The Power to Accomplish His Plan

Job answered the Lord and said, “I know that You can do all things, and that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted.”

–Job 42:1–2

God’s sovereignty means God has a plan, but it also means God has the power to accomplish His plan.

Some people will concede that God has a plan for the world and even a plan for our lives. But they say, “Don’t our mistakes sometimes mess up God’s plan?” So they propose that God has two wills: a perfect will and a permissive will. God’s permissive will, they say, takes into account all the things God wishes wouldn’t happen: earthquakes, floods, starvation, murder.

That makes sense until you read the Bible. The Bible does not teach that God has several wills, that He has a plan A and a plan B. No, the Bible says God has one will. Ephesians 1:11 says He “works all things after the counsel of His will.” Notice the word “will” is singular. God doesn’t have multiple plans; He has one plan. And He has the power to accomplish His plan in our lives.

If anybody believed in God’s permissive will, it would have been the Old Testament character Job. He lost his health. He lost his possessions. He lost his children in a freak accident. Job could have said, “God, I know You didn’t want any of this to happen. This must be Your permissive will, not Your perfect will.” Is that how Job responded? In Job 42:2, he said, “I know that You can do all things, and that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted.” Yes, Job had questions for God. He asked, “Why did You allow these things to happen?” But Job never doubted God’s ability to carry out His plan in Job’s life.

God never answered the why question for Job. He never explained to Job what we know from chapters 1–2–that Job’s suffering was part of an eternal drama between God and Satan. God never answered the why question for Job, but He did answer the who question. In chapters 38–40, God said to Job, in essence, “Trust Me; I’m in control.”

Rarely does God answer the why question for us, either. When a tragedy happens, we ask, “Why would God allow something like that?” There is no way to answer that question. But we can answer the who question: God is in control. He is working in the darkness even when we can’t see His hand. The sovereignty of God means God has a plan for our lives, and He has the power to accomplish that plan.

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Today’s devotion is adapted from “The Shepherd’s Safety Net” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2008.

Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org.