Transcript
There are two truths that offered huge comfort to me as I went through the unwanted, the unplanned for me, the unthinkable, the unexpected. The first truth was that everything that is outside of my control lives under the control of the One who is my Savior.
The Complete Loss of Control
One of the things that you go through that's so painful is just the complete loss of control, even control of the normal decorums of everyday life. I mean, just the embarrassing, mortifying things that are done with your body and all the people that are touching and poking you, and being naked with people standing around your room and things put inside of you and all. You just feel like, "Do I have any control over anything in my life?"
And then, all the questions of control of finances and your future capabilities, and all those things -- to know that not one of those things is outside of the control of the One who gave His life for me is wow, couldn't be any bigger than that, so that was so precious to me.
The other thing is the reality of God's presence. One of the passages that I think is enormously encouraging to someone in suffering is Acts 17, where the way that Paul talks about the sovereignty of God is he says that He determines the exact place where I will live and the exact length of my life; and He does this so that He's near so at any moment, we could reach out and touch Him.
God Is Sovereignly Near
Often when we think of God's sovereignty, we think of it as one of His transcendent qualities. He's actually talking about the imminent sovereignty of God, that God is sovereignly near. That teaching puts together the presence of God with the sovereignty of God, so the One who is near me is the same One who's in control of all the things that I'm not in control of. That is a beautiful bringing together of two truths that a sufferer needs to know.
One, I'm not alone and two, my life is under careful control because you will need to know that what is out of control, the massive amount of things that suddenly are out of control are under the control of the One who is near and who has the power to meet you in the middle of what you have no ability to get yourself out of.
