Week Eight: God's Eternal Purpose

How does God carry out His eternal purposes?

I absolutely love knowing that there is a purpose to something and finding out what that purpose is.

It just makes life simpler, doesn’t it, when we discover the purpose for something, whether it be an item that is manufactured or some event in our life?

How many of us have pondered events and circumstances in our lives and have often said, “I wish I knew the reason for that?”

Obviously, in God’s great big plan and all-wise purpose, we can’t and don’t know the purpose and plan of everything, not here on earth anyway.  But it is always fun – “wonderful,” maybe I should say – when we can look back and begin to see God’s hand through the events and details of our lives, even when we many of those purposes are hidden from our view.

Remember the account of Job? He was described at the beginning of the book of Job as a man who was “blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil” (Job 1:1).  He not only had a righteous character; he was also faithful to intercede on behalf of his children (1:5).  This guy had family, reputation, and a blameless and upright character to go along with it!

Yet at the end of the book, after his great struggles and trial, he is a man who confesses to God,

“My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. 
Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.  (42:6)

Here is a blameless and upright man repenting of the fact that he had spoken of things “that he did not understand, things too wonderful for [him] to know,” (42:3).  He repented for asking questions of God (or perhaps making accusations) when he should have been listening to God!

Job is:

•     A man who feared God and yet who came to a deeper fear and trust than he had ever known!

•     A man who said to the Lord, “I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted” (42:2).

Wow!  Those are some deep, wonderful lessons, aren’t they?

• Job grew in his knowledge of God through the things he suffered. 

• He came to a greater knowledge of God than he had ever known.

• He worshipped God as he had never done before.

• He came to know that God “can do all things” and that no plan or purpose of His can be thwarted.

God is so much greater than I can imagine….greater than any of us can imagine.

As someone has said, one of our biggest lessons is learning that God is God and that we are not God. 
That’s a huge and humbling lesson to learn.

God carries out His purposes in two ways:  in His act of creation this world and as He cares for this world through His hand of providence, that is, through the events and details of each and every day.

God is working to carry out His good and holy purposes through every event and detail of life.

I am so glad that God is who He is, that He has a purpose, and that nothing can thwart His good and wise purposes. I can and must trust that God completely.  May God grant me grace to do so.

“The secret things belong to the Lord our God,
but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever,
that we may follow all the words of this law.”
Deuteronomy 29:29