Understanding God
Wednesday, June 17
Understanding God
Jesus replied, “You don’t understand now what I am doing, but someday you will. John 13:7
It is easy to get lost in trying to understand the Providence of God. Because His provisions won’t always come as we expect and are almost never packaged in a way that makes sense to man. So what do we do when we find ourselves in a position where we are trying to understand what is going on? We look to those who have gone before us. In 1774, William Cooper suffered such a severe episode of mental illness that he was prevented from entering into his intended marriage to Mary Unwin. Shortly afterwards, in perhaps his most famous hymn, he wrote: God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform.
He understood the truth– God is good. God is love. All this we know. Then you read passages in the Bible that don’t seem to fit with your understanding of God. You have experiences in life that don’t seem to fit either.
You cannot put God in a box. He is far greater than you could ever conceive. Some passages in the Bible are mysterious. Jesus said on one occasion, ‘You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand’ (John 13:7). Sometimes that understanding may come in our lifetime. Some things we will only understand when we meet the Lord.
A song written in 1911 tells us ‘Tempted and tried, we’re oft made to wonder, why it should be thus all the day long; While there are others living about us, Never molested, though in the wrong. Refrain: Farther along we’ll know more about it, Farther along we’ll understand why; Cheer up, my brother, live in the sunshine, We’ll understand it all by and by.
Believing in the providence of God, we are preserved from the pitfalls of bitterness and resentment, where Satan seeks to have us fall. The burden that you bear today, the sorrow that is yours, all things come, not by chance, but by the hand of God.
God’s providence is about you.