This past week we travelled to Indianapolis for the funeral of Chad and Courtney Phelps and their unborn little girl. Chad was born in Denver when Chuck and Linda were serving with us at Tri-City Baptist Church. Being with our dear friends and sharing in their grief, pain, hope, and joy, is something I don’t think I will ever have the words to describe. I am so grateful to the Phelps and Gaddy families who have demonstrated for us the power of the gospel through grace-filled living. Our prayers continue to be with them.
There are times we won’t understand God’s wisdom or His ways in the events that touch our lives. During such times we must believe what we know to be true about God because our emotions will take us to some very dark places. God tells us He has all wisdom. He weaves this incredible wisdom throughout the tapestry of His sovereign plan for our lives to present a beautiful work of His grace that brings Him great glory.
Wayne Grudem writes, “Wisdom. God’s wisdom means that God always chooses the best goals and the best means to those goals. This definition goes beyond the idea of God knowing all things and specifies that God’s decisions about what he will do are always wise decisions: that is, they always will bring about the best results (from God’s ultimate perspective), and they will bring about those results through the best possible means.”
Grudem goes on to say, “‘We know that God works all things together for good for those who love him, who are called according to his purpose’ (Rom. 8:28, author’s translation). Here Paul affirms that God does work wisely in all the things that come into our lives, and that through all these things he advances us toward the goal of conformity to the image of Christ (Rom. 8:29). It should be our great confidence and a source of peace day by day to know that God causes all things to move us toward the ultimate goal he has for our lives, namely, that we might be like Christ and thereby bring glory to him. Such confidence enabled Paul to accept his “thorn in the flesh” (2 Cor. 12:7) as something that, though painful, God in his wisdom had chosen not to remove (2 Cor. 12:8–10). Every day of our lives, we may quiet our discouragement with the comfort that comes from the knowledge of God’s infinite wisdom: if we are his children, we can know that he is working wisely in our lives, even today, to bring us into greater conformity into the image of Christ.” Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine.
May we rest in these words:
Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them? For from Him and through Him and for Him, are all things. To Him be glory forever! Amen. -Romans 11:33-36