1467 High Providence In Low Places

High Providence In Low Places You have decisions to make and you desperately don’t want to screw this up. The time has come to choose, but what if you choose wrong? Or what if someone else chooses wrong for you? Others hold the power to say yes or no to you, and what if they get it wrong? What will happen here if the wrong choice is made? What will your future be if this gets screwed up? Let me tell you what your future will be … it will be held! Your future is always held in the mighty and capable hands of God. Nothing falls too far for his reach. He is forever holding your future and the good plans he has for you. And here’s the thing about God’s good plans for you … they are far beyond the temporary struggles of here and now. He’s already gone beyond where you are to align future events that bring you precisely where you will need to be. This is God’s providence. This is God using natural circumstances to bring about his supernatural will. This is all things working together for good, even when it didn’t look like they would. This is somehow, someway, finding a way when there was no way. And today, if you can lean into God’s providence, you will find peace in the uncertainty of what will happen next for you. What will happen next is God will be working in the details. What will happen next is God will be making a way. What will happen next is natural circumstances aligning with supernatural will. Proverbs 16:33, “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.” To better understand this scripture, lets look at a few different translations. New Living Translation: “We may throw the dice, but the LORD determines how they fall.” Contemporary English Version: “We make our own decisions, but the LORD alone determines what happens.” You may throw the dice wrong. You may make the wrong decision here. Someone may give you the short stick. But none of that matters. Why? Because God is in ultimate charge. He can flip the dice in mid air. He can redirect your wrong turn in the right direction. He can turn your letdown into a step up. And he does it all through seemingly natural circumstances that most will never even notice. But, God wants you to notice. He wants you to stop and see all he has done for you. Recognize how he turned what was bad then into what is good now. Be overwhelmed by his divine hand in the details of how all of this unfolded for you. You didn’t do that on your own. That was God working for you! What has he done for you? How did he redirect your steps to bring you to a place you could have never gotten to on your own? How did he open doors that should have never been open to you? How did he put you in precisely the right place at the right time to make all this happen? Ahhhh, yes, that’s providence. My favorite story of God’s providence is the story of Ruth. A woman who had lost her husband and now struggling to find scraps of food for her and her mother-in-law, Naomi. This chapter of her life was called, “Hard Times.” Maybe you’ve had a chapter like that yourself. Heck, maybe you’re in it right now. This isn’t how you imagined your life working out. This hardship doesn’t align with your 10 year plan. That must have been how Ruth felt too. She was grieving the loss of her husband, while caring for her mother-in-law who had not only lost her son, but her husband as well. All the men had died in their life. And back then a woman without a man to care for her was completely helpless and likely to starve. The dice had been thrown for Ruth, and it didn’t look good. But, the Lord determines how they will fall. Decisions had been made, but God alone determines what happens. Ruth 2:3, “So Ruth went out to gather grain behind the harvesters. And she happened to find herself working in a field that belonged to Boaz, the relative of her father-in-law.” This is God’s divine providence. If you blink, you