Is God Still at Work?
261 | “Peak Bible Geeks”
Trust God’s Unseen Hand
This week, we’re hitting "peak Bible Geeks" territory. Is God actually at work in your life, or did He just set the world spinning and walk away? We tackle the heavyweights — providence, miracles, and the mystery of God's will — without getting bogged down in the philosophy. We explore the meaning of "providence," the "salami sandwich" of Proverbs 16 (where man plans but God establishes the steps), and the story of Joseph to see how the Lord governs the world. We also ask: Are miracles still happening today, or is there a distinction between apostolic signs and God’s mighty works in response to prayer? Join us as we look at Romans 8:28 and the power of the word "perhaps" to guide us through uncertainty.
Takeaways
The Big Idea: God still personally and purposefully works to quietly direct ordinary events toward his good and eternal purposes.
This Week's Challenge: This week, pause once each day to name one “ordinary” event and thank God for how he might be using it for good — whether or not you can see the outcome yet.
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Introduction and Welcome
Bryan: mean, we've talked about providence and, deism and predestination and miracles. Like, this is peak Bible geeks here, everybody. Welcome aboard. Well, hello everyone. And welcome to the Bible Geeks podcast. I'm Bryan Schiele.
Ryan: I'm Ryan Joy.
Bryan: And thanks so much everyone for tuning in today. We're tackling not a very difficult topic at all.
Discussing Providence and Miracles
Bryan: We're talking about providence and miracles. Is God still doing miracles? Is he active at all? Or did he mostly just set the world spinning and leave us out here on our own?
Ryan: In this episode, we're going to tackle one of the big questions of faith. How does God actually work in the world right now? Let's see what the Bible says and build our trust in God.
So there's a certain level where this conversation feels obvious. They don't at all seem like hot seat questions, like, is God still at work in the world?
Personal Experiences and Doubts
Ryan: But I have grown up with these little cliche statements that have kind of undermined the idea of God at work throughout my life.
And I think part of it comes back to there was, there was a time where, uh, someone that's close to me, uh, went through some hard things years ago and, uh, a preacher sat her down and told her, well, God is not at work in the world like this. He set the world in motion and he's not involved in these kinds of things.
And it was meant as a way of explaining that God isn't causing evil and hard things in your life to give comfort, but it was just the wrong way of framing it. It was bad theology, ultimately, where--there's other things to explain it, and that's true, that God isn't, you know, isn't making every bad thing happen to you.
But, so that kind of background is all around where I grew up starting to think about, providence, like, well, yeah, God is still around, but how involved is he really? I don't know. Did you grow up at all with any of that kind of question or anything in doubt around
Bryan: in some deep ways with me, but it's not like one targeted moment or conversation. I feel like I'm seeing what you're seeing there, where the more we say what God isn't or can't do,
Ryan: Yeah.
Bryan: then what we think he is doing in some maybe negative ways.
Yeah.
Theological Insights on God's Work
Ryan: Well, I, I think what you just said is, is really on point with what was affecting the kind of teaching I got on this through the years and, you know, some teaching that I did maybe even to a certain extent is trying to frame things out to so forcefully correct error, like, you know, the idea of whether it's Pentecostalism or, you know, the kind of Calvinist idea of determinist sovereignty or, you know, that everything is happening for a reason and you can know exactly what it is, all these kinds of ways that things go too far another way, and then you start swinging it back.
And something I've been realizing lately actually is I think most of the wrong ideas that I came to as an early Bible student and that I thought that I had to work my way out of didn't come from false teaching. It came from unbalanced teaching.
Bryan: Ooh, that's a good way to say that. I've felt that very strongly a lot over the years. And as I've been kind of trying to put a name to that, I almost, let's just say, I want to define that sometimes as preaching that is about what we aren't rather than what we are. And while it's true that here's what we're not, or here's what we don't do, what we do do or what we are is often not highlighted as much.
And yeah, like you're saying, feels very imbalanced in a way. And so I think even broadly, a real problem, imbalanced teaching.
Ryan: Because we want to not only teach what Jesus and what the Bible says, but teach it in, proportion to how it says it, right? Like, like teach the whole counsel of God and don't camp mostly on this and, "Oh, and let me every five years throw in a mention of this other stuff." looking at the Scriptures, I think is gonna be an important part of this.
And so, yeah.
Bryan: right. Let's get into the hot seat here, because we're
Ryan: Yeah.
Bryan: starting to talk about some of these questions, and I think we're framing this whole episode around some of these really sticky questions that we're going to try to unpack and work through a little bit together. And we may not do a great job about it, but we're going to do our best to kind of work through some of these things.
Hot seat question number one here is, "Is God still at work in the world?" And before we get to actually answering that question, why do you think this is such an important question that people ask? what's the genesis of a question like this?
Understanding God's Providence
Ryan: well, I, I think that we have to have the realization that God is at work in our lives, that we are not abandoned. God has not left us alone here and said, "You know what? I used to be involved, but I am taking an extended vacation from, you know, engaging with the world and working in the world," or I am, you know, like, like the, the deism idea of God created everything.
Bryan: This is what Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin, a lot of their early founding fathers believed. At that time, it was in vogue to believe that, yes, they were Christian deists that believed in some way that God made the universe, but now he's just distant from everything and he's not involved like that.
Ryan: And I had a, a friend, a young brother, uh, that was really in conflict in the last year about what he could actually pray for. And he was,
receiving some false teaching about the idea that to pray for God to heal the sick or for God to give us wisdom or all these things that we're actually told to do would be wrong and based in, in an idea of something that, you know, God doesn't do that anymore. And that's an extreme case, but have you ever heard someone pray as if they weren't completely comfortable asking God to actually do
Bryan: yeah. Yeah. I think prayer is one of the reasons why I think this is an important question is because there are a lot of people who aren't clear about what they can pray for,
I think that's why this is an important conversation to me, just to kind of roll back. Like, I feel like this topic, centering it around prayer and understanding what it is that we can pray for and what we should be praying for is, I think, why we need to understand God's role in the world still.
I think so many of our prayers are centered in the today and the now and what's going on in the world now. And if we don't really understand what God does in the world now, then it can leave us misguided and confused. And like you're saying, allowing other doctrines, other false teachings to kind of color our view and limit God in ways that, boy, I don't want to be guilty of limiting God in the ways that he would work in my life.
Ryan: Limiting God is a big part of this conversation for sure. you know, sometimes we pray even like, give us a reasonable portion of health. And Adrian has made this point of like, I don't want a reasonable portion of health. I want an unreasonable portion of health. Like, not to be selfish, but like to ask God for big things, ask God to bless us and if it's not his will, we accept it.
Bryan: small doling out of health.
Ryan: yeah, we don't want to ask too much, but you know, like, it's pouring down his blessings and instead of a giant bucket, we put a little thimble down and say, "Hey, let me catch a little bit of his blessings."
Bryan: And I think when we ask this question, really, is God still at work in the world? It is so important for us to leave the anecdotal and to go to the biblical and to find what does the Bible actually tell us about how God works in the world? What is he doing? What has he done? And I mean, you're bringing it up here, but like, God made everything.
He created the world. Did he just set it in motion and step away? Or is he still doing things along with us or to us or in spite of us or all these things? Like, is he still at work
Ryan: And that's where we get into this idea of the word "providence." Providence has to do with God working, continuing in the world to provide for us, to see what's going to happen and kind of plan things out, to sustain creation and keep it going. God is at work, and that isn't a really prominent word in the Bible, but I think what we want to start to see is how that idea that God continues to work in the world, in ordinary ways even, continues, right?
Bryan: Yeah. Well, I was just talking about how like, we need to use the Bible as the foundation for understanding what God does. And you brought up a word that really isn't in the Bible, which is like, I'm with you. Because you almost need a word to explain what is unexplained in the Bible itself with a word.
Like, there's this concept about God working and God doing things and God, like this word really means like seeing ahead, how he has a view of what's going on ahead of time and sees the plans and crafts everything in a way that is sort of working outside of time. But that word is not in the Bible. So, I just wanted to note that as a point here.
Like, providence as a word doesn't really show up here, but it is such a concept that I think this is an appropriate description of it.
Ryan: yeah. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's like Trinity or something like that. There's these concepts that you see everywhere, and it's almost--it's providence. God's working in the world continually and keeping the world going and doing His will, is almost like so accepted to the biblical writers. It's not fleshed out as something they have to argue for, it's definitely there.
So early Christian writers used a Greek word, "pronoia," and then a Latin word, "providentia," that speaks to that idea of care, like you said, foresight, of God working things out. And, you know, we can go back to Genesis. Most famously with Joseph, right? I mean, that's like the great example of the story where at the end of his story in Genesis 50, verse 20, he talks about these brothers were doing bad things.
They meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. And that word for meant--hashav--is about weaving, devising, planning, thinking. He's weaving through these things, planning something good to bring about good meaning at the end of it
Bryan: And I think this is one of these examples where sometimes because we're imbalanced in teaching, we want to highlight one aspect of it, which might be the, I don't know, let's call it the preservation of God and how he's creating everything and he's preserving everything and upholding the universe and its natural laws and all these things.
And you might hold up and say, well, that's all God does. But if you don't get to like the God meant in Genesis 50 verse 20, if you don't get to the fact that he is governing and directing and weaving together these moments of history and in his mind is not history, but is, yeah, well, I guess it's history.
He's outside of time. It's so hard to understand a God who doesn't abide by time because he created it. And so, it's like God knows the story. He knows how it's going to end. He knows what's currently happening. And it's such a complicated view. I can imagine why people don't want to talk about that very much because it's a lot easier to think, well, God was the clockmaker who wound it up and set it to go rather than the one who is currently actively holding things together.
Ryan: is one aspect of this, the time, the foresight. And then another aspect that's complicated with it is our choices and other free actors doing things throughout time, that how is God accomplishing His purpose? Am I doing only what is God's will for me to do always? Is everything that happens happening because of, you know, God is making it happen?
How does that all go together? And that's a big part of this.
Proverbs 16: God's Plans vs. Our Plans
Ryan: And maybe that can bring us to a passage I wanted to point us towards, verses 1 to 9. And it's just this one kind of chunk of Proverbs that weave in and out these ideas of how do our plans and God's plans go
Bryan: 16 is, I think, one of the great examples of this because it begins, right, like answering this question, "The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord." And so, right there, right off the bat, he's setting the stage. there are two actors in play here.
There's us planning, but the answer comes from God and in the ways that he explores that here, he ends it in verse 9, "The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps." And so, of all of these things, really, that's sort of the sandwich, I guess, where all of this teaching kind of fits in the middle of, we do our work, we plan, we think about things, we act in the world, but God is the one who answers.
God is the one who is establishing and making our direction firm.
Ryan: and to get into the meat of this salami sandwich here, "All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the spirit." So God is the one who's evaluating. "Commit your work to the Lord and your plan will be established. The Lord has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble."
God knew people would choose wicked things and He made them and He allows it, and it's all part of--there is a part of His purposes that they're thwarting because they're not doing what He wants them to do in His really good will, but they can't ultimately thwart what He wants to do with all of this.
He saw it all, and so even the wicked are fitting into what He wants to accomplish there, and that's through verse 4.
So, I am deep into... I'm stuck here. Sorry. I got stuck on verse 3.
Okay.
Bryan: this is such a key, right? "Commit your work to the Lord and your plans will be established." That really, I think, hits to the heart of this because sometimes it's easy for us to think, "Well, it all depends on me.
I'm the one who has the goals and the plans and everything else in it." That work, though, the Lord's work to be committed to. He's the one who we're doing this for, and he is the one who is establishing the outcome of this work. He's got that part, as we've sort of talked about this season a lot, that's his role to deal with the outcome.
We deal with the planting and the watering. He creates the increase, and it's when we work for him that that really goes well for us because we're in line with his will. And I don't know. I think it's so nuanced, but it is very clear when you read a verse like this that it's, "Yes, we work, and God is doing work as well."
Ryan: and there are doctrines that we could think about that grab one of those. God is the one who is doing everything, and it's all just Him and we are puppets, basically. I mean, nobody would actually teach it that way, but essentially you're taking away man's free will, or we're doing it all, but neither of those are what the Bible teaches throughout.
Bryan: It does not have to be "or." Right,
Ryan: It's not "or," it's "and." God is certainly the greater power, but in His will He wants to work with us, and so He's accomplishing His purpose. Philippians 2, 12-13 is one we sometimes go to. He wants us to work things, but He is working ultimately for these things. So yeah, I love that you camped on verse 3,
Bryan: "
Yeah, so, "I stalled us out on the salami sandwich," and I really just wanted to get into the rest of it here because I know we were heading somewhere here. Verse five kind of carries on the thought that you had stopped with.
Ryan: everyone who's arrogant and hard is an abomination to the Lord, so there is this moral fabric to everything that God is going to be evaluating us on. Be assured He will not go unpunished. There are consequences. And then He continues to talk about both sides of that. Verse 7, "When a man's ways please the Lord, he makes his enemy, even his enemies, to be at peace with him."
Man is doing this, God is bringing about that. And yeah, and so we kind of see how all of this is saying we're both acting, but God is the one who's bringing the final end of His purpose, what He ultimately wants to do, whether we choose righteousness or we choose wickedness, that's going to affect where we fit in His purposes and how all of this plays
Bryan: So, the Bible here is clearly telling us that the providence of God, while not using that word, is still in place, that God is still working in the world. And maybe that's an overly simplistic answer to this question, but I feel like it's a complete answer to the question that we see, especially proverbs like this, really highlighting that, yes, God does work while we also work.
And maybe if it's okay, let's move on to the second hot seat question here, which is, I think, the really big one, and I don't want to get stuck here, but it is good and important to answer this question.
Defining Miracles and Their Relevance
Bryan: Do miracles still happen? And the reason why I think I'm asking this question and that we should be tackling this question is in light of prayer, and in, like we talked about a minute ago, that I feel like when we pray for things, we need to understand what is it that we're praying for, and how is God going to do that?
maybe this goes to the small portion of health or the massive overflowing of health that we were talking about a second ago.
Ryan: A massive overflowing of health. I guess the first place to go is to define miracles. So Bryan, I'll ask you, what do you--how do you define miracle?
Bryan: It's just, it is something that defies the natural order, which that is maybe the simplistic definition. Would you agree with that? It's like there's the natural world and it is like taking the laws of nature and canceling them out and doing something that is unnatural in the most literal definition of that term.
Ryan: Okay, yeah, so I think that of these are going to be really interesting to work with, I think. And we don't want this to be like all a philosophical kind of an episode, we want to get practical, we've got a lot to cover. So like, what is the boundary--and I'm asking, because I don't have this worked out, but what is the boundary of natural and supernatural?
Because if natural is just everything that would automatically happen without anything - without God reaching in and doing something, then doesn't that say that He isn't at work? If we're saying that nothing that is super or beyond what would naturally, automatically happen in the chain of cause and effect, then why am I asking Him to do something in my life?
Am I just asking because He's already was going to make it happen and it already is going to happen? Or am I saying that He actually is able, in a way beyond my full understanding, to act in the world, to bring about something in me or around me that would change things? Does that question make sense?
Bryan: sounds like you're asking the question, like how are miracles and providence different in a way? But like, depending on how you define miracle, that's kind of the place where we're at here.
Ryan: Yeah.
Bryan: I'm going to do a solid conversational technique and not answer your question, but I will ask another question in return.
Ryan: It's very strategic of you.
Bryan: Well, you know.
The Complexity of Miracles and Providence
Bryan: So here's what I struggle with with this, and this is real. Like I'm not even, this is not a play or anything. Like I realize how little I realize. And that's actually a hard thing to say, because I actually don't know how much I don't know, but I recognize that I don't know more than I know.
I know that there are things in life that I just don't understand. And you know, there's, there are things that are just even the slightest little bit more complex than I'm capable of wrapping my brain around that feel like magic to me. Like they feel like a miracle to me. And I'm just going to say, you know, there were times thousands of years ago where people just did not even understand the scientific connections of what the laws of nature even were that we understand today.
And for us to understand that we're just coming to the realization of some things should tell us that we have a lot of learning to go. Like if we've made so much progress over the last thousands of years, I think we still have a lot that we don't know. And for me to say that here is the natural world means that I have somehow figured it all out and coded it all up so that I can say, yes, this fits in the natural world versus that, which does not fit in the natural world.
And I, I just don't know. I don't know what I don't know. And so it is hard for me to answer the question from my limited vantage point, because for me to say, I'm going to define what a miracle is versus what a miracle is not based on the natural world, which I do not understand. I don't, that's a hard way of defining it for me.
So I guess I kind of defined the word a second ago and now I'm pulling back and saying maybe that's not the definition I would use.
Ryan: Well, and that's a very common definition, and I'm just trying to think through it because there's different ways of defining it. I appreciate everything you just said. Accepting not knowing, accepting the idea of mystery and not knowing everything we would love to know is an important part of this discussion and a lot of discussions around that.
Deuteronomy 29, 29, "What the Lord has revealed to the man and the sons belong to us, and the secret things belong to God." There are things that He just doesn't need to tell us. But in Providence, definitely some aspects of this exist there. So a couple other ways of defining miracle. There's this natural/supernatural distinction that you brought up.
There's another way of defining it would just be what the actual biblical word means, like the just means an act of power. It has to do with dynamis, like that kind of idea.
Bryan: sure.
Ryan: And I think we're going to want to, at some point, start to fold in the three words for miracles. Miracles are acts of power, wonders, things that bring astonishment and amazement, and signs, things that are meant to confirm something or point to something.
And that last one is, I think, what we're mostly talking about, really, most of all, when we talk about these things coming to completion and not really happening in that same way today. But a last way we could define this would be, like, God working in the ordinary or ways that are not clearly showing us absolutely, there's no doubt about it, His hand reached down and made this happen.
This person was dead for three days and then He rose again. There's no other explanation versus God working in ways that He's still involved, He's doing something. His hand is reaching in and making something happen. But other people would say, "Well, you know, some things are hard to explain. Yes, you know, we thought that this person was going to die and then they immediately, amazingly got better.
But, was no clear and absolute work of wonder that points to something." So that would be another way. But I think we're trying to draw a distinction, ultimately. One distinction I would absolutely want to make, at least, is between what the apostles were doing or, other people at different times Jesus was doing, those that the apostles laid their hands on, and what's happening whenever we say a prayer or whenever we see God working in our lives.
Bryan: Yeah. Because in that case, you've got one who is clearly doing some wondrous demonstration of God's power for a reason, for a very particular reason not just to become like the hospital arm of the, of the first century, but like to really and literally show that I am coming with the authority of God and God alone.
And that, that was, you know, in another sense is also like the sign part of the miracle. That, that's, that's the apostles doing that work. But then of course, when I pray, there's, I'm not praying for an apostle to show up and like lay his hands on somebody, or I'm not, I'm not praying necessarily with that same process or motivation or reasoning, because I'm asking for a specific situation to be resolved or fixed.
And I guess the question is, do I only in my prayer rely on the things that I can understand as the answer to that prayer? Or am I okay opening it up to things that I don't understand as the answer to that prayer? Maybe that's, maybe that's why this question is difficult to wrap my head around. And maybe that's maybe an easier way for me to frame it in my own head.
Like, do I, do I need to understand how God is going to do this? Or can I trust him to do it even if I don't understand?
Ryan: Right. Like, in James 5, it doesn't say, "Pray that the doctors would find a medicine that will work." It says, "Pray that the sick will be healed." And that could come through doctors. That could come through all kinds of things. God works in all kinds of ways. But we don't have to understand. I
Miracles and the Purpose of Signs
Ryan: think that's a good distinction.
I appreciate kind of the summary of—we won't go into a whole case right now for, like, cessationism versus
Bryan: we could. I
Ryan: Pentecostalism. But, like, yeah, you know, but maybe point people to Acts 8 and the laying on of hands and how Simon saw how these gifts were passed on. 1 Corinthians 13, Hebrews 2, you know, the end of Mark 16.
When we think about the purpose of those signs, we're confirming the Word and helping us to understand that this was, through the apostles and prophets, a really important divine Word that we needed at that time. But to take that to the extreme to say, "And then God gave us the Bible, so we don't need Him to ever do anything else," is just not anywhere what we find the Bible
Does Everything Happen Because God Wants It To?
Ryan: saying that I can see.
Bryan: Yeah. So, I feel like that's a good summary of the difference, maybe of the purpose of miracles in the first century.
And, you know, please feel free to check out Acts 8, 1 Corinthians 13, Hebrews 2, and maybe we can talk more about miracles on future episodes. But I want to be real sensitive in my life, not to put a boundary around what God is able to do. And I feel like sometimes we, like you said, there's maybe unbalanced teaching, or we let the pendulum swing so far the other direction to where now we say, well, God can never do anything supernatural because of these, you know, the way that he dealt with these apostles and prophets in the first century.
Let's maybe be careful. And if it's not going to be too, too shocking to anyone, let's move on to our third hot seat question here, because I feel like this is the one where we get into something that I think ties this all together in some ways. And it's the question, does everything happen because God wants it to?
That's not a controversial discussion at all, is it?
Ryan: Yeah, I mean, the will of God. Is God's will gonna be done? Well, yeah.
Bryan: Don't sound so confident, Ryan. Right?
Ryan: I mean, we've all heard people say, right, like, "Everything happens for a reason." You know, like, you know, somebody gets into a car accident and, you know, something awful has happened, and they say, "Well, it was God's will," as if that's comforting. And, you know, and then, you know, on the other hand, there's attempt to comfort that I brought up at the beginning about, "Well, God is nowhere to be found in any of this."
And so it's like deism versus determinism, and is there another option? Yes, I think there is.
God's Will and Human Freedom
Ryan: That the way I say it, is that everything that happens, God either caused it or He allowed it. Do you think that's true? That, like, there's some things God causes and some things He permits?
Yeah,
Bryan: Well, I mean, again, go back to the garden, right? Was it God's intention that his people would seize power and want to become their own definition of wisdom and what's good and evil and these things? No. Like, he gave them boundaries, he gave them limits and said, don't do this. So it was not his will that they sin, but he sure did let them.
And so then in that case, yeah, you've got God letting something happen. He's permitting it to happen, but it was absolutely not his cause. He didn't cause them to do it that way. So I think even in that, you're looking at both sides of this, right? In some meaningful ways.
Ryan: and sometimes there's different definitions given in theology for His different kinds of will, but the main idea, of course, He doesn't want us to do evil. doesn't want any of these bad things. He brings life, not death. He brings holiness, not sin. But a part of His goodwill is for love and freedom to exist, and so that means that He's free.
We are here to do these things, and we allow these things, and there's consequences to them.
Bryan: And yet even the bad things can't thwart His ultimate purposes.
The Mystery of God's Providence
Ryan: He works through all of these things to bring about good, which is going to lead us to our scripture du jour, but I'm interested in your thoughts on all that.
Bryan: that be difficult or really hard to wrap your brain around if God could be thwarted by our decisions? If his purpose is... There's these ideas that like, well, plan B, we're going to have to send Jesus now. Like, no, that's not it. Right. And how that... Wow. Talk about limiting God. That would absolutely limit God to the same frame of reference and bound by time that we are.
Like, that's how I operate. That's how I deal with things. Like, I'm reactionary and people can thwart my plans and change my direction, but for God to be limitless in that way, that's not how he operates. He's got a plan and he will carry it forward, even if he needs to raise up from these rocks, children of Abraham, right?
Like, he'll make it happen however he needs to make it happen.
Ryan: a passage in the Gospels that talks about the Pharisees forsaking God's purposes for them, and the idea is not that they were able to throw off what God wanted to accomplish, but God wants us—He created us—to do good things, and He had plans Jewish leaders to do specific things, and they didn't do them, and we get all twisted up sometimes about, "What is my purpose, and what is God's will for me to be a pharmacist or an engineer?"
And things like that, as opposed to prayerfully continuing to move forward, knowing at the core of His purpose for us are these spiritual callings that He brings for us, and if we're being true to that and we're walking with Him, He'll guide us through the rest of
Bryan: Right. But I feel like a verse that needs to be addressed at this point is Romans 8, 28, "For we know that those who love God, all things work together for good." And that is a really helpful one in thinking about providence and the way that God works in the world today, that he is working things together for good.
And I think maybe it's helpful for us to reframe that in a way that says that not all things are good, but God is weaving them together for good.
Biblical Stories of Providence
Bryan: he will use the hatred and the jealousy and the pridefulness of Joseph's brothers to throw him into a pit, but weave it together as a good scenario for his entire chosen people.
And I feel like stories like that, like Joseph's story, so many more stories in the Bible about how we see the working and weaving together of bad scenarios for good. So many of those stories really are highlighting this very fact that God is working, he is putting together these things to his end, but not all of those things along the way are going to be great and they're not going to help.
And can I just say like right off the bat, this is like, for me, this is difficult to communicate to some people who are going through things, but having gone through a few things and dealt with loss myself, like I feel this in intangible ways. I can see that even in difficult situations, growth comes out of that.
And the loss of loved ones and difficulties with going through life-changing events and things like that, like you could look at it and say, "Well, this is a terrible situation. I should not be happy about this at all." But then at the end of it, you see the way that things worked out together for good and how God was working in those moments.
Ryan: Yeah, sometimes it's clearer than others, you know, and it's all going back to the mystery idea. We have to have the humility to allow it all to exist in the, "I don't know for sure, but I think I see what you did there, God," right? That takes us—maybe we can fold in one other passage and then put them together, which I was thinking about Philemon 15.
Bryan: deep
Ryan: Perhaps, yeah. Paul uses this term as he's talking about why Onesimus left and what God is going to bring about in Onesimus' choices. Onesimus was a slave that had run away, and Paul is writing this letter to Philemon to bring reconciliation between the two of them, and he says, you know, "Perhaps he was parted from you for a while for this reason," you know, so that maybe this is what God was doing.
And so on the one hand, there's the fact that he has confidence that God might be working in Onesimus' choices to bring about something good, that God's hand is all over the place. And yet he also, as an apostle, is humble enough to say, "It's only a possibility. I don't think I," Paul is saying, "even know.
Perhaps." And that's such a useful word to me. Perhaps this is what God was doing in this.
Bryan: I like that as a comparison between these two verses as well. Like, we know that those who love God, all things are working together for them. But then perhaps, I feel like that the story-making, the reason-making person within me wants to know why and probably need to go to Job to talk about the "you may never know why" kind of scenario.
Like, I don't think Job ever really understood fully why he was facing what he was facing. So, like, being okay not knowing how or not seeing the broader picture and not even really knowing what God's will is necessarily. Like, I can pray that his will will be done without even really fully understanding what his will is for a specific scenario or situation.
And again, you know, there are things that I know, of course. I know and can be confident in what God wants, who he wants me to be, the kind of person he wants me to be in this world. Those kinds of things I'm confident in. But in those day-to-day decisions and the little tiny moments and the direction of world powers and things, I really don't know.
I can't know and I won't know. And I need to be okay with saying "perhaps"
Ryan: Yeah. I mean, sometimes, like Esther, God isn't mentioned, it never says God did this, but this is the ultimate providence story, because we never see God, like, claim in our lives. And so here's why I did this. And yet you get to the end and it's like, okay, I see what you did there. The dramatic irony is too forceful here for me to miss it, and it's--and sometimes it just seems like, okay, yeah, thank you, God, for bringing about all of this good in my life.
And the good here is not good like, oh, you lost a job, you must be gonna get a better job or something. The good is kingdom good. The good is from God's eternal perspective, what does he want to make us into and to do? And so sometimes it's really about asking the right question. Like, you know, Adrienne and I always ask, instead of asking, "Well, what is--why did God do that?"
ask things like, " What might God want me to learn from this?"
Bryan: Yes. in any providence conversation, that really has to be on the table. Like, what am I needing to learn here? Not even necessarily why or how. Those aren't maybe the helpful questions. It's, yeah, what do I need to learn is huge.
Ryan: because whether it's, you know, 12, he disciplines his children, or James 1, 2 and 3 to 4, Romans 5, all these passages that talk about we go through trials for a purpose, and one of God's purposes for this is to teach us and train us and develop us into who we're meant to be. So we need to view them how God views them as training.
This is--every day you go through a difficult thing, it's school, you know, it's him teaching you something. So what are we learning? Yeah,
Bryan: Oh, boy. It reminds me of Haggai, right? You've got this, God is trying to teach them a lesson and he's like, "Look, you're putting your money into a big pocket and there's a whole bunch of holes in it and it just keeps coming out." And you're like, "How does this keep happening?" It's because I'm trying to teach you something, but you don't get the lesson.
Like, you're not seeing it clearly. And I think what I'm taking from what you're saying there is like, yeah, these moments where God may not be trying to satisfy our every need and our whims and our desires, some of these moments God may be trying to correct us and lead us back to him and discipline us in ways.
And so, seeing the way that God could be working now, it may not be happy and shiny and everything is great. Maybe it's that way for a reason because maybe today I need to be learning a lesson about dependence and trust or, you know, fill in the blank, whatever. But it's so helpful to see that perspective when we start thinking about what is God doing and why is he doing what he's doing?
Ryan: And putting this passage, Romans 8, 28, into its context, Romans 8 is this passage all about assurance, and it talks about how God's Spirit is, you know, is in us, and the future glory that awaits us and the present struggles, you can't even compare them.
And then he talks about how we're groaning here in this life, creation itself is groaning, and God's Spirit is groaning within us. There's all these troubles. And so he's putting--this verse exists within the context of all these troubles in the present time while we're in between Jesus coming and Jesus coming again, and we are praying things, and we don't always know what to pray for as we ought.
And so the Spirit helps us to pray the right things. And as we're groaning these things, right, we don't know what is supposed to be happening, again, living in that weakness that we have here and the mystery. And then he says, "The Spirit intercedes for us, he searches our hearts, and we know that for those who love God," not for everybody, but for those who love God, "all things work together."
And that word "work together" is like a collaborative word, it's like partnering together, weaving together. God is making all these things paired together and partner up to bring about good for those who love him, who are called according to his purpose. And then he says, complicated passage maybe, "For those he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son."
And so we talked about how providence has to do with foreseeing.
Bryan: Yeah.
Ryan: God foreknew who would love him to the end. "Those" there is a word that points back to something, what it points back to is those who love God. For those, those people who love God, he knew those who were going to hold on to him and love him all the way through and endure all these trials.
And those people, for those people, he is working all of these things for their good. He didn't make them love him, you know, we have choice as we've been saying, but he knew, he's omniscient, he knows who's gonna keep loving him. And so he is weaving all of these things in our lives because he is bringing about us conforming to the image of his Son, ultimately the resurrected life and body of his Son.
And so ultimately, we're becoming, he sees the end, he sees who we are and who we're gonna be, and he's working in our lives and through all of these things that are happening to bring about this good end of us being conformed to the image of his Son. Isn't that beautiful? I just think when you fold all this together, it just makes it even more powerful.
Bryan: mean, we've talked about providence and, you know, deism and predestination and miracles. Like, this is peak Bible geeks here, everybody.
Personal Reflections on God's Providence
Bryan: Welcome aboard. All Okay. So, that kind of, you know, has been a lot of heady discussion, and I appreciate that we've really covered a lot of ground here in our hot seat discussion. Let us kind of wrap this thing up with a real easy softball, which, as they always are, this question that we've got for our reach out discussion. Yeah. Not really always very easy, but what's a key moment, Ryan, in your life where, looking back now, you can see how God made things work together for good, like we've been talking about in your
Ryan: The thing that stands out most of all as the turning point of my life is us moving to Hawaii when I was 16. And it's just, you know how in that period of the teen years, I didn't know who I was, I was so like lost, I was hanging out with the wrong people. Church was something we just went to and, you know, I had been baptized, but I had kind of lost my fervor.
I was just adrift. And, you know, we moved there because of a hurricane, actually, and I'm not saying this is why the hurricane happened, but I can see looking back how God used us moving there for my dad to help, you know, rebuild the island of Kauai after Hurricane Iniki and us planting new roots, me having to find new relationships, me having distance, my dad being more involved in my life than he had been ever before.
He was always like just nose to the grindstone, and that was the first time in a work situation where he had space. There was a good church, but a church where we were working through a lot of questions, and so that made, you know, sent me to the Bible, sent him to the Bible. You were in the most beautiful place in the world maybe, you know, just like surrounded by God's beauty and goodness and in the rainforests of Hawaii and the beaches and everything.
So it was just something that there's so many things that weave together that led me to this place of questioning, of putting everything on the line, of saying, "What do I really believe? If I'm going to believe this, then I'm going to be all in for the Lord and give him everything, so what do I really think?"
And going through that process just shifted the whole trajectory of my life, So it's pretty unmistakable to me, looking back, that God was using all of those things, and he brought about something that worked tremendous good for my eternal life, right?
Bryan: So, what I'm hearing you saying is that God made the hurricane so that he could bless your life is where we're
Ryan: Yeah, it's all about--it was mostly about
Bryan: Yeah.
Ryan: Everything is,
Bryan: the focus of the whole, yeah. No, I mean, that's really powerful, right? To be able to see zooming out. And I think the intention of this question is to look back or to zoom out, because that's the only way we can connect these dots with each other or with our own lives is like to look back.
And that it's kind of sad, I guess, that we don't, how much in the moment were you like, ah, as you wake up in this brand new home and new friends and not knowing anybody and like, how much at the moment were you like, this is exactly what I need? Or was it just like, wow, this is terrible. What is happening?
My whole life has changed. And maybe that period didn't last for very long, but I don't know. It feels like we don't often extol the virtues of the time that we're in when we're in it, but it's like that hindsight that kind of helps us to see it more clearly.
Ryan: Absolutely, yeah. I mean, it's the fact that I'm 30 years removed from it that lets me be able to see what its effect was in my life and how clearly--like, you can't see a story until you read the whole book, and you don't know where it's going and what's happening. And so that's the challenge.
The Role of Faith in Uncertainty
Ryan: That's the challenge of life in time, this theme that we keep going through, is we are stuck in one moment, and we can look back, but we can't see anything in the future, and so we have to--that's where faith is.
That's why the Bible constantly points to this idea of waiting on the Lord, because there is something that is not yet revealed.
Bryan: Yeah. It's that waiting. I think that for me, It is a training ground, right? That is the moment where training happens. And I, I get this sense, like in the beginning of our podcast, I'm thinking about my answer to this question.
we sort of started before covid and everything. And I remember how like real early on, like pretty quick into our episodes, we started going through this, you know, the pandemic and everything is like, what is happening here? And I can if you go back and listen, which I don't necessarily recommend people doing, but like if you go back and listen at the time when we were working through some of these things, it did not take us very long to get to a place where we were like, this can be good.
I can see how God can be using these moments. And for me, when I think about my life, like covid was a really big eye opener for me that looking back on it, I can see how God was able to do some amazing thing for me.
And it's that waiting on the Lord. Like when you get in these moments where you have to wait on the Lord, when you have, when you are forced to sit with whatever's going on and to think about it and to experience it. I mean, how many generations of people in the Bible stories had to just sit and wait and not sure what things were going to work out to be, you know, this as they're sitting in Babylonian exile or, you know, they're sitting, wandering through the wilderness or whatever they're doing.
Like there are these moments where we're just kind of, we're working through some stuff. We're in the wilderness, we're, we're off kind of like dealing with our uncertainty and our fear, things don't feel comfortable. And we get back into it and we start to see, oh yes, like this is where God met us. This is where God was working through us and in us in ways that we never really understood at the time.
And covid was a big one for me. Like, I know a lot of people don't appreciate that time or enjoy thinking about that time, but I came through that having stripped away a lot of unhealthy things, re-examining a lot of things, re-establishing some better patterns that maybe I have forgotten about since then, but it is, that was a healthy time, I think for me in a really weird way that, that feels strange to say, I
Ryan: I can relate to that, and then even--the harder part, in some ways, was the aftermath of it.
Bryan: think.
Ryan: You know, in the Church and in a lot of people's kind of mental health that I was, you know, witnessing and maybe my own to a certain extent. It's hard to see from inside yourself all the things that are going on, but I think that now having a little distance from that, I can see how all of that brought about good, you know, because whenever problems show up, then it tends to just highlight issues that were already there, and then you start addressing them and getting better, doing things like you should have done all along, or, you know, understanding the way you're working together, who we can be as a Church, that kind of thing.
So yeah, I can see that. I can see a lot of good that came from it, and, kind of like we talk about this all the time. It's not one thing. It's never one thing. The things that happen to us, somebody in your life passing away, whatever it is, it can be bittersweet. It can be bad, and God bring good.
Certainly the evil things people are doing in the world are all evil, and yet God can use the Pharaoh's choices, Judas' choices, all of the bad
Bryan: Yeah. That's a helpful maybe way of summing this all up is as we think about God has his purposes, he is going to make things work out together for good to those who love him. Like we, we follow him, we sit in the uncertainty of it in our perhaps kind of thought process. And we just realized that, look, there's, there are things we can't know.
There are things we don't know. we're not minimizing the bad because we see the bad. It's right in front of us. It's a, it's a difficult situation, but we also are willing to see through the bad. And that is the otherworldly perspective that I want to have more as a Christian. I want to have more of that seeing past the circumstances and into the possibilities of what God can do and what he is doing.
And I do still believe that God is working in the world. I believe that he is, he is able to take my prayers, however big they may be and do something with them that I may not, I may not completely understand, but I'm okay with that. He's, he's bigger than me and can, and can take those things for me.
Ryan: And that's where--I pushed back pretty hard there early on about the word "miracle," but what you're talking about is God doing mighty works in the world, because as we pray to Him, or even, you know, when we don't pray to Him, because we don't know the things to pray as we should, but the Lord is doing big things, good things, and He has chosen to work with us, and so often our measly efforts He can make bigger also.
And so He's working mightily. If you want to call that a miracle based on a very literal definition of the word in the Bible, you can do that. Not doing it the same way He always was in that short period in the New Testament and some other moments, but to think that He has left us and pulled His hand back and shortened His arm and said, "I'm not involved," man, that is not the Christian faith, and that's a really hard way to live in this world as one of God's people.
He is with us always, and He is at work within us, through us, and all around
Bryan: Very well said.
Concluding Thoughts and Next Episode Preview
Bryan: And this has been, as, as anyone knows in this topic, this has been a big one to bite off and chew on for a while. So maybe it's time to kind of wrap this thing up and think about our next episode. So on our next conversation, we're not going to deal with anything too challenging, just the entire system of family patterns and healthy disciples.
Yeah. Steel up. We're going to get into a bigger conversation on the next one too. It's, I've really enjoyed these meaty discussions we've been having and hopefully you have enjoyed them as well. Thanks everyone for tuning in. You can find show notes for this episode in your podcast player or on our website.
If you have enjoyed the show this season, please rate us on Apple Podcasts. We would love that. You want to reach out with questions, please do so. We were always interested in getting in touch with you and until the next discussion, everyone may the Lord bless you and keep you.