August 30, 2020

When God Doesn’t

Speaker:
In Change, Coronavirus, Eternity, Faith, Freedom, God, Grace, Maturity, Planning, Trust, Uncertainty
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Introduction: Recalculating is something we’ve all done during the COVID-19 pandemic. How we do most everything has been altered. Not everything is bad about the recalculations. New Life Church is attempting to improve its online presence. I understand the environment has been helped since so many are working from home and not commuting to offices. Families have spent more time together, eaten more family dinners at home, and enjoyed life’s simple pleasures. Your unwilling recalculations now may be benefiting your future and may have eternal benefit.

1. God Preserves Human Freedom – Acts 5:40
• If God made us with a free will, then we are free to do wrong, as well as right!
• In order for us to be free and in order for us to be human, God leaves us free to do right or wrong.

2. God Allows Us to Mature – Acts 15
• God may not intervene to give us opportunity to develop wisdom and maturity.
• If we don’t have the freedom of choice, we never develop maturity.

3. God Allows Us to Show Grace – Acts 7:60
• God may not intervene and by not intervening, His family, His sons and daughters, may display the grace of Jesus Christ.

When you are persecuted and broken, the reservoir of what’s in our heart is revealed.

4. God Advances the Gospel – Acts 20:1-3
• Sometimes God’s nonintervention acts to significantly advance the Gospel.

5. God Deepens Our Faith – Acts 4:24
• God may not intervene because He wants to give us an opportunity to deepen our faith.
• Words “Sovereign Lord” – Greek text means “director.”
• The person totally in charge.

Who you are, is more important than what happens to you.

6. God Doesn’t Let You Know – Acts 12
• God may not intervene, and you may never know why He didn’t.

Weekly Questions:
When God’s response doesn’t meet your expectation, what happens to your faith? Have you ever been denied the opportunity to live where you wanted to or have the job you felt you should have had, and discovered later that God placed you where He needed you most? How does that experience affect your response to God’s direction in the future?