God’s Steady Hand Working Through Us

Esther 4:14 (ESV) … “For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”

God is never in a hurry. He knows the end from the beginning, and His decrees are always right and always on time. Dr. A.W. Tozer compared God’s sovereign purposes to an ocean liner, leaving New York City, bound for Liverpool, England. The people on board the ship are free to do as they please, but they aren’t free to change the course of the ship.

“The mighty liner of God’s sovereign design keeps its steady course over the sea of history,” wrote Dr. Tozer. “God moves undisturbed and unhindered toward the fulfillment of those eternal purposes which He purposed in Christ Jesus before the world began” (The Knowledge of the Holy, p. 118).

The sovereignty of God doesn’t suggest fatalism or blind determinism, both of which would make life a prison. Only a sovereign God is great enough to decree freedom of choice for men and women, and only a sovereign God could fulfill His wise and loving purposes in this world and even make evil cooperate in producing good (Gen. 50:20). The question is not, “Is God in control of this world?” but, “Is God in control of my life?” Are we cooperating with Him so that we are a part of the answer and not a part of the problem?

To quote Dr. Tozer again: “In the moral conflict now raging around us whoever is on God’s side is on the winning side and cannot lose; whoever is on the other side is on the losing side and cannot win” (p. 119). [1]

[1] Wiersbe, W. W. (1993). Be Committed (p. 114). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.