John Piper is the Pastor for Preaching and Vision at Bethlehem Baptist Church (Minneapolis, MN) and the founder of Desiring God.

“Remember those...who are mistreated, since you also are in the body.” (Hebrews 13:3)

Lord have mercy on your people harassed and driven from their homes in eastern India. Grant them protection and relief. That is what I would want for my body.

In the meantime, Lord, grant them to entrust their souls to a faithful Creator, and to not return evil for evil.

Soren Kierkegaard said, “When the age loses the tragic, it gains despair.”

This sounds profoundly right.

The elements of life that make tragedy possible are the same as the ones that fight off despair. For tragedy to be real there has to be something hugely precious, and there has to be the capacity to feel a great emotion. When these are both present, tragedy can happen.

Despair is the horrible blankness that settles over us when nothing is seen as precious anymore and there is no capacity to feel it anyway.

As great as our tragedy may be, if we feel it to the full, it is a sign that the weapons against despair are still in place.

Often the gifts of God come in strange pairs. “It has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake” (Philippians 1:29).

Our ninth grandchild was born on Friday: Morrow John Piper. The day was filled with evidences of God’s tenderness to us. So I ask with the psalmist, “What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits to me?”

The psalmist answers, “I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord” (Psalms 116:12-13).

The fact of the call defines the meaning of the cup. The cup is lifted for another filling. More, Lord, more! Show your inexhaustible Self! Which is to say, God will be most glorified in Morrow and me if we keep calling on him as the only all-satisfying Treasure of our lives.

So my “return” to the Lord for this child is to purpose that every day, while I have mental ability, I will call on the Lord that Morrow will treasure Christ above all, and that the Lord will make me more Christ-like so that I can point Morrow to the all-satisfying Original—a pledge I make to all my grandchildren on earth.

We miss his big sister. But rest in Psalm 30:5.

Though weeping tarry through the night
And darkness deepens sorrow,
Felicity awaits the Dawn
And joy comes on the Morrow.

Joseph Bottum, an editor at First Things, recently published an article called “The Death of Protestant America.” Here are a few of his observations that give meaning  to the title.

• By “Protestant America” he means the America that was once defined by the mainline churches—the more liberal expressions of the Northern Baptists, United Church of Christ, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, and Presbyterians. Take a deep breath and consider: In 1965 50% of the American population was in these churches. But today 8% of Americans belong to these churches.
• “The death of the Mainline is the central historical fact of our time: the event that distinguishes the past several decades from every other period in American history. Almost every one of our current political and cultural oddities, our contradictions and obscurities, derives from this fact: The Mainline...has lost the capacity to set, or even significantly  influence, the national vocabulary or the national self-understanding.”
• Lutheran theologian Carl Braaten is quoted to explain why scholars leave the ELCA. Among the reasons he gives is this: “They are saying that the Roman Catholic Church is now more hospitable to confessional Lutheran teaching than the church in which they were baptized and confirmed.”
• Quoting a 1993 article in First Things, “The Real Reason for Decline”: “The single best predictor of church participation turned out to be belief—orthodox Christian belief, and especially the teaching that a person can be saved only through Jesus Christ....  Amazingly enough, fully 68 % of those who are still active Presbyterians don’t believe it.”

What happened?

• “The churches’ desperate hunger to mean more in politics and economics had the perverse effect of making them less effective opponents of the political and economic pressures on the nation. They mattered more when they wanted to matter less.”

I pray that the younger evangelicals who are pondering where to put their energies will learn from history that doctrinal accommodation brings larger audiences in the short run but death and irrelevance in the long run.

And God forbid that any should say with Hezekiah: Who cares if the death comes in 80 years as long as I have crowds and influence in my day (2 Kings 20:19).

From Rousseau to the Tom and Jerry Cartoons, Wheaton English Professor, Alan Jacobs, traces a “cultural history” of Original Sin, the name of his recent 304 page book. The most auspicious and provocative lines in Matt Jenson’s review in Books and Culture are these:

Original sin’s deniers like to claim that the doctrine does bad things, or at least discourages us from doing good things. It deals death. So they tell us. But over and over in Jacobs’ account, we meet well-intentioned characters, only to find their happier, gentler anthropologies turning sour, leading to (or at least abetting) anarchy, eugenics, despair. Perhaps the greatest irony in this history is the discovery that knowledge of original sin gives life—by revealing us to ourselves, yes, but also by grounding a sense of universal human kinship.... Truly a revolutionary thought—that the roots of our common humanity might be found, not in our dignity or even our potential, but in our depravity.

Lee Grady, the editor of Charisma, one of the main charismatic magazines, has written a lament and critique of the Lakeland “revival” which is now in a tailspin over the leader's announced separation from his wife. Grady’s summons to pray for the church and our nation is right, and among his commendable questions and observations are these:

• "Many of us would rather watch a noisy demonstration of miracles, signs and wonders than have a quiet Bible study. Yet we are faced today with the sad reality that our untempered zeal is a sign of immaturity. Our adolescent craving for the wild and crazy makes us do stupid things. It’s way past time for us to grow up."
  
• "True revival will be accompanied by brokenness, humility, reverence and repentance—not the arrogance, showmanship and empty hype that often was on display in Lakeland."
  
• "A prominent Pentecostal evangelist called me this week after Bentley’s news hit the fan. He said to me: “I’m now convinced that a large segment of the charismatic church will follow the anti-Christ when he shows up because they have no discernment.” Ouch. Hopefully we’ll learn our lesson this time and apply the necessary caution when an imposter shows up."

Charismatics will not be the only ones who follow the Antichrist when he rises. So will the mass of those who today in thousands of evangelical churches belittle the truth of biblical doctrine as God’s agent to set us free (John 8:32).

Discernment is not created in God’s people by brokenness, humility, reverence, and repentance. It is created by biblical truth and the application of truth by the power of the Holy Spirit to our hearts and minds. When that happens, then the brokenness, humility, reverence, and repentance will have the strong fiber of the full counsel of God in them. They will be profoundly Christian and not merely religious and emotional and psychological.

The common denominator of those who follow the Antichrist will not be “charismatic.” It will be, as Paul says, “they refused to love the truth.”

The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. (2 Thessalonians 2:9-12)

Our test for every Lakeland that comes along should first be doctrinal and expositional. Is this awakening carried along by a “love for the truth” and a passion to hear the whole counsel of God proclaimed?

One of the main points of the forthcoming book Spectacular Sins and Their Global Purpose in the Glory of Christ is that sin and God’s wrath against it were part of God’s plan when he created the world. This is different from saying that God sins or that he approves of sinning.

The main reason for making this point is to exalt the revelation of God’s grace in the crucifixion of Jesus to the highest place. This is the point of the universe—the glorification of the grace of God in the apex of its expression in the death of Jesus...

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Adapted from the sermon, "Bethlehem, Break Forth Like the Dawn."

In addition to the all-important need for faith and forgiveness and personal holiness, there are other needs that Isaiah—and Jesus—are passionately concerned about.

Here are 5 kinds of human need mentioned in Isaiah 58.

1) The need for freedom from bondage and oppression. Four times in Isaiah verse 6 and once in verse 9 he hits on this.

• Isaiah 58:6 - "Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?"
• Isaiah 58:9 - "...take away the yoke from your midst..."

2) The need for food.

• Isaiah 58:7 - "Is it not to share your bread with the hungry..."

3) The need for housing.

• Isaiah 58:7 - "...and bring the homeless poor into your house..."

4) The need for clothing.

• Isaiah 58:7 - "...when you see the naked, to cover him..."

5) The need for respect.

• Isaiah 58:9 - "...if you take away...the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness." In other words, stop accusing unjustly, belittling, and exploiting.

Isaiah preaches justice to the people of God, and Jesus displays justice to the people of God. And not only does he display the justice he expects, he suffers to cleanse and empower us, so our piety will produce a passion for social justice and practical mercy.

If it doesn’t, our piety is empty.

And if it does—if our devotion to Christ produces a passion for freeing the oppressed and feeding the hungry and housing the homeless and clothing the naked and putting away belittling talk and demeaning gestures—then we will break forth like the dawn.

It was granted to me to carry away from my prison years on my bent back, which nearly broke beneath its load, this essential experience: how a human being becomes evil and how good. In the intoxication of youthful successes I had felt myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was a murderer and an oppressor. In my most evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well supplied with systematic arguments. It was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.... That is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me: “Bless you, prison!” I...have served enough time there. I nourished my soul there, and I say without hesitation: “Bless you, prison, for having been in my life!” (The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956, Vol. 2, 615-617)

Having just preached three messages on the relationship between baptism and church membership, here is a small follow up. Paul Jewett’s compelling book on infant baptism gives a clear and persuasive interpretation to a puzzling text.

Here’s the text and the interpretation.

“If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.” (1Corinthians 7:13-14).

 According to the interpretation we shall suggest, in 1 Corinthians 7:14 Paul has in view the sanctity of lawful matrimony and the purity of the resulting offspring. When he says that the unbeliever is “sanctified” by the believer, he is simply referring to the marriage covenant by which the unbeliever has been consecrated and set apart for the exclusive fellowship of the believer in the bond of marriage. He writes to assure his Corinthian converts that this exclusive propriety, which the marriage covenant seals, is in no way abrogated by any disparity of religious commitment, great as this disparity may be. Christians, then, should never fear defilement through cohabitation with an unbelieving spouse: indeed, such defilement would imply that their children were also defiled, which they grant is not the case. In other words, he reasons from what is allowed to what is in doubt. If that relationship were unclean from which the children came, then the children would be unclean too; but everyone agrees they are not. Rather, they are “holy” in the sense that they are not contaminated with the taint of illegitimacy. Therefore, the union of  which they were born is likewise above suspicion and reproach. (Infant Baptism and the Covenant of Grace, 133)

Dear Friends at Bethlehem and Beyond,

I’m writing to invite you to an unusual conference. This Fall’s Desiring God National Conference is one of the most extraordinary we have conceived. Our expectations are very high that its effect will be mind-sharpening, heart-humbling, mouth-seasoning, backbone-strengthening, and Christ-acclaiming. Our theme is The Power of Words and the Wonder of God...

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Jonathan Edwards put it this way:

God doubtless will entertain his saints according to the state of the King of heaven, when he comes to entertain them at the feast that he has provided.... We read of Ahasuerus, a great king, when he made a feast unto all his princes and servants, he showed the riches of his glorious kingdom, and the power of his excellent majesty, and gave drink in vessels of gold, and royal wine in abundance, according to the state of the king [Esther 1]. So doubtless the happiness of the saints in heaven shall be so great, that the very majesty of God shall be exceedingly shown in the greatness, and magnificence, and fullness of their enjoyments and delights. (The Miscellanies, 833-1152, 189)

My theology is the conviction that this quote from St. Augustine tells us more about God’s good design than our bad depravity.

The desire for happiness is not in myself alone or in a few friends, but is found in everybody. If we did not know this with certain knowledge, we would not want it with determination in our will. But what does this mean?

If two people are asked if they want to serve in the army, it may turn out that one of them replies that he would like to do so, while the other would not. But if they are asked whether they would like to be happy, each would at once say without the least hesitation that he would choose to be so. And the reason why one would wish to be a soldier and the other would not is only that they want to be happy. Is it then the case that one person finds joy in one way, another in a different way?

What all agree upon is that they want to be happy, just as they would concur, if asked, that they want to experience joy and would call that joy the happy life. If one person pursues it in one way, and another in a different way, yet there is one goal which all are striving to attain, namely to experience joy. (Confessions, 198)

Short answer: No. God never says anything like: “I am not God.” Or: “You are not sinful.” Or: “Christ is not a great Savior.” Or: “If you believe in Christ, you will not be saved.” Or: “It is foolish to follow my counsel.” Or: “My word is unreliable.”

But God does ordain that lying happen as part of his judgment on the guilty. That is why the question comes up...

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Because the Psalms are so personal, they often do not represent the mood or the situation we are in when we read them. For example, a couple mornings ago I read Psalm 142. It says,

There is none who takes notice of me; no refuge remains to me; no one cares for my soul. (v. 4)

And,

I am brought very low! (v. 6)

I do not share this lament at this time. There are many who care for my soul. And I am not presently very low. I have known times more like this. But it is not true of me now.

So what should we do when we read psalms that do not represent our present experience?

1. Realize that somewhere in the world there are Christians who right now are in this situation. Pray with them and for them.
2. Realize that you will be in this situation sooner or later, and build this pattern of prayer into your life as preparation.
3. Get to know God by the way the godly go to him and what they say to him and about him in such times.
4. Give thanks for the relative peace and joy you have in this fragile season.

Dear Jon,

Your faithfulness as the creator and leader of Desiring God has been a gift to me beyond all deserving or imagining for these last fifteen years.

Who would have dreamed the little church tape ministry would be Desiring God? God alone. You are exactly the leader Desiring God needs. You embody the spirit and life that I long for this ministry to awaken in others.

Some can say things accurately; you feel the preciousness of what is said and the reality behind it.

You have tasted the Treasure that Christ is.

You have drunk at the fountain of sovereign grace.

You have absorbed the humbling impact of the glory of free mercy.

You live the amazed life of gratitude for life-long forgiveness.

You have walked through the darkness and known the helplessness of human nature.

You have felt the infinite value of dawn rising over the empty tomb.

You have the fruit of the love for your staff and for the thousands who look to this ministry for glimpses of God’s glory.

You lead with a pastor’s heart and a wise mind.

I admire you. I am rich to know and work with you. I love you.

John

God says things like:

• These bad things happened to you because I intend to work it together for your good (Romans 8).
• These happened so that you would rely more on God who raises the dead (2 Corinthians 1).
• This happened so that the gold and silver of your faith would be refined (1 Peter 1).
• This thorn is so that the power of Christ would be magnified in your weakness (2 Corinthians 12).

But we can always object that there are other easier ways for God to accomplish those things. We want to know more specifics: Why now? Why this much? Why this often? Why this way? Why these people?

The problem is, we would have to be God to grasp all that God is doing in our problems. In fact, pushing too hard for more detailed explanations from God is a kind of demand that we be God.

Think of this, you are a blacksmith making horseshoes. You are hammering on a white hot shoe and it ricochets off and hits you in the leg and burns you. In your haste to tend to your leg you let the shoe alone unfinished. You wonder why God let this happen. You were singing a hymn and doing his will.

Your helper, not knowing the horseshoe was unfinished gathered it up and put it with the others.

Later there was an invasion of your country by a hostile army with a powerful cavalry. They came through your town and demanded that you supply them with food and with shoes for their horses. You comply.

Their commander has his horse shoed by his own smith using the stolen horseshoes, and the unfinished shoe with the thin weak spot is put on the commander’s horse.

In the decisive battle against the loyal troops defending your homeland the enemy commander is leading the final charge. The weak shoe snaps and catches on a root and causes his horse to fall. He crashes to the ground and his own soldiers, galloping at full speed, trample him to death.

This causes such a confusion that the defenders are able to rout the enemy and the country is saved.

Now you might say, well, it would sure help me trust God if he informed me of these events so that I would know why the horseshoe ricocheted and burned my leg. Well maybe it would help you. Maybe not.

God cannot make plain all he is doing, because there are millions and millions and millions and millions of effects of every event in your life, the good and the bad. God guides them all. They all have micro purposes and macro purposes. He cannot tell you all of them because your brain can’t hold all of them.

Trust does not demand more than God has told us. And he has given us immeasurably precious promises that he is in control of all things and only does good to his children. And he has given us a very thick book where we can read story after story after story about how he rules for the good of his people.

Let’s trust him and not ask for what our brains cannot contain.

Happy birthday, John Calvin. Today we celebrate your 499th birthday. Your preaching inspires me to press on with this great and glorious task of heralding the Word of God.

T. H. L. Parker’s 1975 biography tells why:

And so we trace him preaching on Sundays with one hundred and eighty-nine sermons on the Acts between 1549 and 1554, a shorter series on some of the Pauline letters between 1554 and 1558, and the sixty-five on the Harmony of the Gospels between 1559 and 1564. During this time the weekdays saw series on Jeremiah and Lamentations (up to 1550), on the Minor Prophets and Daniel (1550-2), the one hundred and seventy-four on Ezekiel (1552-4), the one hundred and fifty-nine on Job (1554-5), the two hundred on Deuteronomy (1555-6), the three hundred and forty-two on Isaiah (1556-9), then one hundred twenty-three on Genesis (1559-61), a short set on Judges (1561), one hundred and seven on 1 Samuel and eighty-seven on 2 Samuel (1561-3) and a set on 1 Kings (1563-4).

Before he smiles at such unusual activity of the pulpit, the reader would do well to ask himself whether he would prefer to listen to the second-hand views on a religion of social ethics, or the ill-digested piety, delivered in slipshod English, that he will hear today in most churches of whatever denomination he may enter, or three hundred and forty-two  sermons on the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, sermons born of an infinite passion of faith and a burning sincerity, sermons luminous with theological sense, lively with wit and imagery, showing depths of compassion and the unquenchable joyousness of hope. Those in Geneva who listened Sunday after Sunday, day after day, and did not shut their ears, but were “instructed, admonished, exhorted, and censured,” received a training in Christianity such as had been given to few congregations in Europe since the days of the fathers. (92)

Thank you, John Calvin, for believing in the majesty of the word and for demonstrating by your life the glory of preaching the Bible.

I hope you are reading your Bible steadily through the summer. I hope you don’t miss a day. “On his law he meditates day and night” (Psalms 1:2). I pray that there are times when it tastes so good, you slow down and steep your heart in it. Today was an especially rich day for me.

I was reading in four parts of the Bible—not for any preparation, but just to feed my soul. In every text another text came to mind that made each clearer. And that blew some fog away so I could see and enjoy God more fully...

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What does Jesus mean when he says,

Take care then how you hear, for to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he thinks that he has will be taken away (Luke 8:18)?

He is applying the parable of the four soils (Luke 8:12-15). Notice the connection between “take care how you hear,” and the focus in hearing in the parable.

1. “The ones along the path are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word.”
2. “And the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it  with joy. But these have no root; they believe for a while, and in time of testing  fall away.”
3. “And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but  as they go on their way they are choked by the  cares and riches and pleasures of life.”
4. “As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit  with patience.”

The point of that parable is that three out of four ways to “hear” result in the word being “taken away.” So Jesus says, “Take care how you hear.” It is infinitely important whether we hear like the three soils and lose what we heard, or hear like the fourth soil and bear fruit with what we heard.

Jesus motivates us to “take care how you hear” by saying two things, the first relating to the fourth soil, the second relating to the first three soils.

1. “. . . for to the one who has, more will be given. . .”
   
   When we hear and “hold it fast in a honest and good heart,” we bear fruit. That is, more [fruit] is given to those already have [the word held fast by an honest and good heart].
   
   
2. “. . . and from the one who has not, even what he thinks that he has will be taken away.”
   
   The first three ways of hearing are deceived. They “think” they have the word, but they don’t. And even this illusion will be destroyed some day: “What he thinks that he has will be taken away.”

When you hear preaching or read your Bible take hold of it like a miser taking hold of gold and silver. Take hold of it like a pearl of great price and a treasure in a field. Take hold of it like a drowning man seizes a float. Fight off every word-destroying demonic bird and burning affliction and deceitful desire. Then you will “have” and “more will be given.” You will bear fruit with patience.

Since there are some Arminians who are more godly than some Calvinists and some Calvinists who are more godly than some Arminians, what is the correlation between true knowledge of God and godliness?

The best of both groups have historically admired the godliness of those in the other group. Whitefield, the Calvinist, said of Wesley, the Arminian, “Mr. Wesley I think is wrong in some things; yet I believe...Mr. Wesley, and others, with whom we do not agree in all things, will shine bright in glory” (Wesley and the Men Who Followed, 71).

But the sad thing about our day, unlike the days of Whitefield and Wesley, is that many infer from this that knowing God with greater truth and fullness is not important, since it doesn’t appear to be decisive in what produces godliness. Those who know what the Bible says will be protected from that mistake...

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Resolved 08, which I spoke at a couple weeks ago, had a sobering theme: Heaven and Hell. In my preparation, I dug up this contrast between Clark Pinnock and Dorothy Sayers.

Clark Pinnock, a Canadian theologian who has moved far from his evangelical roots, wrote:

I was led to question the traditional belief in everlasting conscious torment because of moral revulsion and broader theological considerations, not first of all on scriptural grounds. It just does not make any sense to say that a God of love will torture people forever for sins done in the context of a finite life.... It’s time for evangelicals to come out and say that the biblical and morally appropriate doctrine of hell is annihilation, not everlasting torment. (Theological Crossfire: An Evangelical/Liberal Dialogue, 226-7)

Dorothy Sayers, who died in 1957, speaks a wise and faithful antidote to this kind of abandonment of truth.

There seems to be a kind of conspiracy, especially among middle-aged writers of vaguely liberal tendency, to forget, or to conceal, where the doctrine of Hell comes from. One finds frequent references to the “cruel and abominable mediaeval doctrine of hell,” or “the childish and grotesque mediaeval imagery of physical fire and worms.” ...

But the case is quite otherwise; let us face the facts. The doctrine of hell is not “mediaeval”: it is Christ’s. It is not a device of “mediaeval priestcraft” for frightening people into giving money to the church: it is Christ’s deliberate judgment on sin. The imagery of the undying worm and the unquenchable fire derives, not from “mediaeval superstition,” but originally from the Prophet Isaiah, and it was Christ who emphatically used it.... It confronts us in the oldest and least “edited” of the gospels: it is explicit in many of the most familiar parables and implicit in many more: it bulks far larger in the teaching than one realizes, until one reads the Evangelists through instead of picking out the most comfortable texts: one cannot get rid of it without tearing the New Testament to tatters. We cannot repudiate Hell without altogether repudiating Christ. (A Matter of Eternity, 86)

Not everything is complex when it comes to politics. Here’s something that is clear and simple and fearful. If political figures don’t humble themselves and give glory to God when they are praised for their speeches, they will be eaten by worms.

Now:

On an appointed day Herod put on his royal robes, took his seat upon the throne, and delivered an oration to them. And the people were shouting, “The voice of a god, and not of a man!” Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down, because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and breathed his last. (Acts 12:21-23)

Or later:

It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, "where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched." (Mark 9:47-48)

Here is a sampling of God’s complete providence in governing the world.

• “I have commanded the ravens to feed you there” (1Kings 17:4)
• “The Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah” (Jonah 4:6).
• “God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered” (Jonah 4:7).
• “I will send swarms of flies on you and your servants” (Exodus 8:21).
• “He summoned a famine on the land and broke all supply of bread” (Psalms 105:16).
• “He gave them hail for rain” (Psalms 105:32).
• “He spoke, and the locusts came” (Psalms 105:34).
• “The Lord will whistle for . . . the bee that is in the land of Assyria” (Isaiah 7:18).
• “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord” (Proverbs 16:33).
• “Even the wind and the sea obey him” (Mark 4:41).
• “He removes kings and sets up kings” (Daniel 2:21).
• “Even the unclean spirits, and they obey him” (Mark 1:27).
• “He upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3).

The most beautiful confessional statements of God’s providence are found in the Heidelberg Catechism:

What do you mean by the providence of God? (Question 27)

The almighty and everywhere present power of God; whereby, as it were by his hand, he upholds and governs heaven, earth, and all creatures; so that herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, yea, and all things come, not by chance, but by his fatherly hand.

What advantage is it to us to know that God has created, and by his providence does still uphold all things? (Question 28)

That we may be patient in adversity; thankful in prosperity; and that in all things, which may hereafter befall us, we place our firm trust in our faithful God and Father, that nothing shall separate us from his love; since all creatures are so in his hand, that without his will they cannot so much as move.

Read, trust, worship, be radical.