Monday, March 27, 2017

"His Story"

"His Story"     
                                      
   As the saying goes, "History is His Story".

   "God… worketh all things after the counsel of His own will" (Ephesians 1:3; 11).

   The Apostle Paul's declaration does not suggest the fatalistic pagan notion that everything happens according to God's will.  Scripture clearly teaches otherwise (Titus 1:16; Psalm 119:53).  Paul rather affirms that God is wise enough, powerful enough, involved enough, and wondrous enough to allow angels and humans to disobey Him throughout history without thwarting His eternal purpose in the Lord Jesus Christ.  

   "Then cometh the end, when He shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when He shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign, till He hath put all enemies under his feet" (I Corinthians 15:24-25).

   In the mystery of our Lord's infinite wisdom, the current of history ever flows in the direction of God's purposes, even as contrary eddies and streams swirl against it.  As modern culture devolves and dissolves, we do well to daily encourage our hearts in His Story.  Events sometimes bless us, and sometimes trouble us.  This is exactly as it should be.  God made us to respond to both the pleasant and the painful, whether in our personal lives, or in the world wherein we presently live as "strangers and pilgrims" (I Peter 2:11).  What we do with those responses, however, determines the peace of our hearts.  Do we see the ebb and flow of history in terms of mere happenstance?  Or will we choose to open our ears and hearts to His Story?  God's determinations and allowances all somehow fit into the larger picture of His inexorable purpose to "gather together in one all things in Christ" (Ephesians 1:10).  How it all coordinates, we do not know.  That it all coordinates, we can be completely certain.  To the degree we remember and submit to this truth will be the degree we swim with the current of purpose and peace in a generation complete untethered from its moral and spiritual moorings.

   Let us apply the truth to our personal lives.  God determines and allows much that challenges our understanding.  Is our story a part of His Story?  Does He really "work all things together for good to them that love God"? (Romans 8:28).  Do our present blessings and difficulties fit into this purpose?  Again, how we answer these questions completely determines the peace of our hearts.  Completely.  Circumstances, situations, and conditions do not govern our internals.  Certainly they influence thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations.  But that which determines either still waters or raging seas within us is the eternal purpose of God in Christ - and our response thereunto.  Is He wise enough, powerful enough, involved enough, and wondrous enough to incorporate our story as a working associate and collaborator of His Story?  We know the answer.  We must also embrace the answer with determination and commitment as enabled by the Spirit of God and the Word of God.  Yes, history is His Story, including our particular stream that flows with the Divine current of God's grace and truth in Christ Jesus.

"Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee."
(Isaiah 26:3)

Weekly Memory Verse
   He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?
(Romans 8:32)
   
  

No comments: