How does the sovereignty of God impact my everyday life?

God is not only in control of the destiny of peoples and nations. Nor is His interest limited to the big issues in our lives. Rather, He holds everything is His mighty hand — even the small details of everyday life. Very often we do not take this into account and we ask questions — Why? How long? etc. However, our limited perception does not mean that His dealings with us are not real. They are! It was God who kept sleep away from king Ahasuerus. It was God who directed the king not to ask for some women to attend him and distract him (which was quite usual at court at that time) so that he asked to see ‘the book of the records’ (6:1). And it was God who directed his attention to the record this contained concerning the way Mordecai had saved his life in the past. Was all that just by chance? Not at all! God had all these small and inconspicuous details in His mighty hands. In the end, all these things turned out to fulfil His plans.

So also, when we look around us in the world, God is in everything. The overturning of thrones, the crashing of empires, the famine, the pestilence, and every event that occurs among nations, exhibit traces of the hand of God, and utter a voice for the ear of man. The devil will seek to rob the Christian of the real sweetness of this thought; he will tempt him to think that, at least, the commonplace circumstances of every-day life exhibit nothing extraordinary, but only such as happen to other men. But we must not yield to him in this. We must start on our course every morning, with this truth vividly impressed on our mind — God is in everything. The sun that rolls along the heavens in splendid brilliancy, and the worm that crawls along the path, have both alike been prepared of God, and, moreover, could both alike cooperate in the development of His unsearchable designs.

Further, God is in control of everything and he will conduct and direct everything according to His perfect will. In Isaiah 46:10 He says: ‘declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure’. In addition to His foreknowledge, God’s providence means He directly influences things according to His purpose so that in the end His plans will always be realised.[1]

With the exception of certain solemn judgments on the wicked, and the establishment for a time of His throne in Israel, God's government of the world has, since the entrance of sin, been of a secret, providential character. All things are, indeed, ordered or controlled by divine power; human wickedness is thus checked, and the violence of man's passions restrained; all things are caused to work together for good to God's people; and generally speaking, iniquity becomes, in the long run, its own punishment: but all this is by a mysterious combination and superintendence of events of which natural men know nothing. Faith recognizes it, discerning the hand of God in many things, and confessing it in all; but the world at large neither discern nor own anything but the actual course of events, and the human agencies to which these are attributed. Such is Providence.

The will of man is recognized in all this, and not set aside. Certainly we are nowhere led, from Scripture, to think of him as a mere intellectual machine, moved necessarily by influences external to himself, but as a being free and responsible, though now, alas! fallen, and be come the willing slave of sin. As to this, we shall see more directly. It is certain that in no wise are we to think of God as determining to evil the wills of His creatures, or as involving them, whether by (what is to them) the accident of their birth or in any other way, in irretrievable ruin. This Scripture unites with our own consciences to assure us of. There may be difficulties, and there are; but however even insoluble may be the mystery, God has given us that within us which witnesses unfailingly for Him, that man's evil and man's ruin are of himself alone. How, spite of contrary and conflicting wills, God is yet as absolutely "over all, and through all, and in all," "working all after the counsel of His own will,"- this is beyond our skill to fathom. But so it is: and blessed it is to recognize that, as the apostle witnesses, it is as "God and Father of all" He is so. This is in fact the very web and woof of Scripture. This is what so irresistibly appeals to us in those tears wept over impenitent Jerusalem by Him who could pronounce its sure and approaching doom,- a doom to be executed by the hands of men ignorant and careless of Him whose sentence they fulfilled. This predestination extends to everything. Foresight and omnipotent will are everywhere. Thank God they are! In the moral as in the physical universe, nowhere can one escape from His presence, save, alas! by such an insensibility as the mass of men have sunk into. For the Christian, it is joy unspeakable to recognize this pervading presence, which recognized brings light into darkness, order into disorder, peace into whatever circumstances of distress.

But were all these remarkable happenings just a series of coincidences? By no means: they were the movings of the hand of God, though He Himself remained hidden. God was behind the scenes of man's busy little world; but then, as has very well been observed, He moves all the scenes that He is behind. Moreover He moves them in favour of His people, if not always for their temporal preservation and advancement always for their spiritual good and the advancement of His own purposes.

The renewed mind enjoys one of its sweetest exercises, while tracing the divine footsteps in circumstances and events in which a thoughtless spirit sees only blind chance or rigid fate. The most trifling matter may, at times, turn out to be a most important link in a chain of events by which the Almighty God is helping forward the development of His grand designs. Look, for instance, at Esther 4:1, and what do you see? A heathen monarch, spending a restless night. No uncommon circumstance, we may suppose; and, yet, this very circumstance was a link in a great chain of providence at the end of which you find the marvellous deliverance of the oppressed seed of Israel.

In the calculations of men, events unfold themselves as the effects of causes which are known to be operating. But, while this has its truth, to faith it is God who, in His supremacy, holds a seal in His hand to stamp each day with its character or sign.

There is no such thing as blind fate, but there is a Providence that guides and governs the world. "The lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord" (Prov. 16:33). … Providence is God's ordering all issues and events of things, after the counsel of His will, to His own glory. … The wheels in a clock seem to move contrary one to the other, but they help forward the motion of the clock, and make the alarum strike; so the providences of God seem to be cross wheels; but for all that they shall carry on the good of the elect. … God is not like an artificer that builds a house, and then leaves it, but like a pilot He steers the ship of the whole creation.

He who knows the end from the beginning, and sees what is coming, alone can make provision. Nothing takes Him by surprise. The cloud that has darkened the heavens and desolated the earth He saw before it was the size of a man's hand. It may have come upon the pilgrim suddenly, like a thunderclap, so that, for the moment, he knew not where to look, what to say, or what to do. He was overwhelmed — his soul was sinking in deep waters. But there was one eye that saw what was coming and prepared for it. And, oh, what a preparation is His! With wonder and amazement the soul can only worship in the presence of a love that has thought of everything, and provided for everything, even to the least thing. Adorable Lord, what grace is Thine! what care for Thy people! But why wonder? No event, no circumstance in the event, could be too minute for Him who counts the hairs of our head, and suffers not a sparrow to fall to the ground without His providence.