J. Mitchell Lane

“A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps.” (Proverbs 16:9)

That verse pretty much sums up what I am going to be talking about in the next several blog posts. It really is a selfish blog post because it’s just a way for me to get all the verses and thoughts that I’ve been having recently into one place for review in the future. Hopefully it’s something you can use later as well.

I’m not sure how many posts this is going to be, but the main theme is that everything… EVERYthing was created by God and for God’s purpose (Acts 17:26, Lamentations 3:37-38, Romans 9:19, Proverbs 16:9, Isaiah 46:10, Ex 4:11).

One of the major issues that people struggle with (especially in today’s culture) is the fact that even though God exists, bad things still happen. A question we hear all the time is, “How could God allow something like that to happen?” I’m not sure that the answer to that is one that many people want to hear, but in short, God didn’t just allow them to happen, they were part of His plan from the beginning. Is it not from the mouth of the Lord that both good and ill go forth? (Lam 3:38)

To start with, that question assumes an awful lot. By asking, “How could God allow something like that to happen,” I’m assuming that we deserve better. By asking, I’m pretty much stating that somehow I don’t deserve the worst possible punishment that God can give me. Sure, if you’re using a worldly standard, I’m a ‘pretty good guy’, and I do ‘good things’. I don’t steal. I’ve never murdered anyone. That makes me a good person, right?

We can’t use a broken measuring tape to measure the length of something and then assume that measurement is valid when it has to be perfect. If we follow that rule, we’re going to end up with a lot of wood that isn’t cut to right length when it’s time to put it in place.

For how much the Bible mentions how devastated we as humans are, we sure skip over it a lot. The Bible tells us that there is not one person in the entire world who does righteousness. (Romans 3:10) That means that any capacity we have to something ‘good’ is given to us by the Grace of God, and it’s not something we’re able to do on our own.

Since we have no righteousness outside of what is given to us by God, and without Him we can do no right (John 15:5), we are in no place at all to decide of think about what God should or should not do. Genesis tells us that God created everything, and He is sovereign over all of it. The Bible goes through the attributes of God’s character over and over again, and we find that He is perfect (2 Samuel 22:31, Matthew 5:48, Hebrews 5:9, 1Kings 8:61).

If God is perfect, and we are not, if God is Holy and we are not, if God created everything, and we didn’t, who are we to question what God is doing with His creation? The Bible tells us that everything happens to bring Glory to God (Colossians 1:16) It also tells us that God is sovereign over everything, the good and the bad. The chief end of God is to magnify Himself and make His Glory known! Nothing in the universe happens outside that purpose! Nothing!

“For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.” (Colossians 1:16)

Even the highest authorities on the Earth were created for Christ and to display His Glory to us! Even the ones that deceive! “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities.” (Ephesians 6:12) These same forces that deceive the world were created by God and for God to make his Glory known!

However, God didn’t create them evil, He created them good, and they rebelled against God. Jude 1:6 tells us that “[they] did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling.” God allowed this to happen because it brings the most Glory to Him. The evil in the world is in a sense necessary to show us how little and helpless we are without God. When you remove Christ from our lives, we are nothing but sinners caught up in our own devices. We have no righteousness outside of that which is credited to us by God. How would it be possible for us to know this without seeing what we’re like without Him?

Seeing what we would be without God causes us to appreciate Him more and worship Him, which in turn brings Him more Glory. It is not possible to understand all of God’s plan with our tiny minds. This little glimpse that we have is part of a big circle of God revealing his truth to us in order that we would realize His Glory and worship Him which in turn causes us to realize more of God’s truth, and it’s amazing to thing just how smart God must be to have planned every single second of it!

We really do serve and amazing God!