The sovereignty of God is His supreme, independent, and unrestricted right to rule over all things and govern everything according to His own will and for His own glory.
“Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows. ”
Matthew 10:29-31 (NKJV)
Welcome to Week 3 of our 40 Days of Prayer & Fasting and Day 1 of our 5 Days of Providence. If you have not done so already, it’s time to lock in much more. Remember that those who wait on the lord shall renew their strength. Today we are going to continue our time of consecration with something very critical to our walk with God, and that is Providence. The first thing to understand when speaking about Providence is the concept of Sovereignty.
The sovereignty of God is His supreme, independent, and unrestricted right to rule over all things and govern everything according to His own will and for His own glory. And as simple as this is, many believers still struggle with it. They don’t believe that God should have the right to do whatever He wants to do uncontested. The things that sponsor such thoughts are pride, sin, etc. And when there is a problem with your acceptance of the sovereignty of God, you cannot understand His providence or benefit from it.
God is Supreme, meaning nothing outranks Him. He is Independent, meaning nothing causes Him; He is not reacting, He is not catching up, He is not one influence among many pulling at the universe. He is Unrestricted, meaning there is no boardroom He answers to, no council that can override Him. This should help you see that, of everyone you can give your life to, God is the best to take care of you.
Daniel 4:35
New King James Version
35 All the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing; He does according to His will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth. No one can restrain His hand or say to Him, "What have You done?"
No one can restrain His hand. Not circumstances. Not the enemy. Not the government, not the diagnosis, not the delay, not the person who hurt you. Nobody has the authority to say to Him, "What have you done?" Because that question assumes He answers to something bigger than Himself. He doesn't. The sovereignty of God is not against you; it is for you! If you are on the lord’s side, then it is for you.
Psalm 115:3
New King James Version
3 But our God is in heaven; He does whatever He pleases.
Now be careful with that word "pleases". It means nothing outside Him has to grant Him permission. One preacher put it this way: to say God is sovereign is to say His power is absolute, that no rival exists who can defeat His purpose, and no creature can act outside the boundary of His control. Before we talk about God's plan for your life, you need to settle this first: the God who has a plan for you is the same God nothing can restrain, nothing can outvote, and nothing can override.
Sovereignty tells you who is in charge. Providence tells you how He runs it. When we say God is providential, we are rejecting two wrong ideas at the same time:
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The first wrong idea is that God made the world and stepped back. That He wound it up like a clock and let it run on its own, watching from a distance, uninvolved in the details of your day. That is not your God.
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The second wrong idea is the opposite error: that everything is just chance, luck, fate, a universe of coincidences with no one steering it. That is not your God either.
Providence is the truth in between those two errors: God is personally, actively, continually involved in your life, at this exact moment and creation is still real; your choices are still real, but none of it is outside His hand.
God’s involvement is broken into three simple movements.
- He preserves you. He does not just start things; He keeps them going.
The Bible says Christ is "...upholding all things by the word of His power..."(Hebrews 1:3 NKJV). That word "upholding" does not mean passively holding still; it means actively carrying. Right now, this moment, you are not surviving on your own strength. You are being carried. If He let go, you would not just struggle; you would cease.
- He works through means. This is the part people get confused about. God does not usually bypass the natural world to do His will. He works through it.
Observe the story of Moses. There is a baby, born to a woman who cannot keep him. The law says he should die. She puts him in a basket, seals it with tar, and sets it adrift on a river; not toward safety, toward the very palace of the man who ordered his death. If you were narrating that story without knowing how it ends, you might call it what it looks like: the fickle finger of fate.
Exodus 2:5-6
New King James Version
5 Then the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river. And her maidens walked along the riverside; and when she saw the ark among the reeds, she sent her maid to get it.
6 *And when she opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the baby wept. So she had compassion on him, and said, “This is one of the Hebrews’ children.”
A river really carried that basket; that is a real, natural cause. A woman really felt real compassion; that is a real, human choice. Nothing was faked. And at the same time, God was fully behind every inch of it. It was not 50% river and 50% God. It was the river, completely doing what rivers do, and God, completely accomplishing what He purposed at the same time, on two different levels. That basket did not drift by luck into the one household in Egypt with both the power to save him and the reason to raise him as royalty; that was providence, wearing the disguise of an accident.
So the next time something in your life looks like coincidence: a phone call at the right time, a door that opened when you didn't force it, a person who showed up exactly when you needed them — do not be so quick to call it luck. What looks like a fickle finger, in your life, is very often a sovereign hand, in a very good disguise.
- He governs everything toward a purpose. And this is where it stops being theory and starts being personal, because He has actually told us what that aim looks like for us.
Jeremiah 29:11
New King James Version
11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.
This was not written to somebody having a good afternoon. He said this to a nation sitting in exile. The verse before it says: "For thus says the LORD: After seventy years are completed at Babylon, I will visit you and perform My good word toward you, and cause you to return to this place."
This was written to a people carried out of their land, wondering if God had simply moved on without them, and He sends them a letter that says, in effect, "I have not forgotten the plan". "I have not even forgotten the timeline".
We are a people in a wilderness season, on purpose, by His own leading. The delay is not the absence of a plan. The delay is inside the plan. And He was not just planning for the nation. He was planning for you, specifically, before you existed.
Psalm 139:16
New King James Version
16 Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.
Before you were formed, your days were already written. Trust your Father and walk with Him.
With Love,
The Catalyst,
Pastor Michael Ipaye.
Prayer
God, help me see and trust Your plans for my life. I would never doubt it.
