There are many books designed to help Christians deal with issues such as anxiety, depression, alcoholism, loneliness, (lack of) fulfilment, bereavement, grief, marital struggles, addiction, low self-esteem, and so on. Many of them are very good – I’ve read a good handful myself. However, it seems to me that there might be a more fruitful way of addressing the issues underlying these symptoms.
This alternative way is to wrestle long and hard with the biblical doctrine of the exhaustive sovereignty of God.
If this foundation has not been laid, it strikes me that none of these therapeutic paths to emotional stability will be likely to yield much fruit. But if this foundational conviction is firmly in place, there’s a good chance that many of the above trials may not arise so severely (or, in some cases, even at all) in the first place.
The Bible teaches that God is sovereign over everything that happens in his creation. This means not only that he sustains all things in being, but that he directs and brings about every event that takes place. From the affairs of nations to the fall of a single sparrow, the Living God is sovereign over it all.
Most strikingly, according to Scripture, this includes what we customarily think of as our “free” decisions and actions. It’s true that we make genuine, meaningful, responsible choices. We’re not robots. But these choices are “free” only in the sense that we are “free” from creaturely compulsion; we are not “free” from God’s sovereign hand.
Furthermore, the living God is sovereign over the situations in which we find ourselves – whether those situations arise from external events or internal emotions. Our emotional angst and personal ups and downs frequently take us by surprise, but God is not shocked by them, and he is perfectly able to shepherd us through them, since he is the author of them. Our lives may feel out of our control, but they’re never out of God’s control.
The path of wrestling with the sovereignty of God is long, and at times perplexing. It’s not an easy quick-fix. But it’s a journey well worth travelling. Among the best places in the Bible to begin would be the Psalms, Isaiah and Daniel, though to be honest the whole of Scripture shouts this message loudly and clearly that it’s more a matter of reading the whole Bible with our eyes open to it that studying any individual passages.
But if I had to pick a single chapter with which to begin, it would probably be Psalm 139. Here are the first few verses:
O LORD, you have searched me
and known me!You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.
