God’s Providence

Introduction

Today, as I was reading Jeremiah 12, the Holy Spirit opened my understanding in a way I had never seen before.

I cannot even tell you exactly how my heart arrived at this thought. I began reading Jeremiah, and somewhere in the reading another conversation began within me. Hours later I was still trying to understand how I got there. Then it became clear.

I have studied God’s providence before, but there was always something missing, there was a hole in my understanding, and today that hole was filled.

And I will tell you plainly where this came from, because I did not read it out of a commentary and I did not work it out. I believe the Holy Spirit gave it to me that morning, and the passages I am about to walk confirmed it afterward. They did not produce it. So hold it as mine and weigh it against the text yourself.

And let me set its limit before I start, because it is a key and not a law. Scripture also shows God putting in what was not there at all. He promises a new heart and a new spirit in Ezekiel. Paul says God works in us both to will and to do. Ezra says the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus. So I am not saying God only ever works with what He finds. I am saying He can, and that is what these passages showed me.

God can work with what is already at work in us.

That one sentence opened many passages of Scripture that had once seemed difficult to me.

Jeremiah 12:14 to 17

Read who He is speaking against. Mine evil neighbours, the nations round about, and what they touched was the inheritance He caused Israel to inherit. He says He will pluck them out of their land, and He will pluck the house of Judah out from among them. So there are two pluckings in one sentence, and they are not the same plucking.

And I will say plainly what this passage does not do. It does not name Babylon. The question I am about to ask is a real one, but Jeremiah 12 is not where I get it, so let me go where Scripture asks it outright.

Here is the question. If a wicked nation carries out God’s judgment, why would God then judge that nation? And Isaiah asks it and answers it in the same chapter.

The rod of mine anger. God says He sent him. Now read the very next thing Isaiah says about that same man.

Howbeit he meaneth not so. That is the whole thing in four words, and Isaiah says it, not me. God sent him, and the man was not doing what God was doing. God meant correction. It was in his heart to destroy. Same march, two intentions.

And when the work was performed, God punished the stout heart. Not the marching. The heart he brought to it. That was the first key that unlocked providence.

God can work with what is already at work in us.

Providence Does Not Remove Responsibility

Many imagine providence as God forcing people to do things they would never otherwise do, yet Scripture presents something much deeper.

In the accounts I have walked here, nothing that was in a man took Him by surprise, and He did not become the author of the sin in any of them.

Knowing Is Not Causing

Many people assume that if God knew something beforehand, then He must have caused it, yet the Bible does not teach that, for God’s foreknowledge and God’s providence are closely connected, but they are not the same thing.

And here is how I am using the two words in this study, so you know what I mean by them. By foreknowledge I mean His knowing a thing before it happens. By providence I mean His governing of history through circumstances and choices to accomplish His purpose, without becoming the author of sin. Those are my working definitions and not sentences I am lifting out of a verse. Isaiah says it plainly.

Declaring the end from the beginning. Yet the Bible holds men and women responsible for the choices they make. These two truths are not enemies. In the accounts I have walked here they work together, and the reason I believe they do is the very thing the Spirit showed me, He does not have to plant a thing in order to use it, for it was already there.

Pharaoh

The Bible says God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and for years that troubled many readers. Now let me be careful with the order, because God says it first. Before Moses ever stood in front of Pharaoh, God said this.

So the announcement comes before the man does anything. But read what Exodus records Pharaoh doing, over and over, in his own right.

Exodus puts both in the same account, God saying He will and Pharaoh doing it himself, and it does not stop to sort them out for me. So I will not sort them out for you either. What I hold is what the text shows, a man hardening his own heart, again and again.

And here is my reading of the two together, and it is a reading and not the text. I do not see God creating the rebellion. I see a man being confirmed in a road he kept taking.

Joseph’s Brothers

Read what Genesis says was in them before Joseph ever came to them in Dothan.

They hated him, and could not speak peaceably. And when they saw him afar off, before he came near, they had already conspired. Genesis gives me both, the hating and the conspiring, and the second one is where the first one went. Years later Joseph declared,

The same event contained two completely different intentions, for their intention was evil and God’s intention was salvation, yet providence did not remove their responsibility.

Cain

God warned Cain before Abel was murdered.

God’s warning was genuine, and Cain was responsible. Genesis does not stop and tell me what God knew beforehand, so I will not put that in. What it does tell me is where the sin was already lying, and whose face was already fallen.

Romans 1

Romans 1 repeats the same pattern, for Paul never says God created sinful desires inside people, instead he says,

And read what Paul says they had done before that giving up.

They knew God and glorified Him not. They changed the glory. That comes first in Paul’s own order, and then comes the giving up, through the lusts of their own hearts.

Judah

Judah’s rebellion had existed for generations, the prophets warned, God pleaded, mercy waited, repentance was offered, and eventually Babylon came.

Babylon did not create Judah’s rebellion, Babylon exposed it, yet afterward Babylon also fell, because Babylon’s own heart was proud, and God judged both, one for covenant rebellion, the other for arrogant cruelty.

Saul

Israel demanded a king like the surrounding nations, yet God had already given instructions for a future king long before they asked.

So the Law had contemplated a king. But read what God says when they ask for one.

Both sides are on the page now. A king was provided for in the Law, and the asking in Samuel is called a rejecting. What I take from that is that the trouble was in how they wanted him, like all the nations, on their own terms.

Saul was given every opportunity to obey, for God anointed him, God equipped him, and God gave him clear instructions, so Saul’s downfall was not because God forced him to fail, Saul repeatedly chose disobedience.

God was not looking for Saul’s religious activity, God wanted obedience.

Judas and the Cross

Judas did not become a betrayer overnight, and John stops and tells us what was in him.

He was a thief, and he had the bag. John says it, not me. So when the opportunity came, it did not have to make him into anything.

Yet redemption came through the cross all the same, and Judas is not excused anywhere in the account, and the purpose was not stopped.

And Peter says who was foreordained before the foundation of the world.

Foreordained before the foundation of the world. And read what Peter puts in one sentence. The determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, and wicked hands. He does not drop either one. Now Acts 2:23 does not name Judas, so let me bring the verse that does.

He went his way and he communed with them. The going and the communing are his. And what I take from Acts 2:23 is that God did not create the wickedness in that room, and the redemption came through it all the same.

Adam and Eve

Eventually every discussion reaches Eden, for if He can work with what is already at work in us, what was already at work in Adam and Eve?

Here Scripture allows mystery, and here is how I hold Eden, and it is how I hold it and not a thing Genesis stops to explain. God made them and called it good. I do not read Him putting evil in them. What Genesis records is a serpent that spoke, a woman that saw and took, and a man that ate.

And Genesis does not close there. Before they leave the garden a seed is spoken of, and I read that as the beginning of the mending.

Peter

Jesus told Peter,

Jesus did not pray that Peter would never face the trial, He prayed that Peter’s faith would survive the trial, so Peter failed, yet his faith did not fail. Jesus says what He prayed for, that thy faith fail not, and He says what came after, when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren. Luke does not tell me what Satan intended beyond the sifting, so I will leave that where Luke leaves it.

That the sifting became part of Peter’s preparing is what I see looking back at it, and Luke does not say it in those words.

God Wounds and God Heals

One truth became especially clear, an enemy wounds to destroy, yet God wounds to heal, an enemy disciplines to satisfy hatred, yet God disciplines to restore His inheritance.

This comparison should never be pushed too far, for some human parents discipline from genuine love, while others discipline from anger, pride, frustration, or selfishness, and I do not read God disciplining out of the motives I named. What I hold about His judgments is that they are righteous, and that is a thing I believe about Him and not a thing Hosea stops to argue. As Hosea declares,

Hosea is calling Israel back to a covenant God, and in that call the tearing is not the end of it. He hath torn, and he will heal us. I am not going to stretch that into a rule for every judgment God has ever given, because Scripture records judgments that ended. What I hold is what Hosea holds out to the people he is speaking to.

My Personal Lesson

During a morning prayer meeting, the pastor interrupted the meeting and said that the Lord wanted me to pray for my daughter’s ovaries, and I obeyed.

Yet I did not come with an empty heart, for I already had my own purpose, my daughter had a boyfriend I did not care for, and I was praying for God to remove him. The instruction was to pray for her ovaries, and I ran with it, yet I ran my own way, like an unthinking horse to battle, believing I knew why God had told me to pray.

At the time I believed I was praying about another person, yet later I came to believe He was praying through me while exposing something inside me, for there was prejudice hidden in my own heart, and I could not see it. And I believe He worked with what was already at work in me.

And after one of those prayers I heard a question, and I believe it was God asking it, and it pierced my heart. I hold that as my own testimony and not as a doctrine I can hand you.

How do you expect to see the things of God if you do not want to hear the things of God?

Those words left me undone, and for hours I could not recover. What I came to understand was that He was not condemning me, He was exposing me, showing me that while I thought I was praying His purpose, I was also praying from my own perspective and bringing my own expectations into prayer. And I believe His purpose went on being accomplished while my own heart was being shown to me.

When I accepted His correction, everything changed, for my heart was no longer for one outcome or against another, I surrendered my preference, and I simply wanted God’s will.

Within two weeks the situation changed, and that young man was no longer in her life.

In time she met the man who would become her husband, and within that marriage she became pregnant. By then she had reached the age where the screening is done, and the first screening came back with a very high likelihood of Down syndrome, and that is the way it was given to me. During that frightening season another sister who had been on that prayer line reminded me of God’s original instruction to pray for my daughter’s ovaries. A later test came back clear.

Looking back, I realized something profound, God first changed the intercessor, and then He dealt with the circumstance.

The instruction was right, and it was mine to obey, yet the purpose was God’s, and it was never what I imagined. I had prayed to remove a man, and looking back I believe a husband and a child were being prepared. I prayed to shut a door, and I believe His mercy opened the right one.

Obedience Does Not Require Complete Understanding

Obedience is valuable because we often do not know why God asks us to do something, for God sees the whole picture, and we usually see only the next step.

God often reveals enough for obedience without revealing the entire purpose. Even today I cannot say with certainty what would have happened had I ignored God’s instruction, for Scripture never gives us access to the history that never happened. But I can say this. I believed I was told to pray, I obeyed, and what I saw afterward was enough for me.

Like Joseph, we may only understand years later, like Peter, we may only recognize God’s hand after the sifting, and like my own testimony, we may discover later that we were praying our limited understanding while something else was being done.

Paul does not say that all things are good, for Joseph’s slavery was not good, Peter’s denial was not good, and the cross itself was not good from man’s perspective. And read who Paul is speaking to, because he names them. Them that love God. Them who are the called according to his purpose. He does not hand that promise to everybody in the world, and I am not going to hand it wider than he did.

The Principle of Providence

So here is the principle I believe comes out of all of this, and it is mine to be weighed. Providence is not merely God controlling events. It is God governing history while dealing with real hearts.

He works through kings, He works through nations, He works through enemies, He works through friends, He works through our strengths, He works through our weaknesses, and He even works through the things hidden in our hearts.

In every account I have laid out here, nothing surprised Him and nothing defeated Him, and every person still answered for the intentions of his own heart.

Conclusion

And there is a prayer any believer can pray, and it is not simply, Lord, change my circumstances. David prayed it this way.

Lord, search me, reveal what is already at work in me, remove what does not please You, strengthen what brings You glory, and let Your providence not only accomplish Your purpose through me, but transform my heart for You.

God can work with what is already at work in us, and in the accounts I have walked He exposes, He disciplines, He wounds, He heals, He humbles, He restores, and in Jeremiah He is still calling that people His inheritance.

May we have hearts that are willing not only to see the things of God, but also to hear the things of God. For it is often through what He speaks to our own hearts that He accomplishes His greatest work in us.