Radicallybiblical’s Weblog

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Here’s a link to a good post for help in memorizing Scripture.

If when I am dead,

I am made alive

in order to gain life,

then when I die

I will forever live.

In all of life’s experiences we need to be able to accurately categorize what happens to us.  One such category is to be able to know whose work it is that we experience.

1. Every good thing that happens to us is God’s work (James 1:17; Psalm 145).  We should view God’s work as God’s work!

2. Every evil thing that happens to us is satan’s work (I John 3:8; John 8:44).  We should view satan’s work as satan’s work!

3. Everything (both good and evil) that happens to us is God’s work (Romans 8:28; Ephesians 1:11; Isaiah 45:7; 46:9-10; 48:3, 11; Prov. 16:33; Job 1:21-22; 2:7, 10; Genesis 50:20; etc…).  We should view all work as God’s work!

So, while we should never view God’s work as satan’s work (Matthew 12:22-32; Mark 3:22-30), we should view God’s work as God’s work, satan’s work as satan’s work, and (ultimately) satan’s work as God’s work (cf. Matt. 22:1-6 and John 13:2 with Acts 2:23 and 4:23-28).

The first two of these statments seem easier for most people to swallow, but this last one is the most important, even necessary, for us to embrace.  I close with what I heard of C. H. Spurgeon, by John Piper, when he experienced bad things in his life (as he did on a regular basis):

What comes through again and again is Spurgeon’s unwavering belief in the sovereignty of God in all his afflictions. More than anything else it seems, this kept him from caving in to the adversities of his life. He said,

‘It would be a very sharp and trying experience to me to think that I have an affliction which God never sent me, that the bitter cup was never filled by his hand, that my trials were never measured out by him, nor sent to me by his arrangement of their weight and quantity’ (Spurgeon, C.H., “The Anguish and Agonies of Charles Spurgeon,” p. 25.).

This is exactly the opposite strategy of modern thought, even much evangelical thought, that recoils from the implications of infinity. If God is God he not only knows what is coming, but he knows it because he designs it. For Spurgeon this view of God was not first argument for debate, it was a means of survival.”  (By John Piper. © Desiring God. Website: desiringGod.org).