Proverbs 16:1-9 “The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord. All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the spirit. Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established. The Lord has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble. Everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to the Lord; be assured, he will not go unpunished. By steadfast love and faithfulness iniquity is atoned for, and by the fear of the Lord one turns away from evil. When a man’s ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him. Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues with injustice. The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.”

I remember singing a song as a child about God having the whole world in his hands – a simple truth that is quickly forgotten. Each one of us has hopes for today and the future. We make plans, and live our life accordingly. God tells us though, that He is the ultimate authority for everything that happens. Today I’m not going to answer the question of how God is sovereign over evil, I’ve done so before, and it takes a bit to unpack. I want to focus instead just on the simple truth of God’s sovereignty over our lives and how that is a source of peace for those of us who know God, know Jesus as our all-loving Savior.

The arrogance of man’s heart, is an abomination to God. God hates when someone believes that they are the determiners of their fate. That may be difficult for the Type A persons to swallow. At the root of it all is pride, to believe that they are God, and God is not. We labor and worry over life, as if we could change its end result. This is an abomination to God.

Matthew 6:25-27, 34

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?”

“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”

God’s answer to us is not that we should sit idly by and do nothing, but that we should commit our works to the Him and trust Him. He is the ultimate determiner of all things, and He values us and loves us. We do not commit an end result to God – we commit our works to God. We should be asking ourselves questions often – is this work I’m doing pleasing to God? If so, then regardless of the outcome, you are delighting God and doing exactly what you should be doing. You can rest that whatever the result of those works are, it is exactly as God intends it. This is incredibly powerful for Christians. How much stress do people carry worrying about things that they cannot control? How much stress do people carry about things you can control? God says to stop altogether, to give responsibility for the end results over to Him, and simply to commit yourself and your works each day to Him. He is our loving Father, and His love for us and His plans for us will always be far greater than our own.

Look to Jesus, who was confronted by a culture of arrogant persons attempting to make themselves righteous before God by observing the laws of Moses. What the Jewish culture believed would bring life was only bringing endless guilt, shame, and ultimately death. God’s plan was better. He did what man could not do, by taking all of man’s sin on Himself, dying in their place, and rising again in power – having conquered not the Roman army as Jews expected, but having conquered sin and death itself. In Jesus there is no guilt, no shame, because we have been made completely holy forever through him.

2 Corinthians 5:21 – “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

I’ll close with this as we consider the place of mourning amidst trusting God’s sovereignty. It is right to mourn loss. It may be right to mourn missed expectations and hopes for a time. After mourning however, Christians should not stay sorrowful indefinitely. Let your soul be refreshed in Jesus, who loves you, is with you, and is for you. We will never understand all the joys and sorrows of this life on this side of eternity, but we do know Jesus, who is good and in control of all things.