Prepare for Worship | His Wise and Loving Plan for Me
Last Sunday, Pastor Gabe Bolding preached from Acts 21:37-22:29 and showed us how we are called as Christ’s witnesses.
Read: Acts 22:30-23:35
This Sunday, Noah Squires will preach from acts 22:30-23:35 and will call us to take courage, for the Lord is in control. As you prepare for our Sunday worship gathering, let this devotional from Jerry Bridges encourage you to trust God’s wise and loving plan for your life.
Reflect: “His Wise and Loving Plan for Me”
“In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.” - Ephesians 1:11
The bare thought that God does only as He pleases would terrify us if that were all we knew about God. But He is not only sovereign; He is also perfect in love and infinite in wisdom. God always exercises His sovereignty for His glory and the good of His people.
But how is this any more than merely an abstract statement about God to be debated by the theologians, a statement that has little relevance to our day-to-day lives?
The answer is that God does have a purpose and a plan for you, and He has the power to carry out that plan. It’s one thing to know that no person or circumstance can touch us outside of God’s sovereign control; it’s still another to realize that no person or circumstance can frustrate God’s purpose for our lives.
God’s overarching purpose for all believers is to conform us to the likeness of Jesus: “Those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29). He also has a specific purpose for each of us that is His unique, tailor-made plan for our individual life: “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10).
God will fulfill that personal plan for us. As David said in Psalm 138:8, “The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me.” Because we know God is directing our lives to an ultimate end and because we know He is sovereignly able to orchestrate the events of our lives toward that end, we can trust Him. We can commit to Him not only the ultimate outcome of our lives but also all the intermediate events and circumstances that will bring us to that outcome.
Still, it’s difficult for us to fully appreciate the reality of God’s sovereignly doing as He pleases in our lives because we don’t see Him doing anything. Instead, we see ourselves or other people acting and events occurring, and we evaluate those actions and events according to our own preferences and plans. We see ourselves influencing or perhaps even controlling or being controlled by the actions of other people, but we don’t see God at work.
But over all the actions and events of our lives, God is in control, doing as He pleases—not apart from those events or in spite of them but through them. Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery—a malicious act in and of itself—but in due time, Joseph recognized that through his brothers’ actions, God was acting. Joseph could say to them, “It was not you who sent me here, but God” (Genesis 45:8). Joseph recognized the hand of God in his life sovereignly directing all the events to bring about His plan for him.
You and I may never have the privilege in this life of seeing an obvious outcome of God’s plan for us, as Joseph did. But God’s plan for us is no less firm and its outcome no less certain than was God’s plan for Joseph. God did not give us the story of Joseph’s life just to inform us but also to encourage us: “Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Romans 15:4).
What God did for Joseph, He will do for us. But to derive the comfort and encouragement from this truth God has provided, we must learn to trust Him. We must learn to walk, as Paul said, “by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7).
And so “we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (4:18).
“His Wise and Loving Plan for Me,” Day 4 Reading, in 31 Days toward Trusting God, by Jerry Bridges.
Sing: Song List for Sunday
1. “We Give Thanks (Psalm 107),” by Sovereign Grace Music
2. “Lord, I Need You,” Arr. The Worship Initiative
3. “The Love of God,” by Frederick M. Lehman & Meir Ben Isaac Nehorai
4. “His Glory and My Good,” by CityAlight
5. “Sovereign Over Us,” Arr. The Worship Initiative