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Trusting God with Creation But Not Providence

Trusting God with Creation But Not Providence

Each of us is prone at times to lose our confidence in God’s wisdom and to assume that he would benefit from a bit of our own. How often do we grumble and complain against God’s will? How often in prayer do we attempt to direct God according to our own limited knowledge, our own limited wisdom?

Yet God’s creation has a way of redirecting our thoughts, for it displays the greatness of his wisdom. God created it without the least bit of input from any man, yet he made it good and very good. And if God exercised his wisdom in creating so wonderful a universe, shouldn’t we trust him to exercise his wisdom in the affairs and circumstances of our lives? Will we trust him with creation but not providence, trust him to create but not to direct?

To ask the question is to highlight its absurdity. Faith directs us to believe that God’s providence is every bit as beautiful as creation—as beautiful as the mighty mountains, as awesome as the expanse of the oceans, as stunning as the most wondrous of all the creatures that live on the earth.

As Matthew Henry once wrote, “God did not consult us in making the world, yet it is well made; why should we expect then that he should take his measures from us in governing it?”

(This is an excerpt from my forthcoming devotional book Understanding and Trusting Our Great God)


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