By Martin Morrison
This is one of our top devotions of 2020 published on the 20th of July 2020. Find the full article here
The concepts of karma, luck and fate are very common in our culture. Inadvertently we can easily fall into the trap of thinking that someone lives a charmed life or someone else is lucky or unlucky. We speak about someone being in the right place at the right time, as if there is some unseen power that is in control.
Paul does not view life in those terms at all, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose”. Romans 8:28. For Paul, our lives as Christians are tightly held by the purposes of God. Paul affirms in this most remarkable verse, that despite the brokenness of the world, despite the suffering of God’s people, despite at times the seeming victory of sin and Satan, that God’s plan for his children and his world is unstoppable. This verse is one of the great verses in the Bible. Someone said, that it is like a pillow in which to rest your weary head!
The verse starts off by Paul saying that, “We know”. This same phrase was used in verse 22, “For we know that that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now”. Christians are often accused of having their heads in the clouds! But that is not the Apostle Paul. Paul is an absolute realist. There are no false promises here. We know that the whole world is groaning because of sin, because of the fall. As Christians we know that we are not exempted from living in a broken world, with broken bodies and other broken people. Sin, suffering and evil do not surprise Christians, who know their Bibles.
But we also know that despite the brokenness of our world, that God is absolutely sovereign over all things. That all things will ultimately work for the good, that God’s eternal purposes will be accomplished despite what it may look like at the moment, “ for those who love God all things work together for good”… Keep Reading