The Sovereign Hand of God

I often wonder at how the sovereign hand of God moves in my life. I will pray and then take what I think is the Biblical course, but God has "arrived" me at some places I have not expected to arrive at. I know some really organized Christian thinkers, who pray earnestly, and try to map out everything they do. I know that God will honor the earnest efforts of those that serve to glorify Him. That's all good and everything, but in the Book of Acts, for example, He appears to do many things despite the efforts of the Apostles.

The apostles were told by the Lord to wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit in Acts 1:4-8, and that it wasn't for them to know times or seasons. In other words, be patient, and let God take care of it. So what did they do? They decided to do the "Biblical thing", consulting the Psalms for guidance, and replace Judas with Matthias, and we never hear about Matthias again. We have no way of knowing that perhaps Matthias was used mightily of God in ways known only to Matthias and the Lord, but there is no record of it. Instead, we end up hearing an awful lot about a man named Paul.

It seems that Paul was the man God chose to be apostle number 12, even when the apostles resisted meeting with him at first. It is believers who go unnamed, and who we have no record of that God uses mightily when the church is persecuted, (Acts 8:1-2) and "all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles." (Emphasis mine.) While the apostles stayed in Jerusalem it was the rank and file members of the church whom God used to evangelize others and pave the way for the establishment of His church.

It was an appointed deacon named Stephen that the Holy Spirit used to set so many things in motion. Saul, who became Paul, was there. So many hearts were impacted for Christ either at that point or later on by that one man's death. (Acts 6 and 7) It was by the preaching of Phillip in Samaria that the Lord moved so many to eternal joy in Chapter 8.

Paul's first missionary journey starts in Acts 13, and it is the Spirit who sends he and Barnabas out. Paul wants to undertake a second journey and go back through the places they went on the first one, however, a bitter argument takes place between he and Barnabas. The argument caused them to divide and go their separate ways, but it was the sovereign hand of the Living God who used the outgrowth of that argument to guide Paul to Philippi. (Acts 16:6-10)

It didn't matter what Paul might have wanted to do, what he might have mapped out to do. I don't think that it was Paul who sat down and thought, "Hmmmm..... I think it would be best if I get arrested, so that I can be taken to Rome to further the cause of Christ." I certainly don't sit down and think things like that in order to serve God, and I don't think that there is a Biblical prohibition on strategy. I just think that it is probably more often than not, that in our limited, finite perspective, that we make plans, and our infinitely wise God moves in our lives despite those plans. To me, that makes Him all the more beautiful.