Trusting God's Providence in Every Detail of Life

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There is an intimacy of involvement with the world that we mechanized scientific 20th century people don't generally think about. We just think everything is by scientific molecular causalities kind everything just works and God wound it up that way or maybe God didn't and it works. [00:17:12]

It was supposed to be routine surgery, but something went wrong, and the life of my beloved wife Barbara hung in the balance by the thinnest thread. Early in the morning, I had checked Barbara into the hospital and settled back to wait. [00:01:45]

Suzanne had become friends with my wife's niece when they both had worked in the hospital some years before. Barbara's niece had long since moved away, and it was quite unexpected to run into Suzanne, especially since she normally didn't come to the waiting room area where I was sitting that morning. [00:02:03]

Suzanne remembered doing a blood test years ago on Barbara's niece. When she had showed the results to a blood specialist, the niece was warned that if she were ever in a car accident or suffered a similar trauma, she could bleed to death. Suzanne ran to the lab, switched on her computer, called up the niece's records, compared them with Barbara's workup. [00:04:41]

This is not a story about Barbara or Suzanne; it is a story about God. What happened to my wife and Suzanne is a miracle of Divine Providence. There is no other way to explain it. It really started years ago when two board lab technicians ran tests on each other. [00:05:41]

If God had taken Barbara home to be with himself, he would have been just as involved in the events of the day and just as is faithful in his Sovereign care. So that's a great testimony. That's the way we need to tell the stories. [00:06:52]

Providence is the almighty and everywhere present power of God whereby, as it were by his hand, he still upholds Heaven and Earth with all creatures and so governs them that herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, yay all things come not by chance but by his fatherly hand. [00:08:43]

That we may be patient in diversity, thankful in prosperity, and for what is future, which is the rest of your life, by the way, and the only part you have any concern in whatsoever. The rest is gone forever; not even God can change it. [00:09:53]

The lot is cast in the lap, but every decision is from the Lord. I illustrated that with dice throwing. Every time you throw dice, God decides what comes up. That's pretty thoroughgoing Providence, so you're tempted to pray every time you play a game, and maybe you should. [00:11:32]

Jesus says, look at the birds of the air; they neither sow, neither do they reap nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? So right here, this little connection here should alert us to why the Bible even bothers to talk about animals. [00:18:51]

Are not Two Sparrows sold for a scent? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your father, but the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Same kind of connection here. Notice this now: your father feeds the birds, so take heart; you're more valuable than birds. [00:20:27]

If you're persuaded by Jesus' words here that God is so intimately involved in his creation that no bird falls to the ground apart from your father, and the very hairs of your head are all numbered, what's the point of that? Well, nobody in the world knows the number of the hairs in your head. [00:22:08]

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