God has proven this verse over and over again during the last week or two.

A week ago Tuesday, I announced that we were launching our Spanish outreach services this coming week. I made this announcement without thinking it through or getting the green light from the series of factors that needed to be worked through. I had forgotten that we needed to work through the process of finding additional volunteers, and figuring out where the food would come from to support the additional service.

When the guys found out I made such a rash announcement, they weren’t exactly thrilled. In the end we ended up reverting back to the original plan, which is to begin a Spanish ministry SOON, but we can’t put a start date on it till things are ready.

On Thursday morning last week, I was doing the 10 am food run. I walked into the back of the Trader Joes on 21^st street and began putting the boxes on the dolly to load onto the van. As I was moving boxes, a manager came through the back room and greeted me. Then he asked who I was with (I felt a twinge of nervousness/confusion that he needed to ask), so I told him our name. Then he said “Are you with Bill Jones?” I replied “yes.”

He went on to explain that they were looking for someone else to give their mid-day food pickup to (I didn’t even know they had food to give away in the middle of the day at this location) and he said that “they couldn’t be happier” with us, and wanted to offer it to us, before asking if anyone else wanted to take the pickup. I immediately sent an abbreviated text to Pastor Bill, so that I would remember to explain what the manager said when I got back to the church.

This weekend we found ourselves trying to work through a solution to the logistical problems of adding another service. Then it clicked! Maybe this extra food pickup is God’s way of providing the additional food that would be needed to start a Spanish outreach service!

God is constantly reminding us that He’s God and we’re not. He’s the one who runs the show, and we’re just little tiny pieces that He can replace at will.

Another area of changed plans is with this blog post itself. I intended to begin a 5 part series, starting with the authority of Scripture, but then some things came up and I wasn’t able to put the time into crafting the article the way I think it should be done, so I wrote on another topic. This post ended up being twice as long as the word count allows, and I had already cut out so much of what I wanted to say. In the end, I’m writing on yet a third different topic, and I’m not sure why - but figuring everything out isn’t in my job description.

Another way that things did not go as planned was that we had originally planned to go chair shopping this week, at least to get an idea of what color of chairs we want to get for the auditorium. This plan was delayed by an unexpected interruption that took all day Monday, preventing us from being able to go over to the “chair store” in Brooklyn.

Personally, I believe in this thing called “absolute sovereignty” – that God is completely sovereign over all things, and nothing happens or CAN happen that would mess up God’s plan. As someone else said “There is no renegade atom in God’s universe.” This was a big hurdle for me several years ago when I first started seriously grappling with these kinds of doctrines. Ultimately I came to believe it because the Bible explicitly teaches it, and God was kind to grant enabling grace to believe it.

Experientially, I’ve found that only this kind of doctrine can sustain when evil men do evil against me. (Hebrews 12) When men slander you, or are deceitful and manipulative in order to hurt you, only a belief in absolute sovereignty can provide comfort and stability through the storm. I’ve experienced this and I’ve read about it in Scripture. The way that Joseph could look at his brothers and love them was because he knew that God designed his being sold into slavery to ultimately provide salvation for His people. “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.” – Genesis 50:20

Whether your situation is big or small, involving an interruption from work, or moving from one part of the country to another, it is vital that we embrace God’s revelation and submit to Him for who He is. Only then will we be able to “kiss the storm that drives me into the Rock of Ages.”