GOD WORKS

BY STEVE DUNN

This is my life verse. (A life verse is one that describes the organizing principle of a person's life.)  I share here three different ways of translating Romans 8:28.
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” – Romans 8:28

“And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.”  New Living Translation

“Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.” The Message which includes verses 26-27

There is a powerful truth contained in this passage: God works.

This is not the clockwork God of the Deists, Who creates the world, sets it in motion, and stands at a distance watching.  No, this is an attentive, intentional and intervening God.

This is not the Divine Bellhop God of the name it and claim it clan or the situationalist, Who arrives in our lives when and only when He is invited, tethered to our immediate desires and needs.

This is God, Who is intimately active in our lives–often in ways at first unseen and unnoticed, revealing His presence and purposes “in just the right time.”

I love this verse because it reminds me that my life is not a product of fate or chance, but Providence.
There is a second powerful truth:  God works for the good.

Although while navigating the rivers of this life that flow through the valley of the shadow of death, some of the things that God causes to happen to us hurt or even leave us confused, we count on the fact that God is good and all the time God is good.  It does not say all things are good, but that God works in all things to create good outcomes for us.

And a third truth: God works for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purposes.

This does not negate that the rain falls on the just and the unjust, but there is one thing that the just can bank on-it’s all good when we trust Him and let Him work in and through us.  In the end we wouldn’t trade even the failures (from our perspective) and the fumbles. As we live and mature, we see the hand of God at work in our lives and know that to be a blessing.

(C) 2013 by Stephen L. Dunn