Providence

God‘s providence keeps grabbing my attention week after week! I have become so enthralled with this subject, that I even purchased a 600 page book entitled Providence! I can’t get it off my mind. I have a yearning to discover more about God.....

I simply cannot get away from His PROVIDENCE!

Two weeks ago on my way home from Wednesday night church, I picked up a woman walking down the highway in a rainstorm. It was so dark and stormy, I am surprised i even saw her. No rational thinking could persuade me to drive past this stranger. I knew it was a providential moment. God had orchestrated every step.

She climbed into my SUV and we introduced ourselves. When I asked where she was going, she said, “home, but I live in Providence (Providence is a county about a 30 minute drive from my home)”. Imagine how long she would have been walking! She proceeded to tell me that she had been praying that someone she knew would pick her up. The living God heard her prayer and prompted me to stop without fear. Can you see how this ALL works together with purpose? Its crazy good!

John Piper writes, “ Providence is all- embracing and all-pervasive, but when God turns the human will, there is a mystery to it that causes a person to experience God‘s turning as his own preference – an authentic, responsible act of the human will. God is sovereign over man’s preferences. Man is accountable for his preferences. God‘s hidden hand in turning all things and His revealed commands requiring all obedience are in perfect harmony in the mind of God, but not in our visible experience. We are obligated to follow His revealed precepts, not his secret purposes. We will see that such is the nature of Providence”.

The word providence does not occur in most English versions of the Bible.

The word providence is built from the word, provide, which has two parts: pro (Latin “forward”, “on behalf of”) and vide (Latin “to see”). So you might think that the word provide would mean to “see forward” or “to foresee”. But it doesn’t. It means “to supply what is needed”; “to give sustenance or support”. So in reference to God, the noun providence has come to mean “the act of purposefully providing for, or sustaining and governing, the world”.

Now, my natural mind cannot fully grasp nor understand how God can work out millions of things at one time, yet by faith, I know He can! I do not pick up strangers routinely, nor do I go to church every Wednesday night but God’s providence is a constant!

Consider spending some time this week learning about God‘s providence.

Let God show you how it’s working in your life.

Are you the one picking up a stranger, or are you the stranger walking in the rain? What do you need this week?

““Remember this and stand firm, recall it to mind, you transgressors, remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,’ calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of my counsel from a far country. I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass; I have purposed, and I will do it.”

‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭46:8-11‬ ‭ESV‬‬