Tuesday-March 10-Isaiah 43:1–13-Paul David Tripp

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Today you can give way to fear-producing “what-ifs” or rest in the sovereign care of your wise and gracious Savior King.

Here’s the bottom line: if you’re God’s child, your life is never, ever out of control. It’s not spinning wildly in who knows what direction with no intelligent administration. It’s not controlled by the hopeless inertia of impersonal determination or abstract luck. Yes, vast pieces of your existence are out of your control, beyond your power to alter. But you must not conclude that your life is out of control.

There are two reasons for this. First, the story that is your life has been included, by grace, in the greater story of redemption. This story is about God’s age-old commitment to call a people to himself, to fix everything that sin has broken, to conquer sin and death, to establish a new heaven and a new earth, and to invite all his children to live there in communion with him forever. This huge story was set in motion before the earth was created, it is unstoppable, and it will never have an end. Your inclusion in this story took place before you breathed your first breath; in fact, it took place before anyone breathed his or her first breath. Because your story is woven into the fabric of the redemption story, there is meaning, purpose, and direction to every part of it. The inertia of redemption carries your story along. The goal of redemption guarantees your destiny. The future grace of eternity secures for you all the grace you will ever need in between. No, you won’t understand all that you face, and yes, God’s will will confuse you at points, but your story has been infused with meaning and purpose because it’s been included in God’s story of redemption and restoration.

But the fact that your life is under control is even more personal than that. God has appointed his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to be “head over all things to the church” (Eph. 1:22). Right now, Jesus is ruling over all things. That means that every situation, relationship, and location of your life is ruled by King Christ. You cannot be in a place that is not under his rule. Paul says elsewhere that he will continue to reign in this way “until he has put all his enemies under his feet” (1 Cor. 15:25). The phrase “to the church” is better translated “for the church.” This means that not only is everything under the careful rule of the risen Lord Jesus and not only does he sit in rule at the right hand of the Father on high, but he expedites his rule for his people. In other words, he rules over all things for your help and benefit. He rules over all things so that his grace can finish its work in you unabated. You see, the promises of his grace are only as secure as the extent of his rule. His story is unstoppable. His rule is benevolent. There is grand and gracious control over every aspect of your life.

For further study and encouragement: Isaiah 43:1–13

Tripp, Paul David. 2014. New Morning Mercies: A Daily Gospel Devotional. Wheaton, IL: Crossway.