“But you, O Sovereign Lord, deal well with me for your name’s sake; out of the goodness of your love, deliver me.” (Psalms 109:21)
I have a friend who had a close call with death this past weekend. She was returning home from a church outing in moderate rain when her mini-van began to hydroplane. The vehicle plummeted down a steep embankment, turning over several times. She and the teenagers who were with her escaped serious injury in spite of the circumstances.
As we talked about the accident the following day, she knew that her life and the lives of others had been spared by God’s grace. There was simply no other explanation. Interestingly, she also told my wife that the fear she expected to accompany such situations was not present. In fact, she felt a sense of peace during that accident. God’s Word supports her experience. “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.” (Luke 2:14)
That accident reminded me about the sovereign nature of God. The fact is it really doesn’t matter whether it’s your car or your life that’s tumbling out of control. Crisis often brings us closer to God because it reminds us that he has total control. In other words, all of our hopes and expectations depend upon his mercy and grace. The Apostle James said it more bluntly: “Why you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” (James 4:14)
It’s important for us to understand that divine sovereignty does not mean that everything which occurs in the world is God’s will. Solomon, who grew wise from his own mistakes, finally realized, “I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.” (Ecclesiastes 9:11)
God’s permissive will provides for human freedom and the laws of nature. “This freedom”, according to one biblical scholar, “means that sovereignty must always be distinguished from ‘fate’ or ‘destiny’, the belief that everything that occurs in the world has been predetermined, scheduled in advance by God. That view, carried to extremes, makes human beings pawns or puppets or a mechanical universe in which all choices are made in advance and where freedom is not possible.”
These near-catastrophes, especially those from which we escape inexplicably unharmed, remind me of my smallness and his greatness. However, there’s a much more important lesson that comes from such experiences. Genuine freedom has nothing to do with the ability to do whatever we wish and everything to do with submitting to the sovereign will of God. It’s when we have experienced his greatness that we realize we don’t really have the freedom we thought we had. And that’s when we understand what Paul meant when he said, “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” (2 Corinthians 3:17)
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