Why You Can Trust God Completely Even When Life Hurts
How can God be sovereign over all things while people remain responsible for their actions?
Welcome to our new Transformational Theology video series about the sovereignty of God! Check out the corresponding book here, as well as more transformational designs.
God is in control of history, even using sinful actions for His own purposes. Yet He never causes sin and He genuinely calls all people to repent and live.
In this teaching, we’ll discover how God’s sovereignty brings peace in suffering, confidence in trials, and worship in the storms of life — and how human responsibility keeps us running after God with passion, repentance and endurance. Through Joseph, through the Cross, and through God’s call to His people, Scripture reveals a God who reigns with perfect wisdom and invites us to trust Him completely.
How does this transform us?
We trust that God is in control, so even when we make mistakes, He can still make things work out or teach us and perfect us in the process. Our mistakes can’t stop God’s plans from happening. We believe that God is bigger than our errors, and He’ll use them for good in wonderful and awesome ways.
Reflect on the story of Jonah:
How many times did Jonah resist God’s direction?
Did Jonah ever come around to obeying God cheerfully?
Why did God preserve Jonah’s life even though he was so disobedient?
What were the results of Jonah’s obedience (even though it was reluctant)?
How did God accomplish His will in spite of Jonah’s disobedience?
God is sovereign over all, and He will still accomplish His will even if we disobey! Was there a time in your life when you disobeyed God and He still made things work out or He taught you an important lesson?
In addition, there are areas in our lives where we feel very weak. Sometimes these weaknesses can discourage us from thinking that God can use us to glorify Him.
Identify one area of weakness in your life and bring it before Him, thanking Him for His graciousness toward you. Pray for freedom from thinking that this weakness is too big for Him, while meditating on Paul’s insight about his own weakness:
But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:9-10)
