The first time I remember hearing the word “providence” was when Michael W. Smith sang a bouncy song called Hand of Providence on Christian radio, back in 1988. There was also a TV show called Providence in the late ‘90s. Before that, I never really heard or used the word much. I had a pretty good theological education in college, but our group was always afraid someone might think we were Calvinists. So we shied away from anything that might be construed as “Calvinistic”…like the word “providence”.
That’s too bad, because what the Bible teaches about God’s providence is incredibly rich, mysterious and comforting. It’s one of those words that hardly appears in the Bible. It isn’t found in most modern translations, and only used once in the King James Version, in Acts 24:2. Some of the Apostle Paul’s accusers were trying to make their case against him before a Roman governor named Felix. They started by flattering Felix’s ego, saying: “…by thee we enjoy great quietness, and…very worthy deeds are done unto this nation by thy providence.” The English Standard Version renders the word “foresight”, and that is exactly the meaning. Pro- means “before”, and video means “to see”. Combined, it means “to see before”, or “to see what is needed beforehand, and make arrangements to meet that need”. This is exactly what someone is doing when they exercise “foresight”: they are seeing to something beforehand.
Even though the word only appears once in the KJV (and then applied insincerely to a pagan ruler), the concept of providence is woven all through the Bible. It has to do with God providing for us beforehand: seeing to our needs and the needs of His creation, based on His own foreknowledge and sovereignty. (Now right there I’ve set somebody off. Someone, somewhere is mentally screaming, “That’s Calvinism!” Well, guess what? This truth was written into the text of Scripture a very long time before John Calvin was ever born. And I decided a long time ago that I wasn’t going to let disapproving name-callers deprive me of any truth that God intended me to cherish. And you shouldn’t either.)
Somewhere in my early forties, before I became pastor of First Baptist Church in Linton, I began to get very depressed and disappointed over how many of my own plans and goals weren’t being achieved. For the most part, my cherished dreams were washing away like sand castles in the tide, and I began to understand how very little control I actually had over my circumstances. It left me in some bitterness and despair.
Then I began to notice things in the Bible I hadn’t noticed before, that were there all along: like, “He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for His Name’s sake.” (Psalm 23:3) His purpose is not to make me prosperous and comfortable; it’s to form my soul again into the state it should be. And He does this by leading me in paths that He chooses. (As Tarzan might put it: “Him Shepherd; me sheep!”)
The Bible says, “The LORD will fulfill His purpose for me” (Psalm 138:8). Not my purpose, but His. And, “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 1:6) His work, in me.
God showed Jeremiah the prophet a potter at work on his wheel: “And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do.” Then God asked Jeremiah, “…can I not do with you as this potter has done?” (Jeremiah 18:4,5)
Isaiah the prophet prayed this truth to God: “But now, O LORD, You are our Father; we are the clay and you are our potter; we are all the work of Your hand.”
It became an immense comfort to me to know that while my plans for myself might fall apart, God’s plans for me would be fulfilled. (And I also began to suspect that His plans were better than mine.)
What about when bad people do bad things to you? Where is God in that? He is overruling. Listen to what the patriarch Joseph told his brothers who had betrayed him, plotted to kill him, then sold him into slavery for the money: “As for you, you meant it for evil against me, but God meant it for good…” (Genesis 50:20).
And there can’t be a greater example of someone suffering unjust treatment at the hands of cruel people than Jesus Christ, God’s Son, dying on the cross. Yet out of that horrible thing God has made it possible for us to come to Him, because “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures…” (1 Corinthians 15:3,4).
God never promised us that only good things would happen to us if we are His children. We live on a broken planet full of broken people (including us), and bad things happen to everyone here. What God did promise is that when bad things do happen to us, He would overrule them and cause good to come from them, eventually. Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good…” Not, “all things are good”, but “all things [even the bad things, will] work together for good”.
God’s sovereignty and His foreknowledge work together to become His providence in our lives. He sees beforehand what our real needs are (not what we think they are, but what He knows we need for the restoring of our souls), and He moves, arranges and orchestrates things to accomplish all His holy will. But often, from our perspective, He seems to do or allow the wrong things.
The hymnwriter William Cowper (pronounced “Kooper”) had an incredibly sad life. He was physically frail and emotionally sensitive as a child, and his mother died when he was six. He mourned her loss for the rest of his life, and developed a chronic “melancholia” (what we would call today clinical depression). He studied law, but suffered a nervous breakdown at the prospect of his bar exams. He attempted suicide, and was finally placed in an insane asylum for six months.
In those days, nobody thought the Bible was bad for your mental health, and one day Cowper read Romans 3:25. That verse talks about how Christ’s sacrifice on the cross cleared us of our sins in God’s sight. Through reading the Scriptures, Cowper came to a personal relationship with God by faith in Christ, and finally had a sense of forgiveness of sin. He was 33 years old.
He went on to become a minister of the Gospel, but even after that he struggled with doubts and fears. He could never shake the idea that God might turn His back on him. He lived for 69 years, dying in the year 1800. Just before he died, witnesses said his face lit up and he exclaimed: “I am not shut out of heaven after all!” For him, it was a surprise ending.
Out of all Cowper’s sadness, brokenness and despair came much beauty. He wrote nearly seventy hymns, including There Is a Fountain and God Moves In a Mysterious Way. The latter has been called the finest hymn on God’s providence ever written. In just four brief verses, Cowper summarized what the Bible teaches us about this rich, mysterious, comforting truth. Here they are:
God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm.
You fearful saints, fresh courage take: the clouds you so much dread
Are big with mercy and shall break in blessings on your head.
Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust Him for His grace;
Behind a frowning providence He hides a smiling face.
Blind unbelief is sure to err and scan His work in vain;
God is His own interpreter, and He will make it plain.
Sometimes, life scares us. And I am not being profane when I say that, sometimes, it hurts like hell (in the sense of all the pain and loss and separation from God and others that are the inevitible results of 6 billion rebellious sinners living on a planet marred by sin).
That’s when, child of God, we have to remember in the dark what we learned in the light. That’s when we have to remember we’re not Home yet. That’s when we have to remember the providence of God.
Someday, we get to stand with Jesus and laugh the laughter of the redeemed. And then we will say, from the depths of our being, “He has done all things well.” (Mark 7:37) And, “To God alone be the glory!”
Soli Deo Gloria!
Pastor David