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, and tells them to “give thanks for all things.” This is what it means to be filled with the Spirit.

Reasoning Within the Constraints of Scripture

We are Christians, and so we should want to do as we are told. We should not want, under pressure, to reinterpret what God must have actually “meant.” We were not told to be “realistic.” We were told to give thanks in and for everything. This means that it is time for us to put on our big boy pants. “Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men” (1 Cor. 14:20).
 
We have to learn how to argue our case with God, as the psalmist frequently does. We must avoid, at all costs, murmuring in our tents, the way the children of Israel used to do in their tents in the wilderness. We may press our case with God, and that case may include our desire to be free of the current challenge, but we may never forget that His infinite and holy character is the only possible foundation for any sane argument. If that foundation is missing, then we have no argument, we have no complaint, and nothing could possibly be wrong with what is happening to us.

You may appeal to God, and you may do so with loud cries. Jesus did that (Heb. 5:7). You may argue with God. Many holy men and women have done that. But you may not accuse God. You may not try to become a devil to God. You may not adopt into the premises of your argument anything other than the promises of God, grounded as they are in the character and attributes of the immutable and holy One. In short, whenever you argue with God, both of your feet must be firmly fixed in the covenant of grace.

One Premise You Must Have

If God is up in Heaven wringing His hands, and saying “oh dear” along with the rest of us, there is no possible way for us to do this. Since God wants us to plead our case with Him, requiring it as He has, He wants us to get this premise down into our bones.

We live our lives “according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will” (Eph. 1:11). And God saved us by grace through faith because we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10). It now appears that one of those good works is to walk faithfully, with your head up, through this particular affliction.
 
So we are not being asked to thank God in and for an isolated anything. Everything that happens is part of a purpose, plan, plot, stratagem, and so on. God is running a play. God is telling a story, and so you thank God for this particular verb’s place in the story. God is not telling you to thank Him for that same verb twisting aimlessly in an infinite, godless vacuum. No—there is no such place. There is no such thing as a strictly isolated trial. Every trial is a chapter in a story.

And God, a good and gracious Author, never wrote a story that didn’t resolve.

Of Course Not

Now of course it is psychologically impossible for us to thank God for a sin we have committed when we are in the middle of committing it. But that is a limitation created by the sinning. Such a limitation does not place our disobedience outside the story—others may thank God for how He is using our sin for His glory. Remember that whenever we thank God for the cross of Jesus Christ—which we are to do constantly—we are thanking Him for the worst murder that was ever committed on this planet (Acts 2:23; Acts 4:27-28). We are thanking Him for the murder, and we are thanking Him in it. What we are not doing is joining in with the spirit of murder. The same principle applies to all sin.

Now For the Hard Part

When the pain is sharp, when the burden is heavy, when the event is uncertain . . . the wait is long. We don’t mind waiting when we have something to divert us, but if the pain, or the burden, or the anxiety prevent us from being diverted, then all we have is a long and interminable wait.

“But why do we have to wait?” we complain. We are quite happy to have patience, so long as we can have it now. But God apparently does not want you to shine in a day-at-the-beach story. He appears to want you in an adventure story. And have you ever noticed that your worst experiences are frequently the best stories later?

Walk It Through

Take “lousy experience x,” the thing that just happened to you this last week, and which still has you reeling. How do you process it? What precisely are you to do? You should pray a prayer, and it should go something along the lines of this: “God in Heaven, I understand and believe that You govern all things for Your glory and our good. I believe that You are my Father, and that You do all things well. Therefore, I want to thank You in my trial and for my trial. Specifically, I want to thank You for lousy experience x, and am asking You to receive my praise, as I sing the Doxology now. ‘Praise God from whom all blessings flow.’”

Say to Them of Fearful Heart . . .

So it is never enough to speak the truths of God. We must speak the truths of God, supported by the reasons of God. “Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not: Behold, your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompence; He will come and save you” (Is. 35:4). And with this comes the realization that the reason it is not enough to speak the truths of God is because we are summoned (and privileged) to sing the truths of God.