Trusting In Divine Providence

4/23/06

 

 

Faith is built on what we understand--trust is built on who we know.

 

It is impossible to have the peace that goes beyond understanding without trusting in the sovereignty of God.

 

The term “Sovereign Lord” is used 300 times in the New International Version.

 

If you question why, if you doubt God’s judgement, become embittered, you will not be able to experience the peace of God that passes understanding.

 

God is completely sovereign yet man has the freedom to choose.

 

This glorious truth has boggled the minds of some theologians and Christians down through the ages.  They either want to make God all sovereign with man having little or no freewill or else man controls his destiny with little interference from God.

 

God is totally sovereign.  Nothing can happen without His allowing.  God is always in control even when man makes a total chaos of things.

 

God intervenes when He wants or stays His hand when He wants.

 

George Washington fought alongside British General Edward Braddock. On July 9,1755, the British were on the way to Fort Duquesne (du-cane), when the French surprised them in an ambush attack.  The British, who were not accustomed to fighting unless in an open field, were being annihilated. Washington rode back and forth across the battle delivering General Braddock's orders. As the battle raged, every other officer on horseback, except Washington, was shot down. Even General Braddock was killed, at which point the troops fled in confusion. After the battle, on July 18, 1755, Washington wrote to his brother, John A. Washington:  But by the all-powerful dispensations of Providence. I have been protected beyond all human probability or expectation; for I had four bullets through my coat, and two horses shot under me, yet escaped unhurt, although death was leveling my companions on every side of me!

 

The following was taken from James Bradley’s book “Flyboys.”

 

For years, pilots Jimmy Dye, Glenn Frazier, Floyd Hall, Marve Mershon, Warren Earl Vaughn, Dick Woellhof and Grady York were among those “Missing In Action.”  Shot down over Chichi Jima.  Chichi is 400 miles north of Iwo Jima.

It‘s September 2, 1944.  “George, who had celebrated his twentieth birthday just two months earlier, had bombed Chichi the day before, but the damage had been slight. His instructions this day had been brief: "The radio station is your primary target."

By now, George knew all about rough trips. He had been flying in the Pacific for almost five months. He had flown into antiaircraft fire over Guam, Saipan, Wake Island, and Marcus Island. George had sunk ships and had a few close calls, including a harrowing sea ditching. Eventually, he would fly 58 strikes, make 126 carrier landings, and log 1,228 hours. At twenty years of age, George was the youngest pilot in the squadron. Like so many Flyboys, he was a kid doing a man's job.

 

At 7:15 AM George lifted his torpedo plane off the carrier with Ted White and John Delaney in back. Each boy wore a Mae West over his flight suit. George's plane carried four 500-pound bombs.

 

As the Flyboys winged toward Chichi Jima, the enemy was monitoring their progress,

The lead plane went down through black clouds of antiaircraft fire, followed by the second. The two dropped eight bombs — two tons of explosives — on the radio complex. Now, however, the Japanese gunners had the Flyboys' range in their sights. George was the next to dive. He could see that he had to fly into the middle of intense antiaircraft fire.

Fifty-seven years later, I asked George Bush what it was like to dive straight toward antiaircraft gunners trying to blow him out of the sky.

"You see the explosions all around you," he said, "these dark, threatening puffs of black smoke. You're tense in your body, but you can't do anything about it. You cannot take evasive action, so you get used to it. You just think to yourself, 'This is my duty and I have got to do it.'"

Bush paused for a moment and then added, "And of course, you always thought someone else was going to get hit."

But on September 2, that "someone else" was George Bush. At release altitude, a Japanese shell tore into his plane.

"There was a fierce jolt and it lifted the plane forward," he recalled. "We were probably falling at a speed of a hundred and ninety miles per hour. Smoke was coming up from the engine; I couldn't see the controls. I saw flames running along the wings to the fuel tanks. I thought, 'This is really bad.' But I was thinking of what I was supposed to do. And what I was supposed to do was drop those bombs and get out of there."

The twenty-year-old, not yet old enough to vote or drink in a bar, was now at the controls of a burning, falling plane with two buddies in the back. A potential explosion loomed. Flight leader Don Melvin, hovering nearby in a torpedo plane, later said, "You could have seen that smoke for a hundred miles."

 

Amazingly, George stayed on course long enough to drop his bombs on target, as instructed. Later he would be awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his bravery. His flight leader wrote, "Bush continued his dive, releasing his bombs on the radio station to score damaging hits. He then turned sharply to the east to clear the island of Chichi Jima, smoke and flames enveloping his engine and spreading aft as he did so, and his plane losing altitude."

 

Once the bombs were away, it was time to escape. "Hit the silk! Hit the silk!" George shouted into the intercom, telling Ted White and John Delaney to bail out. "Then," he told me, "I turned the plane starboard to take the slipstream pressure off the door near Delaney's station." Bush was riding a unpredictable fireball, but he still thought to maneuver the plane in such a way to give his crewmen a better chance of survival, though it would hinder his own ability to get out. By dipping the right wing slightly and turning the tail rudder to the left, George caused the plane to "skid" sideways through the air, thus relieving air pressure on the crew door and providing them a better opportunity to escape. It was a maneuver that used up precious time and delayed his own exit.

Finally, it was time for George to save himself. "I unfastened my seat belt and dove out and down to avoid the tail," he told me. "But I pulled the cord too quickly, and the tail came up and hit me in the head."

Now George had a big bleeding gash above one eye, and there was more. "Then the parachute hooked on the tail and tore a few panels out," he said. "As a result, I was falling faster than normal."

"Bush's plane was smoking like a two-alarm fire," said radioman Richard Gorman, "then I saw a chute blossom out." Gorman saw Bush "hit the drink" and at the same instant, he saw a "a huge ball of fire." Bush's bomber had exploded.

George had the presence of mind to unsnap his parachute chest strap just as he slammed into the water. He put his hands up, and the parachute blew away from him toward Chichi Jima. He splashed down about four miles northeast of the island and swam to a collapsible yellow one-man life raft dropped from another plane. He inflated it and climbed in. He had no paddles, and the wind was blowing him toward Chichi Jima.

"I could see the island," Bush told me. "I started paddling with my hands, leaning over the front of the raft, paddling as hard as I could. A Portuguese man-of-war had stung my arm and it hurt. I had swallowed a few pints of water and I was vomiting. My head was bleeding. I was wondering about my crewmen. I was crying. I was twenty years old and I was traumatized. I had just survived a burning plane crash. I was all alone and I was wondering if I'd make it."

George scanned the horizon looking for his crewmen. He saw nothing. Witnesses later said that only two chutes came out of the plane. One was George's, but it was unclear who was in the other. Neither Ted White nor John Delaney survived.

George was in even more trouble than he could imagine. Not only was the current pushing him toward Chichi Jima, but some small boats had been launched from the island to capture him.

 

"I saw those small boats heading his way and thought, 'Oh, he's a goner,'" said gunner Charles Bynum. Two American planes dove and strafed the boats. Battle reports later noted that 1,460 rounds of machine gun bullets were fired at the would-be Bush captors."

For the moment, the boats retreated, but Bush's fellow pilots could only help for so long. They were running low on fuel and had to return to their carriers. The flight leader radioed George's location to the rescue submarine USS Finback, which was standing by for just such an emergency.

 

For what seemed like an eternity, George paddled and hoped and paddled some more. "I had seen the famous photo of the Australian pilot being beheaded," Bush told me, "and I knew how Americans were treated. Yes, I had a few things on my mind."

 

After paddling his raft and praying for three hours and thirteen minutes, George saw a black dot emerge from the water about a hundred yards away. "The dot grew larger," he recalled. "First a periscope, then the conning tower, then the hull of a submarine emerged from the depths." Bush had no idea that anyone had radioed his position. "At first I thought maybe I was delirious," he said, "and when I concluded it was a submarine I feared that it might be Japanese. It just seemed too far-fetched that it would be an American submarine."

Five submariners threw Bush a line, pulled him alongside the sub, and helped the soaking-wet and exhausted Flyboy aboard. George managed just four words to his saviors: "Happy to be aboard."

 

George spent a month on the Finback, which gave him plenty of time to reflect on his brush with death. He would often stand the midnight-4 A.M. watch while the sub was surfaced. Later, he recalled those reflective moments:

I'll never forget the beauty of the Pacific — the flying fish, the stark wonder of the sea, the waves breaking across the bow. It was absolutely dark in the middle of the Pacific; the nights were so clear and the stars so brilliant. It was wonderful and energizing, a time to talk to God.

I had time to reflect, to go deep inside myself and search for answers. People talk about a kind of foxhole Christianity, where you're in trouble and think you're going to die, and so you want to make everything right with God and everybody else right there in the last minute.

But this was just the opposite of that. I had already faced death, and God had spared me. I had this very deep and profound gratitude and a sense of wonder. Sometimes when there is a disaster, people will pray, "Why me?" In an opposite way I had the same question: why had I been spared, and what did God have in store for me?

 

As you grow older and try to retrace the steps that made you the person that you are, the signposts to look for are those special times of insight. I remember my days and nights aboard the Finback as one of those times — maybe the most important of them all.

In my own view there's got to be some kind of destiny and I was being spared for something on earth.

 

Many years after those Pacific nights, I interviewed former President Bush about the events of that tragic September day in 1944. When we finished, I was shutting my computer down and we were making idle conversation. Out of the blue, he asked me if I had any additional information about the fates of his crewmen, Ted White and John Delaney.

 

I was surprised by the question because I assumed it had been answered long before. If there was anything new to learn, surely the press would have dug it up during his four campaigns for vice president and president. But no one knew exactly what happened to Ted and John that day, only that they both died.

I told the president I had no additional information.

"It still plagues me if I gave those guys enough time to get out," he said with a pained grimace.

At that moment, I was looking into the eyes of perhaps the most accomplished and successful man alive. George Herbert Walker Bush had led a storied life as an athlete, war hero, businessman, congressman, ambassador to the United Nations, ambassador to China, head of the CIA, vice president, president, and father of the current president. He had been in love with one woman since he was seventeen and they were approaching sixty years of marriage.

 

"I and everyone else thinks you did all you could, Mr. President," I said. "And I am sorry you had to be put into the position where you have these feelings still today."

For a few heartbeats we were both still. Then, as if to break the emotion of the moment, he uncrossed his legs, stood, and pushed his chair against the wall as I went back to putting my computer away.

I glanced up when he didn't walk back to his desk. He was standing at his large office window. His hands were in his pockets, causing his sport jacket to wrinkle a bit. The Texas sunlight illuminated President Bush's face.

Staring at the sky, the former Flyboy said, "I think about those guys all the time."“

 

Est. 6:1 That night the king could not sleep; so he ordered the book of the chronicles, the record of his reign, to be brought in and read to him. ²It was found recorded there that Mordecai had exposed Bigthana and Teresh, two of the king’s officers who guarded the doorway, who had conspired to assassinate King Xerxes.

 

³“What honor and recognition has Mordecai received for this?” the king asked.

 

“Nothing has been done for him,” his attendants answered.

 

⁴The king said, “Who is in the court?” Now Haman had just entered the outer court of the palace to speak to the king about hanging Mordecai on the gallows he had erected for him.

 

⁵His attendants answered, “Haman is standing in the court.”

 

“Bring him in,” the king ordered.

 

⁶When Haman entered, the king asked him, “What should be done for the man the king delights to honor?”

 

Now Haman thought to himself, “Who is there that the king would rather honor than me?” ⁷So he answered the king, “For the man the king delights to honor, ⁸have them bring a royal robe the king has worn and a horse the king has ridden, one with a royal crest placed on its head. ⁹Then let the robe and horse be entrusted to one of the king’s most noble princes. Let them robe the man the king delights to honor, and lead him on the horse through the city streets, proclaiming before him, ‘This is what is done for the man the king delights to honor!’”

 

¹⁰“Go at once,” the king commanded Haman. “Get the robe and the horse and do just as you have suggested for Mordecai the Jew, who sits at the king’s gate. Do not neglect anything you have recommended.”

 

¹¹So Haman got the robe and the horse. He robed Mordecai, and led him on horseback through the city streets, proclaiming before him, “This is what is done for the man the king delights to honor!”

 

¹²Afterward Mordecai returned to the king’s gate. But Haman rushed home, with his head covered in grief, ¹³and told Zeresh his wife and all his friends everything that had happened to him.

His advisers and his wife Zeresh said to him, “Since Mordecai, before whom your downfall has started, is of Jewish origin, you cannot stand against him—you will surely come to ruin!” ¹⁴While they were still talking with him, the king’s eunuchs arrived and hurried Haman away to the banquet Esther had prepared.

 

Don’t be afraid of God’s will!

 

Let’s define the will of God.

 

Rom. 12:2  Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will.

 

(NLT) Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect his will really is.

 

(Living Bible) Then you will learn from your own experience how his ways will really satisfy you.

 

(KJV) good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

 

We are responsible for the things within our control, God is responsible for the things outside of our control.

 

God’s plans for you are not for evil!  God’s plans for you are good!

 

Jer. 29:11  For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

 

We either cooperate with God’s plans for our life or we rebel.

 

We cooperate by giving Jesus complete control of our life.

 

We rebel by taking things into our own hands and not trusting God.

 

God has the ultimate say so in our life.

 

Ja. 4:13  Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money."

¹⁴ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

¹⁵ Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that."

 

Jesus told us a story of a man who thought he was in control and not God.

 

Lk. 12:16  And he told them this parable: "The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop.

¹⁷ He thought to himself, 'What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.'

¹⁸ "Then he said, 'This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.

¹⁹ And I'll say to myself, "You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry."'

²⁰ "But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?'

²¹ "This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God."

 

Since God is in control what do we have to fear?

 

Pr. 3:25  Have no fear of sudden disaster or of the ruin that overtakes the wicked,

²⁶ for the LORD will be your confidence and will keep your foot from being snared.