The Power of Hoping in God’s Meticulous Providence

On April 20, 2001, the Peruvian Air Force mistook a missionary plane for a plane smuggling drugs and opened fire. Missionary Veronica Bowers, age 35, was holding in her lap her seven-month-old daughter, Charity. She was sitting just behind pilot Kevin Donaldson. With them were Veronica’s husband, Jim, and six-year-old son, Cory. Both legs of the pilot were hit. He put the plane into an emergency dive and, amazingly, crash-landed it on a river, where it sank just as they all got out. One bullet had passed by Jim’s head and made a hole in the windshield. Another bullet passed through Veronica’s back and stopped inside her seven-month-old daughter, killing them both. This was the price of serving Christ in missions.

What does a young husband say or do when this happens? What would you say to him? There are many Christians ready to tell him not to embrace the purposeful and merciful providence of God in moments like this. One popular writer might say to Jim Bowers,

When an individual inflicts pain on another individual, [one should not] go looking for “the purpose of God” in the event. . . . Christians frequently speak of “the purpose of God” in the midst of tragedy caused by someone else. . . . But this I regard to simply be a piously confused way of thinking. (Letters from a Skeptic, 46–47)

In other words, God had no particular purpose for the taking of Veronica and Charity Bowers and the leaving of Jim and Cory. And all the words at the memorial service expressing submission to the sovereign purposes of God were simply a confused way of thinking. I think that writer is dead wrong.

The memorial service for Veronica and Charity was held at Calvary Church in Fruitport, Michigan, on April 29, 2001. Listen to the testimony of this young husband, who lost his wife and daughter, as he spoke to the 1,200 people gathered for the service, with his six-year-old son, Cory, sitting at the front.

Most of all, I want to thank my God. He’s a sovereign God. I’m finding that out more now. . . . Could this really be God’s plan for Roni and Charity; God’s plan for Cory and me and our family? I’d like to tell you why I believe so.

Then, after a long list of unlikely events, he said something that only those who trust in God’s sovereign care for his own can truly understand. He said,

Roni and Charity were instantly killed by the same bullet. (Would you say that’s a stray bullet?) And it didn’t reach Kevin [the pilot], who was right in front of Charity; it stayed in Charity. That was a sovereign bullet.

A sovereign bullet. An appointed bullet. A planned bullet.

Witnesses to Providence

I suppose it was no accident that Steve Saint and Elisabeth Elliot both spoke at Veronica and Charity’s funeral, because they both said similar, astonishing things about the sovereignty of God. Steve Saint was the son of Nate Saint, one of the five missionaries speared to death in 1956 in Ecuador. Elisabeth Elliot was the wife of Jim Elliot, another one of the five missionaries killed by the Huaorani People in 1956.

She had already signaled her strong belief in the sovereignty of God in her book Shadow of the Almighty, where she said that the world could see the martyrdom of her husband only as a tragedy. But she protested, “The world did not recognize the truth of the second clause in Jim Elliot’s credo”:

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep
to gain what he cannot lose. (Shadow of the Almighty, 19)

Now, what would she say to Jim Bowers, who just lost his wife and daughter? She said,

You wonder what God is doing, and of course, we know that God never makes mistakes. He knows exactly what He is doing, and suffering is never for nothing. . . . He has given to you, Jim, the cup of suffering, and you can share that with the Lord Jesus, who said, “The cup the Father has given to me, I have received.”

She ended with a quote from Martha Nicholson’s poem:

I learned He never gives a thorn without this added grace,
He takes the thorn to pin aside the veil which hides His face.

Steve Saint had done extensive research into the death of his father and the four other missionaries who died. He came to an astonishing conclusion:

As they described their recollections, it occurred to me how incredibly unlikely it was that the . . . killing took place at all; it is an anomaly (something inexplicable and strange) that I cannot explain outside of divine intervention.

When I first read that, I thought I had misread it. Almost everybody says they died because God did not intervene. And here you are saying that the only way to explain their death is that God did intervene. I wrote to Steve Saint and clarified, “That is what you meant?” “Yes.” Then I invited him to a conference to hear more.

Now, what would Steve Saint say at Veronica and Charity’s funeral? He looked the six-year-old Cory in the eye and said,

I was your age when my father was killed. So I asked my mom, “Where did my dad go?” And she said, “He went to live with Jesus.” And you know, that’s where my mom and dad had told me that we all wanted to go and live. Well, I thought, isn’t that great that Daddy got to go sooner than the rest of us? And you know what? Now, when people say, “That was a tragedy,” I know they were wrong.

Then he looked up at the people and told them the difference between the unbelieving world and the followers of Jesus. He said, “For them, the pain is fundamental and the joy is superficial because it won’t last. For us, the pain is superficial and the joy is fundamental.” It lasts forever (Psalm 16:11).

Purposeful Sovereignty of God

I would like to show you, from the Bible, four crucial things about the providence of God, which I define as the purposeful sovereignty of God — a reality that has inspired and sustained world missions through the darkest and the most fruitful times.

First, the providence of God is all-embracing. Nothing is outside his providence. His purposeful, sovereign will governs all things: good and evil, Satan and angels, electrons and galaxies, animal instincts and human willing.

Second, because of this all-embracing providence, there is an all-satisfying gospel. And there would be no gospel — no salvation, no everlasting joy — if God were not sovereign in this way.

Third, because of this all-embracing providence, God’s missionary purpose will succeed. It cannot fail. He will unstoppably gather his elect from all the peoples of the world. And then the end will come.

Fourth, because of this all-embracing providence, your life in his service will have eternal significance. It will not be wasted. You are in sovereign hands. So, get a Christ-exalting dream and go for it in total confidence that your Champion rules everything.

1. All-Embracing Providence

The providence of God is all-embracing. Nothing is outside his providence. His sovereign will governs all things: good and evil, Satan and angels, electrons and galaxies, animal impulses and human willing.

I invite you to look at James 4:13–16:

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit” — yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.

Focus with me on verse 15: “You ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’” So, there’s an if clause, and there are two results that flow from it. The if clause is, “If the Lord wills.” The two results are, first, “We will live,” and second, “We will do this or that.” Focus on the second result for a moment: “If the Lord wills, we will . . . do this or that.”

What’s the point of saying, “We will do this or that”? Is not the point that God’s sovereign will is all-embracing? He decides if you do this. He decides if you do that. In other words, it’s never right to say, “If I do this, it will be God’s sovereign will that I do it, but if I do that, it will be outside God’s sovereign will that I do it.” No. James says, “If you do this, God has decided you would do this. If you do that, God has decided that you will do that. “If the Lord wills, we will . . . do this or that.”

So, I conclude that the providence of God — the purposeful sovereignty of God’s will — is all-embracing. Nothing is outside his providence. This reality rings throughout the Bible.

• God “works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Ephesians 1:11).
• “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord” (Proverbs 16:33).
• “Not one [sparrow] will fall to the ground apart from your Father” (Matthew 10:29).
• “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will” (Proverbs 21:1).
• “Does disaster come to a city, unless the Lord has done it?” (Amos 3:6).
• “The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; he frustrates the plans of the peoples. The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations” (Psalm 33:10–11).
• “No purpose of yours can be thwarted” (Job 42:2).

So, the first thing I want you to see from the Bible is this: The providence of God is all-embracing. His sovereign will governs all things: good and evil, Satan and angels, electrons and galaxies, animal impulses and human willing. “If the Lord wills, we will . . . do this or that.”

2. All-Satisfying Gospel

Because of this all-embracing providence, there is an all-satisfying gospel. And there would be no gospel — no salvation, no everlasting joy — if God were not sovereign in this way.

“If you are in the hands of the all-encompassing providence of God, it will always be well with your soul.”

Perhaps the most crucial question that the providence of God raises is this: Can God plan that sin happen without himself sinning? Can he ordain that evil come to pass and be perfectly pure and righteous and without sin in himself? And what is so striking about the answer of the Bible is that it comes most clearly at the very point where God has entered into our evil world and saves us from it by taking our evil upon himself. And the answer is yes. God can plan an evil act and not be evil but be, on the contrary, stunningly gracious. Let’s look at it together in Acts 4:27–28, as the Christians pray to God:

Truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

These verses describe four centers of sinful action:

• Herod’s sin of mocking Jesus (Luke 23:11).
• Pilate’s sin of cowardice and expediency as he delivers Jesus to be crucified (Matthew 27:26).
• The Gentile soldiers’ sin of cruelty and brutality as they put a crown with thorns on him and spit on him (Mark 15:17–19).
• And the sin of the mobs in Israel crying, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” (John 19:15).

Then, at the end of Acts 4:28, the Bible says (because God wants us to know this) they were doing “whatever [God’s] hand and [God’s] plan had predestined to take place.” God planned and predestined that the most evil act in the history of the world take place. And if he had not done that, you and I would be utterly without hope. There would be no gospel, no salvation, no everlasting joy, and no missions. Because when the Son of God was mocked and spit upon and beaten and crucified, it was our sins that he bore and our eternal joy that he purchased.

And with that, he put his world mission in motion — because Revelation 5:9 says that in that very moment, when God was ordaining the worst evil in the world, the Lamb of God was “slain, and by [his] blood [he] ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.” Salvation was birthed at Calvary; the gospel was birthed at Calvary; missions was birthed at Calvary — because God planned and predestined the greatest evil and the greatest act of love that will ever be.

If you should go back home, or back to your campus, and be drawn into an argument about the all-embracing sovereignty of God, don’t play games. Remember what is at stake. If God cannot ordain that evil come to pass (like the murder of his Son) without himself being evil, there is no atonement for sin, no salvation, no gospel, no missions, no Christianity. It’s over. But in fact, God did plan and predestine the murder of his Son. And in that evil event, Jesus took on himself all the evil of all the people who would believe on him from all the nations of the world, and he unleashed the greatest mission in the history of the world.

This means that Genesis 50:20 is the banner waving over the cross of Christ and every other evil in the world: “As for you [Herod, Pilate, soldiers, mob, Judas, Satan], you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” Over every demonic or human evil, God says, “Satan meant it for evil, but I meant it for good.”

Summing up: First, the providence of God is all-embracing. Second, without it there would be no gospel, no salvation.

3. All-Victorious Mission

Because of this all-embracing providence, God’s missionary purpose will succeed. It cannot fail.

Jesus said in Matthew 24:14, “This gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed [not may be — will be] throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then [when the mission is done, and it will be done] the end will come.” The message of the cross will penetrate every people group. It cannot be stopped. And then the end will come.

Jesus said, “I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of this [Jewish] fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd” (John 10:15–16). “The sheep are mine. They are scattered all over the world, in all the peoples. I have purchased them. I must bring them. They will listen and come. I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it (Matthew 16:18). My mission cannot fail. My Father’s providence is all-embracing.”

[He] nullifies the counsel of the nations;
     He frustrates the plans of the peoples.
The counsel of the Lord stands forever,
     The plans of His heart from generation to generation. (Psalm 33:10–11 NASB)

[He declares] 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.” (Isaiah 46:10)

First, the providence of God is all-embracing. Second, without it there would be no gospel, no salvation. Third, because of this all-embracing providence, God’s missionary purpose for the world will succeed. It cannot fail.

4. All-Secure Significance

Finally, because of God’s all-embracing providence, your life in his service will have eternal significance. God will not let your life be wasted.

You are in sovereign hands.

• “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6).
• Your steps “are established by the Lord” (Psalm 37:23).
• He will work everything together for your good (Romans 8:28); he will “rejoice in doing [you] good . . . with all [his] heart and all [his] soul” (Jeremiah 32:41).
• He is for you. And if the sovereign God is for you, no one can succeed against you (Romans 8:31).
• He will “establish the work of [your] hands” (Psalm 90:17).
• He will cause you to bear fruit (John 15:5).
• No words that go out of your mouth, no love that goes out of your hands, will return to you empty. They prosper in his purpose (Isaiah 55:11).
• When you make it your passion and ambition to magnify Christ in life and death, you can say with Paul, “To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21).

You will exult:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
     we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. (Romans 8:35–37)

Killed all day long — more than conquerors! Here’s how Jesus said that: “Some of you they will put to death. . . . But not a hair of your head will perish” (Luke 21:16, 18). What in the world does that mean? “You will be put to death. Not a hair of your head will perish.” It means that God’s providence is all-embracing and meticulous, down to the hairs on your head, so that nothing — not the tiniest hair-disturbance — will happen to you but what God decides is for your ultimate good, including your death, because to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

We Will Live

So, we end where we began in James 4:15: “If the Lord wills, we will live.” And if he doesn’t, we don’t. Henry Martyn, missionary to India and Persia, who died when he was 31 in 1812, wrote in his journal in January of that year, “Whether life or death be mine, may Christ be magnified in me! If he has work for me to do, I cannot die” (Journal and Letters of Henry Martyn, 460).

“If the Lord wills, we will live.” Is it not an awesome thing that you can walk out of here in the hands of a sovereign Savior and know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you are immortal until his work for you is done? Nobody and no disease and no bullet can take your life until his purpose for you is complete. If the Lord wills, you will live.

On August 9, I preached at a funeral for a twelve-year-old girl who died of malaria and other complications while her parents were serving as missionaries among a totally unreached people. They’ve been serving like that for over fifteen years. The loss and the grief were massive. But several weeks ago, these parents and some of their other children returned to that people. And for three days, from December 18–20, these parents sat on a green mat with peanuts and dates and a bowl of water and a Bible, and for ten hours each day they shared the gospel as people came to express their condolences.

How does a family not only survive the death of a twelve-year-old daughter but find the strength and the love to return and pour themselves out where their daughter had been poured out to death? The answer is — and they would say it if they were here — the all-encompassing providence of God, who predestined the death of his Son for the salvation of people from every tribe and language, and who purchased an unstoppable mission, and who called us into a life of infinite significance. I plead with you, for your own sake and the glory of Christ and the salvation of the unreached: Join them in that kind of significance.

In that funeral, we sang, “It is well with my soul.” If you are in the hands of the all-encompassing providence of God, it will always be well with your soul. So, get a Christ-exalting vision for your life, and go for it, in the total confidence that your Lord and Savior rules everything.