Dr. Jim Denison
Donald Trump officially became the Republican Party’s presidential nominee last night. A year ago, who predicted this historic event? But nothing that has happened at this week’s Republican convention surprised God. Nor will anything that happens at next week’s Democratic convention. Our omniscient Lord already knows the outcome of the November election and all that will follow it.
How do I know? Consider this: Astronomers from South Africa have discovered more than a thousand galaxies no one knew existed. And this: Scientists using the Kepler telescope have found 104 new planets outside our solar system. In fact, scientists now believe that there could be more planets than stars in the universe. All of this is astonishing to the experts who made these discoveries.
Here’s my point: We can learn nothing about creation that the Creator does not already know. Nehemiah was right to pray, “You are the LORD, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host” (Nehemiah 9:6). Like a man who built his own house, our Maker understands what he has made more perfectly than we do.
In fact, he knows the answers to questions that continue to perplex our greatest scientists. They don’t know why the cosmos exists. They don’t know how our planet really works beneath the few miles they have traveled into the Earth’s crust. They don’t understand what makes up 95 percent of the universe (the material things we can see compose only 4.9 percent of what’s out there). But God does.
If our Lord knows everything about our universe that we do not, isn’t it logical to assume that he knows everything about our lives that we do not? As a result, we are wise to stake our future not on our present but on our Father.
No nation’s prosperity is guaranteed. What country had the world’s greatest military, strongest economy, highest education rate per capita, and most trusted currency? The answer is Great Britain in 1900. No one a century ago could have envisioned the crises and innovations, challenges and advances we have witnessed over the last hundred years. Just as no one today can accurately predict what will happen in the next hundred years or even next year (if the Lord tarries).
You live in a culture that prizes five-year plans and long-range strategies. These have their place. But no one in the Bible received a five-year plan from God. Our Father leads his children into the future one day at a time. And he calls us to say with the prophet, “Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid” (Isaiah 12:2).
What about the future frightens you today: Islamic terrorism? Domestic violence? Political turmoil? Challenges with your family or health or finances? Oswald Chambers advised us to “leave the broken, irreversible past in God’s hands, and step out into the invincible future with him.”
In these unpredicted and unpredictable days, if you seek and trust God’s wisdom and will more than your own, you’ll be counter-cultural in the extreme. But you’ll be right.
