January 4: 2 Samuel 7:28 (NIV)
28 O Sovereign Lord, you are God! Your words are trustworthy, and you have promised these good things to your servant.
How shall we face the coming year with all of it uncertainties and trials? Let us take courage from the text of Scripture in front of us today. Our God is sovereign and he controls everything in his universe, nothing, not even evil can occur without his divine permission and direction. Such thoughts are perhaps too marvelous to us to grasp and yet they are true nonetheless. Whatever God has promised will come to pass no matter how many forces are aligned against such truths.
It was this confidence in the Word of God that would compel Adoniram Judson to cross the thousands of miles of ocean to set his course toward India and Burma. He would leave his homeland and family and travel with his wife, Ann and together they would give birth to several children that would all die under the harsh tropical climate. Along with the loss of his children, Adoniram would see his own beloved wife, Ann, taken by the same diseases.
How shall one fare when faced with such hardships? Hear in his own words how Adoniram viewed the sovereignty of God which would sustain him on the foreign field for decades while he would tarry for the Master often alone on foreign soil. "If I had not felt certain," he says, "that every additional trial was ordered by infinite love and mercy, I could not have survived my accumulated sufferings." Judson joined with Paul in declaring: "The love of Christ constraineth me ... Therefore I will glory in reproaches, in persecution and in distresses for Christ's sake."
We all face many trials in this life but none so hard that the sovereign God cannot keep us in the midst of such trials. He can deliver us from such trials but his most often way is to sustain us in His Word through such trials. Let us go forth into this new year with the confidence that the sovereignty of God will keep us, for he who commanded he light to shine out of darkness has shined into our hearts and he has already given us the knowledge of God in the face of Christ our Savior. If we have such a treasure like this then let us face the future with unwavering confidence.
Facing the Future under the Sovereign God’s Care,
Pastor Phil
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