Christians often say, “Don’t worry. God is still on the throne.” But what does that mean? Does God control everything? If so, how do we explain the bad things? Can we trust him even with those?

*****

Peace in the Back Seat

Imagine you’re a child asleep on a family road trip. Suddenly, you’re jolted awake by the pull of your seatbelt as the car lurches on a hard swerve.

Your body’s emergency response system (anxiety) kicks in instantly. Quick breaths, racing pulse, and surging adrenaline as your whole body braces for danger.

Your first instinct—look at Dad. One hand on the wheel, chatting with Mom, glancing in the rearview mirror at whatever he just avoided. Seeing his calm, you exhale, lay your head back, close your eyes, and soon you’re right back to sleep.

How could anxiety vanish so quickly? When someone you trust is at the wheel, anxiety stands down.

What Does God Control?

That kind of peace only comes, however, when you’re sure the one you trust really is at the wheel. And that raises the real question: Does God steereverything, or does he leave some things to chance? Your answer to that question will set the boundaries of your faith in God because you can only trust someone in areas they control. You can’t trust your wife to make it rain tomorrow or your pastor to lower federal taxes. But what about God? Can you trust him in matters that involve the forces of nature or the free choices of people? Or are there some areas where God is hands-off?

Control Over Nature

When a leaf falls from a tree, does God direct the path it takes and choose the exact landing spot? Or does he simply allow the laws of physics to do their job? It’s an important question because if God is hands-off, then how can you trust him in areas he doesn’t control?

Does the Bible present a picture of a God who says, “Well, that wasn’t what I had planned. I guess I’ll just have to make the best of a bad situation”? No.

“The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD” (Proverbs 16:33).

Casting lots was the ancient equivalent of rolling dice. When the little cubes tumble from your hand, factors like gravity, momentum, and friction determine the outcome. And yet it is God who decides exactly which number comes up.

Notice that this is not about occasional interventions reserved for weighty moments in history. It says every decision is from the LORD. The implications are staggering. It means every time anyone rolls dice anywhere in the world, God determines the outcome.

How? Does God see how it’s about to land and give it a nudge? No. That’s how miracles work, but it’s not how providence works.

Miracles and Providence

Miracles are actions God performs that depart from his normal way of governing the creation. God’s normal way is so normal we call them “laws of physics.” God’s normal way of running the creation is to make axe heads sink in water. If an axe head floats, that’s a miracle.

Miracles are amazing, but providence is even more mind-blowing because in providence, God doesn’t depart from his normal ways. Natural laws continue in their regular pattern, and God still, somehow, sees to it that the outcome is exactly what he planned. God uses miracles on special occasions. Everything else that ever happens falls into the category of divine providence.

Some teach that God is uninvolved in normal life. There is no providence. God simply wound up the creation and, aside from an occasional “intervention,” he now sits back and lets the world spin outside of his direct control. This belief is known as Deism.

But the Bible is clear that God is actively involved even in everyday natural processes. And not just the big ones. God superintends everything right down to a blade of grass sprouting from the ground or a bird finding a seed.

“He makes grass grow” (Psalm 104:14).

“Look at the birds of the air … your heavenly Father feeds them” (Matthew 6:26).

And it’s that control over the tiniest movements of the natural world that Jesus points to as the remedy for anxiety.

“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. … So don’t be afraid” (Matthew 10:29-31).

God feeds every bird every day and not one of them dies without God’s say-so. How does that help with anxiety? Jesus chose birds as his example to make the point that no natural event is so small that it falls outside of God’s direct command. You can fully trust God to be in control of every natural event.

Theologian J. I. Packer put it beautifully in his definition of providence: “In overflowing bounty and goodwill, [God] upholds His creatures in ordered existence, guides and governs all events, circumstances, and free acts of angels and men, and directs everything to its appointed goal, for his own glory.”[1]

But what about human-caused events? If you choose to have a bowl of ice cream, is that God’s doing?

Control Over People

Some assume that God’s sovereign control must halt at the borders of human free will. They argue that if God determined human decisions, we would be robots—and God would be guilty of causing evil.

Sounds logical, right? But what does the Bible say? The question is crucial for finding peace. Just think of how many of your anxieties rise from the actions of people. You need to know if the painful things people do to you are within the boundaries of God’s control or if you’re at the mercy of man.

For God to accomplish his will through human activity, does he have to override free will and make us robots? Or does the Bible describe a God who is so wise and powerful that he can allow a person to choose freely and still ensure that the person ends up deciding exactly what God decreed?

God can do that without breaking a sweat. It boggles the human mind, but it’s what the Bible says.

The clearest example is the cross. Long before Jesus was born, God announced his plan to crush the Messiah, cause him to suffer, and make his life a guilt offering (Isaiah 53:10). How did God get that done? Did he just get lucky when the Roman and Jewish leaders chose to crucify Jesus? Or did God actively bring it about? Scripture is clear:

“Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen” (Acts 4:27-28).

If it happened because of God’s power and will, does that mean the human’s involved aren’t responsible? After all, in our legal system, if someone forces you to commit a crime against your will, you’re not guilty.

But God didn’t force them against their will. The passage is very clear. The people who murdered Jesus conspired together to do it. They are culpable for their actions because they did exactly what they wanted to do.

Someone may say, “Okay, God didn’t force them. But did God nudge them in the direction of sin?” No. God never tempts anyone (James 1:13). All his nudges are only in the direction of righteousness and holiness (Philippians 2:12-13).

So how does God do it? It’s incomprehensible to us because there is nothing in our experience we can compare it to. But the Bible is clear—everything people freely choose also ends up being exactly what God planned.

“A person plans his course, but the LORD directs his steps” (Proverbs 16:9 NET).

Is that a mind-bending? Good. Wouldn’t you expect an infinitely wise God to confound the human mind at times? If we followed a deity whose ways always made perfect sense to us and who always did what we expected, that would probably be a god of our own invention rather than an actual omniscient, infinitely wise, perfectly sinless, holy being.

What about Bad Things?

Many Christians reject the doctrine of God’s control not because it’s paradoxical, but because it’s painful. It makes God seem cruel. They can’t bear the thought of God having a hand in the horrific evils they have suffered. We love the idea of God being on the throne when we want protection, but when the protection we wanted doesn’t come, we’re not so sure.

Does the Bible teach that God is only in control when desirable things happen, or is he sovereign over everything? What do the Scriptures say about God’s role in disasters? God answers that question often in his Word.

Control Over Catastrophe

“I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things” (Isaiah 45:7).

“When disaster comes to a city, has not the LORD caused it?” (Amos 3:6)

Whoa. God causes disasters? All disasters? Why would he do that?

We’ll get to that. But first, it’s important to see how strong this theme is in the Bible. Those two verses are not outliers.

“Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?” (Lamentations 3:38).

“The LORD brings death and makes alive” (1 Samuel 2:6).

“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good” (Genesis 50:20).

“[Jesus] was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death” (Acts 2:23).

“They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen” (Acts 4:28).

Job 1 describes all Job’s troubles as coming from Satan (see Job 1:6-19). But they also came from God.

“The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away” (Job 1:21).

“Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” (Job 2:10).

“They comforted and consoled him over all the trouble the LORD had brought upon him” (Job 42:11).

These verses can feel jarring, even terrifying—at first. Many faithful believers have wrestled here. If you feel your anxiety spiking, stick with me. God’s tenderness is still very real. But we can’t get there by discarding his sovereignty.

If you’re unfamiliar with those passages, it’s not surprising. They don’t come up much in sermons, books, or devotionals. Christians have often neglected them because at first glance, they make God sound like your enemy.

Picture Linda, staring at the ceiling, paralyzed with pain after her husband’s betrayal, whispering, “Where are you God? I prayed so many years for our marriage, just for this to happen?” She can’t square a loving God with the ugliness of what happened, so she decides he must have been absent, allowing human evil to run free. “It was just my husband,” she reasons. “God had nothing to do with this mess.”

She wouldn’t be the first to demote God from powerful sovereign to innocent bystander. In his book Trusting God, Jerry Bridges cites an example.

A Christian husband flew in a private plane to another city to give his testimony at an evangelistic meeting, taking his son with him. On the way home they ran into an electrical storm that caused the plane to crash. Both father and son were killed. A Christian friend, in an effort to comfort the bereaved wife and mother, said, “One thing you can be sure of; God had no part in the accident.” According to this friend, God was apparently looking the other way when the pilot got into trouble. A sparrow cannot fall to the ground without our Father’s will, but apparently a plane with Christians aboard can.[2]

That well-meaning friend tried to bring comfort by suggesting God was not involved. But is that really comforting? If the tragedy wasn’t from God, then there is no meaning in their deaths. All the agony of the loss was for nothing.

Why is there an impulse for people to imagine an uninvolved, hands-off God? For many, it’s because it hurts too much to think God could be involved in our most excruciating and heartbreaking sorrows. Sometimes the swerve is so violent we’re sure Dad must have lost control—or abandoned the car altogether.

But does imagining a detached God bring peace? No. It only places you in a world of meaningless, purposeless suffering, subject to time and chance, sinful men, and events that strike outside of God’s control that may or may not be good for you.

How could you trust a god like that? If God’s hands are tied whenever humans exercise free will, then his hands are always tied. God might have a plan for you, but what if people don’t cooperate? If God isn’t sovereign over human decisions, how could you pray for outcomes that depend on people? God might hear your prayer and say, “Sorry, that’s out of my hands.”

A non-sovereign god can’t promise to protect you nor can he guarantee everything will work for your good. As one preacher said, “The sovereignty of God is the pillow upon which his children rest their head at night.”[3] If the matter is outside of your control, rest in the knowledge it’s not outside of God’s.

But if God is in full control, what are we to make of the problem of evil? If God took your loved one away, gave you cancer, or was in any way involved in someone abusing you, wouldn’t he be guilty of wrongdoing? Does belief in God’s total sovereign control require that we let go of our belief in his goodness? Or is it possible to trust God to be in total control, and also trust him to only do good things?

It’s not only possible—it’s essential. Only when we see the heart behind the hand can God’s sovereignty become a pillow rather than a bed of nails.

Trust God to Be Good

The Bible affirms God’s perfect goodness just as strongly as it does his total sovereignty. God is only good and never does anything evil because there is no evil in him.

“The LORD is upright … there is no wickedness in him” (Psalm 92:15).

“He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he” (Deuteronomy 32:4).

There are no exceptions. All his works are perfect and just, and he does no wrong. He never does evil, nor does he ever induce anyone to commit evil.

“When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone” (James 1:13).

How is this possible? If God causes disasters, takes away health, possessions, and loved ones, sends trouble, and decrees calamities, how can it also be true that he only does good things? Is it possible to trust God to be good—to only do good things, and at the same time trust him to be in full control over everything? Or must we choose between his sovereign control and his goodness?

These questions cut deep. This is where trust is tested—right where pain and sovereignty meet. It’s also where Scripture offers one of its most hope-giving answers—an answer that lies in God’s very nature.

We’ll explore the beautiful harmony of these truths in the next three chapters. But for now, when the swerve comes and anxiety surges, look to your Father’s strong hand on the wheel. He’s not panicked. He’s not surprised. He has full control of the vehicle, and he’s taking you to a good place.

Godliness Training Exercises

Anxiety about the News

News headlines are specifically crafted to create anxiety. That’s how they get clicks. We want to know what we need to be on the lookout for, so we are attracted to anxiety-producing news. Be careful not to overindulge in news. Bad news can be addictive. If the news causes anxiety for you, try this:

• Whenever you consume the news, be intentional about putting each report in its place in the big picture of God’s sovereign reign. Read Psalm 2 or Psalm 24:1, then affirm your trust in God. “Father, what you’re doing is bigger than what they are doing. I trust you.”
• Anxiety about bad people doing bad things is called “fretting.” Whether it be a headline about chaos in the world or just some bad news from a family member, if you find yourself fretting about it, read Psalm 37 and 73 and remind yourself that nobody gets away with anything and God’s people win in the end.

“Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes. Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret–it leads only to evil. For those who are evil will be destroyed, but those who hope in the LORD will inherit the land” (Psalm 37:7-9).

Anxiety from Painful Memories

• Hard memories can trigger crippling stress if you lose sight of God’s role in what happened. When those memories arise, never let the thought pass without giving God’s sovereign control the last word in your mind. Remind yourself that God’s purposes were greater than anyone else’s, and God’s good purposes for you did indeed win, whether you can see it or not.

Trust God’s Goodness

God could have prevented horrible things from happening and chose not to. So how can you trust him with your future?

*****

“God is good all the time.” The line gets a lot of amens in church, but what about in the ICU? Or the funeral home? We left off in the last chapter with the puzzling question—if God is in control of everything, and terrible things happen, can we really say God only does good things? And if bad people did bad things by their own free will, is it proper to say God was in control of that?

The writers of Scripture have no hesitation in attributing a single action to both God and Satan (or other evil agents) at the same time.

Consider the atrocities inflicted on Joseph by his brothers. They almost killed him, threw him in a pit, then sold him into slavery. Did God let that happen with a hands-off approach and then come afterward to make something good of it? No. Scripture says God intended it. God meant for all those things to happen to Joseph.

Does that mean God did something evil? No. He intended it, but only for good.

“You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Genesis 50:20 ESV).

Job’s trouble came from Satan (see Job 2:7) and it came from God (see Job 42:11). The crucifixion was an evil action of sinful men, and a beautiful act of salvation carried out by God (Acts 4:27-28).

Does it seem irrational to think two actors could carry out the same action but only one of them is guilty of evil? Imagine a murderous doctor comes into your hospital room and injects you with a drug he believes will kill you. Moments later, a good doctor injects you with that same drug, knowing that in your rare condition, that drug will actually save your life. Both doctors carry out exactly the same action, but one deserves jail and the other a reward.

No matter what happens to you, it’s always accurate to say the event is from God. It’s never accurate to say the evil involved is from God. While people are doing evil, God is doing only good in the very same action. And God’s promise for believers is that what that good doctor did in the illustration, God does for you in every evil action that is ever taken against you.

Never seek comfort by telling yourself God wasn’t involved. You can’t escape anxiety by diminishing God’s sovereignty or any other attribute. Just the opposite. The deeper your faith in God’s attributes, all of his attributes, the lower your anxiety.

The Truth About Your Trouble

So how should we think about God’s role in our troubles? Remember, finding peace comes from trusting God’s promises. So what has God promised about your suffering? We have established that God only does good things, but sometimes the “greater good” for all mankind isn’t so good for the individual. Does God promise that all the good things he does are good … for you?

Scripture’s answer for God’s people is an absolute, unequivocal YES!

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him” (Romans 8:28).

For the child of God, every event contains within it a good gift from God. Painful, perhaps, but always good. Everything God was doing through that event was loving, faithful, and beneficial to you.

“All the ways of the Lord are loving and faithful for those who keep the demands of his covenant” (Psalm 25:10).

“God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness” (Hebrews 12:10).,

None of those passages say “sometimes.” They are absolute.

When we say God is good, it’s not just that he does that which serves the “greater good.” God’s promise goes further. Not only is God good, but he promises to enforce that goodness on everything that ever happens to you.

“Everything is for your benefit … Therefore we do not give up. … For our … affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory” (2 Corinthians 4:15-17 HCSB).

It’s not glory despite the affliction. The affliction itself is accomplishing the glory, and it’s all for your benefit.

Harmless Trouble

Just as it is God who defines what counts as a need, only God can define the word “harm.” And Jesus goes out of his way to let us know how different his definition is from ours.

“Some of you they will put to death. … But not a hair of your head will perish” (Luke 21:16-18 ESV).

This is one of those statements Jesus clearly wants us to read and say, “Wait … what?” The phrase “not a hair on your head will perish” is a figure of speech meaning you won’t suffer even the slightest harm.

So Jesus promises trouble, persecution, suffering, and even death that is harmless. How could that be? In the following verse, Jesus points us to the resurrection. The trouble God’s people face in this life, no matter how devastating in the short term, is harmless in the big picture. Once the full story plays out, the apparent harm falls short of being true harm.

Healing Trouble

Jesus goes even further. Notice the word “by.”

“Not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your lives.” (Luke 21:18-19 ESV).

He doesn’t just say that you’ll gain life in spite of your suffering. Life comes by means of your suffering.

When a surgeon makes an incision, is he causing harm? If you zoom all the way in and consider only the tiny patch of skin he cuts, then yes, you could call that harm.

But if he does it to remove a life-threatening tumor, we put the whole procedure in the category of healing, not harm. God promises that not only will your suffering be ultimately harmless, but it will be ultimately good for you. Even when the scalpel God uses is an evil person with bad motives like Joseph’s brothers or Judas, still, the master Surgeon makes only healing cuts.

What feels like harm to us is really healing trouble. And what feels like healing to us might be the most dangerous harm of all. We don’t have the perspective to see what’s harm and what’s healing. We are like children who are afraid of the dark when they are safe in bed, but not afraid of traffic on a busy street. They are repulsed by vegetables on their plate but will pick gum off the ground and chew it. A child’s only hope of survival is trusting mom and dad about what is harmful and what isn’t.

This Calls for Celebration

Consider the implications of this. It means God is injecting good into your life through each of the sins people commit against you. This is why no matter what happens to you, you can have a happiness that doesn’t die even in the throes of your sorrow.

“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds” (James 1:2).

Grief, lament, and tears are all appropriate when we suffer. But so is joy. God made us complex beings, capable of complex emotions. We can weep over part of an event and rejoice over another aspect. If a woman dies in childbirth, her husband can be crushed with grief over the loss of his wife and simultaneously have joy as he holds his baby daughter to his chest for the first time. A father whose son dies in combat in an act of heroism can be heartbroken over his loss and at the same time glad to know his son was a brave man. Rejoicing over the good in no way minimizes the pain of the bad.

If a disaster rips into your life, you don’t have to say, I wonder if this is one of those trials God will work for my good. Throughout Scripture you see God’s people automatically assume their trials are for their good.

“Indeed, it was for my own welfare that I had such great bitterness” (Isaiah 38:17 CSB).

“When he has tested me, I will come forth as gold” (Job 23:10).

“In faithfulness you have afflicted me” (Psalms 119:75).

How does belief in God’s total control even over painful trials relieve your anxiety? It happens when you trust God’s promise to make everything that happens to you function for your good.

And not just for your good—specifically for your peace. Look again at Isaiah 38:17. The word translated “welfare” is the Hebrew word for peace (shalom).

“Indeed, it was for my own peace that I had such great bitterness.”

Instead of increasing his anxiety, Hezekiah’s pain brought him greater peace because he trusted God’s promise.

So yes, everything that happens to you is under God’s full control and is for your good. Not only are God’s sovereignty and his goodness compatible, they are interdependent.

Interdependent Doctrines

Neither God’s sovereign control nor his perfect goodness is any comfort without the other. How can you trust your wellbeing to a good, loving God who isn’t in control? He would mean well, but he wouldn’t have the power to use that goodwill for your benefit. There is no guarantee he would be able to protect you from harm.

And a strong, sovereign God who wasn’t always good wouldn’t be any comfort either. He would have plenty of power, but he may not use it in good ways.

When Jesus teaches us how to overcome anxiety in Matthew 6, it is the combination of God’s good purposes for you and his sovereign control that brings relief to anxiety.

“Do not worry about your life … Look at the birds of the air … your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” (Matthew 6:25-26).

“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. … So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows” (Matthew 10:29-31).

God is directly involved in running the world right down to the minute detail of feeding every bird every day (sovereign control). And you matter more to him than those birds (goodness and love).

If either of those doctrines is untrue, you have every reason to remain anxious. If God doesn’t love you, who cares about his ability to feed the birds? And if God does love you but he’s not in full control of feeding the birds, Jesus’ logic falls apart. If it’s mother nature rather than God the Father who feeds them, then those little full bird-bellies have no implications at all for whether God will take care of your needs.

This is why Scripture often speaks of both God’s sovereignty and his goodness side by side in the same passage. Not only does God want good things for you, but he can and will make it happen.

“The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him … so great is his unfailing love. … Who can speak and have it happen if the LORD has not decreed it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?” (Lamentations 3:25-38).

God is both able and willing to bring you good in every event that takes place.

But as wonderful as all these truths are, the ugly reality of human evil remains. How does it help to believe God is good when the source of your anxiety is the evil that people have done?

Trust God’s Supremacy

Joseph wasn’t upset about the horrible injustices he suffered at the hands of his brothers because, in his words:

“You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Genesis 50:20 ESV).

You might say, “It’s great that God meant it for good. But the fact remains—the people who hurt me did indeed intend to hurt me, and that’s the part that causes my anxiety.”

To answer that, we must turn our attention to the relationship between God’s good and human evil. Which one wins?

God Wins

Joseph’s secret wasn’t only in knowing that God meant it for good. Here’s the crucial point: God’s good mattered more to Joseph than his brothers’ evil. It’s not that there are two equal forces—one evil and the other good. They are nowhere close to equal. When the bad doctor tries to harm you and the good doctor tries to heal you, the good doctor wins.

Many Christians derive no peace from learning that God meant it for good because they have a limited view of how good God’s purposes are. “I had to go through decades of agony just so God could teach me a little patience?” That’s not very comforting.

Maybe you can’t even imagine any purpose that would be good enough to make it worth the suffering you’ve endured.

The evil done by evil people is real. And it’s bad—so bad that our situation would be hopeless if God hadn’t promised to overcome it. But he has.

“In me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

Whatever that overwhelming problem is in your world, no matter how catastrophic, Jesus has already overcome it and is offering his peace to you.

Shift Your Attention

That peace won’t come, however, while your attention remains glued to what people are doing. Even if you know about what the good doctor did, you’ll still have anxiety if your thoughts are dominated by what the bad doctor intended.

I know—shifting your attention away from the person who is hurting you can feel impossible. Whether it’s a stranger on the highway, a coworker making life miserable, an angry spouse, or abuse in your past, your natural response will be to fix all your attention on the human actors. But God gives us sufficient grace to rise above the natural.

Ask yourself, what matters most to me—God’s purposes or human evils? If we’re honest, it’s often people whose actions matter most to us because we can see and feel them. The good that God is doing is usually invisible.

Additionally, if you turn your attention away from the evil that people intended and focus on the good God promises, it may feel like you’re giving them a pass. Not true. You can still believe slime is slimy without rolling around in it.

The Craving for Compassion

Yet another reason we cling to thoughts of the offense has to do with pity. The desire for pity is very strong—stronger than most will admit. I have been astonished in recent years to discover how deep the desire for pity is in my own heart.

If you’re like me, there is a fear that if you turn your attention away from the evil done to you and focus on the good God is doing, and if you have a cheerful demeanor, no one will know how painful this has been for you. But the joy you’ll have from enjoying God is far greater than what you get from people’s pity.

The desire for pity (compassion) is not bad. It only goes wrong when we seek it from people rather than from God. And when self-pity or the desire for others to feel sorry for us glues our attention to our troubles, we shoot ourselves in the foot.

While you’re in the process of making sense of what happened, it’s necessary to think deeply about it. But going forward, nursing a grievance only increases your suffering. By dwelling on it, you’re rubbing salt in your own wound. Of course, for some wounds, intrusive memories are not voluntary. But what you do with those memories is up to you. If people want to hurt you, why join them in their efforts? If they are hurting you in evil ways, why take part in that evil by hurting yourself?

You don’t have to cooperate with the people who want you miserable. It’s possible to condemn the evil of what they have done to you while at the same time refusing to cling to a victim-identity. Instead of fixating on the evil, embrace the blessings God promised to bestow through the trial.

If This Isn’t Helping

I’ve done my best to argue that God controls everything, yet he only does good things. And perhaps you’re convinced, but there’s still no peace. Truth doesn’t always penetrate your whole being all at once. Sometimes you can mentally affirm all the right things and still lie awake at night with a knot in your stomach because your soul isn’t in sync with your brain.

Knowing that God is good is not the same as being able to embrace his way, especially when that way has shattered your life. You know God meant it for good, yet you can’t imagine how any good could possibly outweigh the pain. Is peace still possible when you can’t see even the faintest outline of good?

The answer is yes—but the path to that peace can be an uphill climb. In the next chapter, we’ll tackle the hard part—how to not only know God’s way is good—but to truly accept his way of being good. You’ll see how peace finally comes when your heart stops resisting God’s hard providence and finally learns to rest in his mysterious goodness.

Godliness Training Exercises

• Write a letter to your future, anxious self about how these truths about God apply to that terrible event that causes you anxiety.

• Memorize Deuteronomy 32:4.

• Whenever you feel stress over a hardship this week, quiz yourself on Deuteronomy 32:4. Try to make this a habit whenever you feel anxious.

“He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he” (Deuteronomy 32:4).

“Okay soul, how much wrong does God do?”

“None.”

“Is God perfect or imperfect?”

“Perfect.”

“How many of God’s ways are just?”

“All of them.”

“What does that tell me about the fact that your alarm didn’t go off? The blister on your toe? Your delayed flight? The rude guy at the counter?

• Whenever your goal is to escape obsessive thoughts, a useful strategy is to use those thoughts as a memory cue to springboard to the kind of thoughts you’d rather have. Every time you find yourself obsessing about what people are doing, let that be a memory cue to turn your attention to what God is doing. The goal isn’t to stop thinking about what happened. It’s to think about the good God was accomplishing in that action. You can’t see what that good is, but you do know the character of the God who controls it.

[1] J. I. Packer, “Providence” in New Bible Dictionary, ed. D. R. W. Wood, I. H. Marshall, A. R. Millard, and D. J. Wiseman, 3rd ed. (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 979-80.

[2] Jerry Bridges, Trusting God, audiobook, read by John Haag (Christianaudio, 2010).

[3] This quotation is often attributed to C.H. Spurgeon.

 

[1] For example, Newberg, A. B. (2011). Spirituality and the Aging Brain. Journal of the American Society on Aging, 35(2), 83-91. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26555779.
[2] Dr. David Spiegel, associate chair of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and medical director of the center for integrative medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, cited by Nicole Spector, https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/your-brain-prayer-meditation-ncna812376.
[3] van der Kolk, 55-56.