The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…
“Another Power At Work”
“There is another power at work.”
A character in a famous novel uttered these words regarding a conflict he perceived to be something beyond mere human involvement and activity. This could actually be said of any and everything.
“God… worketh all things after the counsel of His own will” (Ephesians 3:11).
No truth seems more unlikely at times, or can be more difficult to perceive and comprehend. A perfectly righteous God at work not only in the good He directly determines, but also in the unrighteous He has allowed since the fall of Lucifer? (Isaiah 14:12-14). Nothing often seems more unlikely, and nothing more requires the spiritual mindedness led by the Holy Spirit and Scripture to think in terms whereby we “judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment” (John 7:24). One event, however, that appeared utterly bereft of "another power at work" bears the clearest witness to God’s universal presence and involvement in “all things.”
“He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from Him; He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted” (Isaiah 53:3-4).
The worst sin - by an infinite measure - ever committed by Adam’s fallen race included “another power at work.” We tortured to death our Creator and the One who so dearly loves us. We “despised and rejected Him” in a horror of evil beyond all description. Nevertheless, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself” by being “stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted” (II Corinthians 5:19). As dark and terrible as other sins can be and have been throughout human history, nothing compares with Calvary in its measure of evil. And yet nothing compares with Calvary in its measure of grace that proceeds from God’s redemptive working to make atonement for the sins of the race to whom Scripture alludes in its stark indictment: “They crucified Him” (Matthew 27:35).
We do well to think of this when we rightly grieve at seeing things in the world that seem beyond “another power at work.” We cannot begin to understand or process the doings of God amid the doings of devils and man. We can, however - and we must - believe the clear declarations of Scripture that tell us of our Lord’s working in all His administrations and allowances. As Joesph said of his brothers, “Ye thought evil unto me,” which included far more than their merely thinking sinfully. However, when all was said and done, and when Joseph could see more clearly, he confessed,”but God meant it unto good” (Genesis 50:20).
We waste no time seeking to understand the how, why, and wherefore of such seeming enigma. We spend much time seeking to know our Lord and His Word so well that we see by faith His heart and hand where it seems impossible they could be. Another power is always at work, the greatest of all powers by an infinite measure, and the One who makes the worst thing that ever happened into the best thing for all who believe. Herein we rest our hearts as we judge not according to the appearance, but judge the righteous reality of God as the power ever and always at work.
“Know therefore this day, and consider it in thine heart, that the Lord, He is God in heaven above and upon the earth beneath. There is none else.”
(Deuteronomy 4:39)
Weekly Memory Verse
To be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.
(Romans 8:6)
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