God’s Eternal Purpose We have been talking in recent blogs about our heavenly Father knowing best how to answer our prayers and that He knows best how to use the circumstances of our lives for our good and His glory. One other thing I see in the Romans passage that we’ve been looking at is that our heavenly Father knows best about His eternal purpose for us. We read in Paul’s writings, “For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren; and whom He predestined, these He also called; and whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified,” (Rom. 8:29,30 NASB). This passage clearly outlines God’s eternal purpose and calling in our lives. Paul makes no effort to reconcile the sovereignty of God with the free will of man in this passage, so neither will I. The Bible teaches both and I will leave it to God to sort it out in the end.
I would like to digress for a moment so that I may give thanks to the Lord for His amazing grace, kindness, and blessing on our 90th-anniversary celebration this past Sunday. The planning process was fraught with difficulties due to the reoccurrence of outbreaks of Covid after we began as a committee to meet and plan for this special day. Yet God in his foreknowledge and tender care allowed us to get past all those issues (including the seriously flooded basement) to have a very special and blessed day in celebrating God’s great faithfulness to us in the past, present, and future. Our God is an amazing God who works and moves in many special ways. I especially appreciate the hard work of those on the committee, who put together a wonderful program and everything came together with grace and blessing. I’d also like to thank all those who came out and enjoyed the Sunday morning messages by Pastor Peter Hook and Pastor Mark Crocco, it was a great day in the life of my ministry here at NDC.
I think I will wait until next week’s blog to begin to unpack verse 29 which talks about God’s sovereignty, and in His calling upon us live out the position that He has placed us in all of eternity. But I also would like to comment on the wide range of emotions that we have been experiencing in our family over the last week. Much has transpired in Deb’s family as she found her brother Dave dead on the couch last Saturday afternoon. Her mother was upstairs on the floor, which resulted in her going to the hospital, and now as of today, she is going to be moved for PT to a nursing home in Bridgewater. We covet your prayers for this transitional time with Deb’s mom and for our family as we deal with the death of Deb’s brother Dave. In the midst of all this happening, while we were visiting my mother-in-law in the hospital Sunday after our luncheon at NDC, I was able to watch my grandson Ethan graduate from high school through the streaming service that the school had made available. I’m very thankful for God’s grace, kindness and care in our lives even in the midst of great storms. God is sovereign and He moves into our lives in ways that we do not always understand, but we just have to keep trusting Him and believing that He’s working everything together for our good and His glory.
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