If we trust God is in control it assures our lives are safe

Henry Veldboom, Pastor,
Granum Christian Reformed Church

This past month the world was confronted with a crisis that has created fear and anxiety. Seemingly overnight, we went from living fairly predictable and stable lives to facing great uncertainty. We are faced with questions that we can’t answer. Will I or my loved ones get the virus and will we survive? Will I be out of a job soon? Will I have enough financial resources now that I’m unemployed? Will I graduate from school? The viral outbreak and the looming financial crisis have left many of us feeling that the world has gone out of control. Loss of control in life leads to fear and anxiety.
If we are people of faith in God, we may be asking, is God really in control when disease goes out of control or disaster strikes? Isn’t a world seemingly out of control evidence that God is not in control? We ask these questions based on our perspective of how the world works…or fails to work as the case may be when illness or disasters strike. From our perspective, life certainly does go out of control. In truth, there is very little in life and in the world that we can control. We don’t keep the world turning. We don’t determine the length of our lives or what events we will face in life. For most of the journey we call life, we can only take things as they come. But that’s not the case with God.
God created the universe and God sustains the universe and all that happens within it. From God’s perspective, the world is not out of control. The world operates differently now than it did just after he created it. The Bible tells us the disruption in how the world functions is due to sin and evil. Sin and evil are the cause of our world being a harsh, harmful, and chaotic place to live. But this does not mean God has lost control of his creation. God knew sin and evil would plague the world and our lives. And God made a plan to fix his world that sin and evil have distorted and disrupted.
God’s plan to fix his creation is to remove sin and evil and the effects they have on how the world operates. The way God has dealt with sin and evil is by coming to earth himself to defeat sin and evil. God came to earth in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus is God the Son who took on a human body. Jesus lived a perfect life that was free from sin and evil. When the time was right, Jesus allowed himself to be unjustly tried and sentenced to death. Jesus died on a cross about 2,000 years ago. And by dying, Jesus paid the penalty for the sin and evil people commit. But Jesus did not remain dead. After three days in a grave, God raised Jesus to life again. Eye-witness accounts recorded in the Bible speak of seeing the once dead Jesus alive and well. The resurrection of Jesus is beyond our understanding because it is a supernatural occurrence. There are many good books that can help us evaluate the evidence and validity of Jesus’s resurrection. Lee Strobel’s books The Case for Christ and The Case for Easter are some of the best, in my opinion.
The Christian Church remembers Jesus’s death and resurrection on Good Friday and Easter. The Church celebrates these events because by accomplishing them, Jesus has conquered sin, evil, and death. Through Jesus’s victory, God provides the way for his creation, the world and our lives, to be renewed. Jesus promises to return and completely eliminate all the effects of sin and evil. He will end all disease, all disaster, and all death. What Jesus has accomplished and what he promises to do prove God is in control. If we believe this and trust that Jesus will make his promise good, then we can be assured God is in control. And if God through Jesus is in control, then we do not have to fear anything in this life. We do not even have to fear death itself.
Because of what Jesus accomplished on Good Friday and Easter, we can move forward trusting the God who became one of us and who proves he controls all things. If we trust God is in control, then we can be assured our lives are safe in his hands. This life is temporary; that fact is true for all of us. But the God who is in absolute control offers us eternal life in a perfect world to come. If we put our faith and hope in Jesus, he will bring us there.

Ministerial Comments are based on the independent views of members of the Claresholm Ministerial Association, who are united in the common bond of allegiance to God as experienced in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The ministerial welcomes your questions. Bring your brief written question for the ministerial to the Local Press during business hours. A member of the ministerial may comment on your concern in a future “Ministerial Comment.”