Whatever our lot, we must resist the temptation to rebel and buck against our creaturely limitations, instead entrusting ourselves to our faithful God and endeavoring to walk in faithfulness to His revealed, recorded will. Along with Paul in pondering the perplexities of a sovereign God, our response is not to pout but to praise.
How many of us have wanted to question God, or at least be made privy to the whys and what fors of what happens in life?
“Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.” (Psalm 139:14, ESV)
How many of us have wanted to question God, or at least be made privy to the whys and what fors of what happens in life? We wonder how the death of a child or the futility of our noble efforts or struggle with a besetting sin can possibly comport with the providence of a sovereign, almighty, loving, beneficent God.
Something doesn’t make sense. But it seems that is just where God wants us. He wants us to embrace the fact that He is the Creator and we are the creature.
How does such knowledge lead us to conduct ourselves in the struggles we face in life, particularly those struggles where we tend to question God? Two verses help us to find our way.
The first is a statement that stands out as an operating principle amidst the discourse of God’s covenantal outworking. “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law” (Deut. 29:29).
This principle distinguishes between two categories: secret things and revealed things. The things secret are secret to us but known to God. They speak to His sovereign plan and purpose that govern all that comes to pass. It is here that we bang on the door asking to be let in, wondering or even demanding an explanation of God for events that transpire (or don’t transpire). But those things belong to the Lord our God.
Contrasted with the secret things are the things revealed. These are what God has spoken and caused to be written down for us in the Bible. The things revealed let us know that God does have a plan and that what happens carries His purpose, but that is not our business. Ours is to obey, to do what is written and to instruct our children likewise in relation to our covenant Lord.
