REJOICE IN THE LORD’S SOVEREIGNTY
You can’t run the world, but you can entrust it to God.
I grew up in a camping family. My dad’s idea of a great vacation involved mountains, creeks, tents, and sleeping bags. Let others tour the big cities or enjoy the theme parks. The Lucado family passed on Mickey and headed for the Rockies.
I attempted to continue this tradition with my own family. No luck. Our idea of roughing it is staying at the in-laws. We like campfires . . . as long as someone else builds them and room service is available. I’m not as hardy as my dad.
He loved camping gear as much as he loved camping trips. One day when I was about nine years old, he returned from a trip to the army surplus store with a tent that became a part of Lucado family lore.
It was huge. It could hold a dozen cots. We could erect the tent around a picnic table and still have room for sleeping bags. A big tent, of course, requires stable tent poles. This one came with two. Don’t confuse these poles with the slender, retractable, aluminum versions that come with the average-size camping tent. No sirree, Bob. These poles were made of cast iron and were as thick as a forearm. The shelter wasn’t fancy. No zippered doors. No mosquito netting. No camouflage design. But it was sturdy. Let the winds howl. Let the summer rains fall. Let the hail pound. Let the weather change. We weren’t going anywhere.
On one occasion we were camped at Estes Park, Colorado, along with Dad’s eight siblings. The sky suddenly grew dark and stormy. Rain popped the ground, and wind bent the pine trees. Everyone made a dash for their tents. Within moments everyone left their tents and scampered to ours. It was, after all, the one with two cast-iron poles.
I’m thinking you and I could use a set of those poles. The world has a way of brewing some fierce winds. Who among us hasn’t sought protection from the elements of life?
If only our storms were limited to wind and rain. Our tempests consist of the big Ds of life: difficulties, divorce, disease, and death. Does anybody know where to find a shelter that is suitable for these gales?
The apostle Paul did. If anyone had reason to be anxious, it was he. Let your imagination transport you two thousand years back in time. Envision an old man as he gazes out the window of a Roman prison.
Paul is about sixty years old, thirty years a Christian, and there is scarcely a seaport on the Mediterranean he doesn’t know.
See how stooped he is? All angles and curves. Blame his bent back on the miles traveled and the beatings endured. He received thirty-nine lashes on five different occasions. He was beaten with rods on three. Scars spiderweb across his skin like bulging veins. He was once left for dead. He has been imprisoned, deserted by friends and coworkers, and has endured shipwrecks, storms, and starvation.
He’s probably half-blind, squinting just to read (Gal. 4:15). What’s more, he is awaiting trial before the Roman emperor. Nero has learned to curry the favor of the Roman citizens by killing believers, of which Paul is the best known.
As if the oppression from the empire weren’t enough, Paul also bears the weight of newborn churches. The members are bickering. False preachers are preaching out of pride and envy (Phil. 1:15–17).
So much for the easy life of an apostle.
His future is as gloomy as his jail cell.
Yet to read his words, you’d think he’d just arrived at a Jamaican beach hotel. His letter to the Philippians bears not one word of fear or complaint. Not one! He never shakes a fist at God; instead, he lifts his thanks to God and calls on his readers to do the same.
“Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!” (Phil. 4:4). Paul’s prescription for anxiety begins with a call to rejoice.
Paul used every tool in the box on this verse, hoping to get our attention. First, he employed a present imperative tense so his readers would hear him say, continually, habitually rejoice!1 And if the verb tense wasn’t enough, he removed the expiration date. “Rejoice in the Lord always” (emphasis mine). And if perchance the verb tense and always were inadequate, he repeated the command: “Again I will say, rejoice!” (emphasis mine).
Paul’s prescription for anxiety begins with a call to rejoice.
But how can a person obey this command? Rejoice always? Is it possible for any person to maintain an uninterrupted spirit of gladness? No. This is not Paul’s challenge. We are urged to “Rejoice in the Lord.” This verse is a call, not to a feeling, but to a decision and a deeply rooted confidence that God exists, that he is in control, and that he is good.
The apostle held firm to this belief. He had erected cast-iron stabilizers in the center of his soul. Let Nero rage. Let preachers self-promote. Let storms blow. Paul’s tent of faith would never collapse. He had stabilized it with a sturdy belief system.
How sturdy is yours?
Flip back the flaps of your soul, and you’ll see a series of beliefs that serve like poles to stabilize your life. Your belief system is your answer to the fundamental questions about life: Is anyone in control of the universe? Does life have a purpose? Do I have value? Is this life all there is?
Your belief system has nothing to do with your skin color, appearance, talents, or age. Your belief system is not concerned with the exterior of the tent but the interior. It is the set of convictions (poles)—all of them unseen—upon which your faith depends. If your belief system is strong, you will stand. If it is weak, the storm will prevail.
Belief always precedes behavior.
Belief always precedes behavior. For this reason the apostle Paul in each of his epistles addressed convictions before he addressed actions. To change the way a person responds to life, change what a person believes about life. The most important thing about you is your belief system.
Paul’s was Gibraltar strong.
Take a close look at the poles in the tent of the apostle, and you will see one with this inscription: the sovereignty of God. Sovereignty is the term the Bible uses to describe God’s perfect control and management of the universe. He preserves and governs every element. He is continually involved with all created things, directing them to act in a way that fulfills his divine purpose.
In the treatment of anxiety, a proper understanding of sovereignty is huge. Anxiety is often the consequence of perceived chaos. If we sense we are victims of unseen, turbulent, random forces, we are troubled.
Psychologists verified this fact when they studied the impact of combat on soldiers in World War II. They determined that after sixty days of continuous combat the ground troops became “emotionally dead.” This reaction is understandable. Soldiers endured a constant threat of bomb blitzes, machine guns, and enemy snipers. The anxiety of ground troops was no surprise.
The comparative calm of fighter pilots, however, was. Their mortality rate was among the highest in combat. Fifty percent of them were killed in action, yet dogfighters loved their work. An astounding 93 percent of them claimed to be happy in their assignments even though the odds of survival were the same as the toss of a coin.2
What made the difference? Those pilots had their hands on the throttle. They sat in the cockpit. They felt that their fate was theirs to determine.3 Infantrymen, by contrast, could just as easily be killed standing still or running away. They felt forlorn and helpless. The formula is simple: Perceived control creates calm. Lack of control gives birth to fear.
You don’t need a war to prove this formula. Road congestion will do just fine. A team of German researchers found that a traffic jam increases your chances of a heart attack threefold.4 Makes sense. Gridlock is the ultimate loss of control. We may know how to drive, but that fellow in the next lane doesn’t! We can be the best drivers in history, but the texting teenager might be the end of us. There is no predictability, just stress. Anxiety increases as perceived control diminishes.
Anxiety increases as perceived control diminishes.
So what do we do?
Control everything? Never board a plane without a parachute. Never enter a restaurant without bringing your own clean silverware. Never leave the house without a gas mask. Never give away your heart for fear of a broken one. Never step on a crack lest you break your mother’s back. Face anxiety by taking control.
If only we could.
Yet certainty is a cruel impostor. A person can accumulate millions of dollars and still lose it in a recession. A health fanatic can eat only nuts and veggies and still battle cancer. A hermit can avoid all human contact and still struggle with insomnia. We want certainty, but the only certainty is the lack thereof.
That’s why the most stressed-out people are control freaks. They fail at the quest they most pursue. The more they try to control the world, the more they realize they cannot. Life becomes a cycle of anxiety, failure; anxiety, failure; anxiety, failure. We can’t take control, because control is not ours to take.
The Bible has a better idea. Rather than seeking total control, relinquish it. You can’t run the world, but you can entrust it to God. This is the message behind Paul’s admonition to “rejoice in the Lord.” Peace is within reach, not for lack of problems, but because of the presence of a sovereign Lord. Rather than rehearse the chaos of the world, rejoice in the Lord’s sovereignty, as Paul did. “The things which happened to me have actually turned out for the furtherance of the gospel, so that it has become evident to the whole palace guard, and to all the rest, that my chains are in Christ” (Phil. 1:12–13).
Rather than rehearse the chaos of the world, rejoice in the Lord’s sovereignty, as Paul did.
And those troublemakers in the church? Those who preached out of “envy and strife” (Phil. 1:15)? Their selfish motives were no match for the sovereignty of Jesus. “Whether their motives are false or genuine, the message about Christ is being preached either way, so I rejoice. And I will continue to rejoice” (Phil. 1:18 NLT).
Paul believed that “God highly exalted [Jesus] and gave Him the name that is above every name” (Phil. 2:9 HCSB).
Conditions might have been miserable in the prison, but high above it all was a “God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13).
To read Paul is to read the words of a man who, in the innermost part of his being, believed in the steady hand of a good God. He was protected by God’s strength, preserved by God’s love. He lived beneath the shadow of God’s wings.
Do you?
Stabilize your soul with the sovereignty of God. He reigns supreme over every detail of the universe. “There is no wisdom, no insight, no plan that can succeed against the LORD” (Prov. 21:30 NIV). “[God] does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him: ‘What have you done?’” (Dan. 4:35 NIV). He “sustains all things” (Heb. 1:3 NRSV). He can “whistle for the fly that is in the farthest part of the rivers of Egypt” (Isa. 7:18). He names the stars and knows the sparrows. Great and small, from the People’s Liberation Army of China to the army ants in my backyard, everything is under his control. “Who can act against you without the Lord’s permission? It is the Lord who helps one and harms another” (Lam. 3:37–38 TLB).
God’s answer for troubled times has always been the same: heaven has an occupied throne. This was certainly the message God gave to the prophet Isaiah. During the eighth century BC, ancient Judah enjoyed a time of relative peace, thanks to the steady leadership of Uzziah, the king. Uzziah was far from perfect, yet he kept the enemies at bay. Though antagonists threatened from all sides, the presence of Uzziah kept the fragile society safe from attack for fifty-two years.
Then Uzziah died. Isaiah, who lived during the reign of the king, was left with ample reason for worry. What would happen to the people of Judah now that Uzziah was gone?
Or, in your case, what will happen now that your job is gone? Or your health has diminished? Or the economy has taken a nosedive? Does God have a message for his people when calamity strikes?
He certainly had a word for Isaiah. The prophet wrote:
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts;
The whole earth is full of His glory!” (Isa. 6:1–3)
Uzziah’s throne was empty, but God’s was occupied. Uzziah’s reign had ended, but God’s had not. Uzziah’s voice was silent, but God’s was strong (Isa. 6:8–10). He was, and is, alive, on the throne, and worthy of endless worship.
God calmed the fears of Isaiah, not by removing the problem, but by revealing his divine power and presence.
Think of it this way. Suppose your dad is the world’s foremost orthopedic surgeon. People travel from distant countries for him to treat them. Regularly he exchanges damaged joints for healthy ones. With the same confidence that a mechanic changes spark plugs, your dad removes and replaces hips, knees, and shoulders.
At ten years of age you are a bit young to comprehend the accomplishments of a renowned surgeon. But you’re not too young to stumble down the stairs and twist your ankle. You roll and writhe on the floor and scream for help. You are weeks away from your first school dance. This is no time for crutches. No time for limping. You need a healthy ankle! Yours is anything but.
Stabilize your soul with the sovereignty of God. He reigns supreme over every detail of the universe.
Into the room walks your dad, still wearing his surgical scrubs. He removes your shoe, peels back your sock, and examines the injury. You groan at the sight of the tennis ball–sized bump. Adolescent anxiety kicks in.
“Dad, I’ll never walk again!”
“Yes, you will.”
“No one can help me!”
“I can.”
“No one knows what to do!”
“I do.”
“No, you don’t!”
Your dad lifts his head and asks you a question. “Do you know what I do for a living?”
Actually you don’t. You know he goes to the hospital every day. You know that people call him “doctor.” Your mom thinks he is smart. But you don’t really know what your father does.
“So,” he says as he places a bag of ice on your ankle, “it’s time for you to learn.” The next day he is waiting for you in the school parking lot after classes. “Hop in. I want you to see what I do,” he says. He drives you to his hospital office and shows you the constellation of diplomas on his wall. Adjacent to them is a collection of awards that include words like distinguished and honorable. He hands you a manual of orthopedic surgery that bears his name.
“You wrote this?”
“I did.”
His cell phone rings. After the call he announces, “We’re off to surgery.” You scrub up and follow him into the operating room on your crutches. During the next few minutes you have a ringside seat for a procedure in which he reconstructs an ankle. He is the commandant of the operating room. He never hesitates or seeks advice. He just does it.
One of the nurses whispers, “Your dad is the best.”
As the two of you ride home that evening, you look at your father. You see him in a different light. If he can conduct orthopedic surgery, he can likely treat a swollen ankle. So you ask, “You think I’ll be okay for the dance?”
“Yes, you’ll be fine.”
Your anxiety decreases as your understanding of your father increases.
This time you believe him. Your anxiety decreases as your understanding of your father increases.
Here is what I think: our biggest fears are sprained ankles to God.
Here is what else I think: a lot of people live with unnecessary anxiety over temporary limps.
The next time you fear the future, rejoice in the Lord’s sovereignty. Rejoice in what he has accomplished. Rejoice that he is able to do what you cannot do. Fill your mind with thoughts of God.
“[He is] the Creator, who is blessed forever” (Rom. 1:25).
“[He] is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb. 13:8).
“[His] years will never end” (Ps. 102:27 NIV).
He is king, supreme ruler, absolute monarch, and overlord of all history.
An arch of his eyebrow and a million angels will pivot and salute. Every throne is a footstool to his. Every crown is papier-mâché next to his. He consults no advisers. He needs no congress. He reports to no one. He is in charge.
Sovereignty gives the saint the inside track to peace. Others see the problems of the world and wring their hands. We see the problems of the world and bend our knees.
Jeremiah did.
My soul has been rejected from peace;
I have forgotten happiness.
So I say, “My strength has perished,
And so has my hope from the LORD.”
Remember my affliction and my wandering, the wormwood and bitterness.
Surely my soul remembers
And is bowed down within me. (Lam. 3:17–20 NASB)
Jeremiah was the prophet to Judah during one of her darkest periods of rebellion. They called him the weeping prophet because he was one. He wept at the condition of the people and the depravity of their faith. He was anxious enough to write a book called Lamentations. But then he considered the work of God. He purposefully lifted his mind to thoughts about his king. Note the intentionality in his words:
This I recall to my mind,
Therefore I have hope.
Others see the problems of the world and wring their hands. We see the problems of the world and bend our knees.
The LORD’s lovingkindnesses indeed never cease,
For His compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.
“The LORD is my portion,” says my soul,
“Therefore I have hope in Him.”
The LORD is good to those who wait for Him,
To the person who seeks Him.
It is good that he waits silently
For the salvation of the LORD. (Lam. 3:21–26 NASB)
Lift up your eyes. Don’t get lost in your troubles. Dare to believe that good things will happen. Dare to believe that God was speaking to you when he said, “In everything God works for the good of those who love him” (Rom. 8:28 NCV). The mind cannot at the same time be full of God and full of fear. “He will keep in perfect peace all those who trust in him, whose thoughts turn often to the Lord!” (Isa. 26:3 TLB). Are you troubled, restless, sleepless? Then rejoice in the Lord’s sovereignty. I dare you—I double-dog dare you—to expose your worries to an hour of worship. Your concerns will melt like ice on a July sidewalk.
The mind cannot at the same time be full of God and full of fear.
Anxiety passes as trust increases. In another Scripture, Jeremiah draws a direct connection between faith and peace.
Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,
And whose hope is the LORD.
For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters,
Which spreads out its roots by the river,
And will not fear when heat comes;
But its leaf will be green,
And will not be anxious in the year of drought. (Jer. 17:7–8, emphasis mine)
Many years ago I spent a week visiting the interior of Brazil with a longtime missionary pilot. He flew a circuit of remote towns in a four-seat plane that threatened to come undone at the slightest gust of wind. Wilbur and Orville had a sturdier aircraft.
I could not get comfortable. I kept thinking the plane was going to crash in some Brazilian jungle and I’d be gobbled up by piranhas or swallowed by an anaconda. I kept shifting around, looking down, and gripping my seat. (As if that would help.) Finally the pilot had enough of my squirming. He looked over at me and shouted over the airplane noise, “We won’t face anything that I can’t handle. You might as well trust me to fly the plane.”
Is God saying the same to you?
Examine the poles that sustain your belief. Make sure one of them is etched with the words “My God is sovereign.”