Life's Inanities and Ironies

  The book of Job confronts every believer with the most severe form of adaptation imaginable: the sudden, comprehensive loss of nearly everything that makes life bearable, while the sufferer remains conscious that God Himself has permitted it. In a single day Job lost his oxen, his sheep, his camels, his servants, and all ten of his children. Then his own body was covered with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown. His wife looked at him in the ashes and said, “Curse God, and die.” Job’s first recorded response remains the gold standard of godly adaptation under catastrophic loss: “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). The Holy Spirit immediately adds, “In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.” This is not stoicism. This is worship. Job did not deny the pain. He did not pretend the losses were small. He simply refused to let the lo...

  Brothers and sisters, few lives in Scripture display more violent and rapid change than the life of Joseph. One day he is the favored son wearing a coat of many colours. The next he is stripped, thrown into a pit, and sold to Ishmaelite traders. One day he is steward of Potiphar’s entire house. The next he is falsely accused and cast into prison. One day he is forgotten by the butler. The next he stands before Pharaoh and is made ruler over all the land of Egypt. Genesis 50:20 is the theological key that unlocks every reversal: “But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.” The fundamentalist Christian must learn to read every sudden downturn through this lens. Men may mean it for evil. Circumstances may appear chaotic. But the sovereign God is never absent, never surprised, and never defeated. Joseph’s adaptation was not passive resignation. In Potiphar’s house he served with excellence. I...

  Beloved saints of the living God, the first great movement of biblical adaptation is not found in a crisis of health or a sudden loss of income. It is found in a quiet, devastating command that strips a man of every earthly security at once. Genesis 12:1 records the word of the Lord to Abram: “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee.” No map was given. No timetable was supplied. No guarantee of comfort was offered. The call was absolute: leave the familiar, leave the family, leave the security of the known, and walk toward a land you have never seen. Abraham obeyed. Hebrews 11:8 states the matter with divine clarity: “By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went.” This is the purest form of adaptation the believer will ever face—adaptation by obedience alone. The modern evangelical world sof...

Because of some of my own life changes recently I felt it an imparitive to dig into scripture to find answers for myself and to share with those of you that read my blog. As you will read that I have found below God is in control always Beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, we live in a world that is constantly shifting. Jobs end. Health fails. Relationships fracture. Homes are left behind. Seasons of abundance give way to lean years. The body that once ran freely now moves slowly. The familiar becomes strange, and the plans we carefully laid crumble under the weight of providence we did not choose. For the true believer who holds the inerrant Word of God as the sole and sufficient rule of faith and practice, these changes are not random, nor are they outside the sovereign hand of the Almighty. The question is never whether change will come—Scripture declares that it will—but how the child of God is to respond when it arrives. The complete counsel of God, from Genesis to Revelation, ...