What is God’s plan for my life? What does the Maker of heaven and earth want
for me – today, tomorrow, forever? What
does God have in store for you, your children, for all of us beyond this short life of ours on earth? Many people exert a lot of energy and spend
lifetimes trying to figure out the answer to such questions. And we can hardly blame them? These are really deep questions. It’s not easy to just stumble upon the right
answer (though many believe they have).
But who is to say when you think you’ve figured it out, that you haven’t
just been deluded and deceived – especially considering that greater and wiser
men than we have spent their entire lives seeking such understanding without
any success? Who’s to say that what we
have figured out, on one hand, and what God has chosen, on the other hand, are
not totally different? It’s a hard
question, and it’s even harder to answer it.
And so people often give up and pretend like it isn’t even an all that
important question anyway. But it
is. Our life depends on it. And we here at Trinity Lutheran Church know
the answer to it. We learn of God’s will
for our eternal welfare when we learn what His will for each one of us is right here today: GOD’S GOOD WILL IS FOR
CHRIST TO BEAR OUR BURDENS.
“Jesus
said, ‘I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden
these things from the wise and
prudent and have revealed them to babes.’” God the Father hides
from some that which He reveals to others.
Wow! This presents one of the
most difficult teachings of Holy Scripture: God’s eternal election, or what is
called the doctrine of predestination.
But what exactly does God hide? And
what exactly does He reveal? How do we
find out what God’s eternal choice is for us, and whether He is holding
something back by hiding something from
us? Since these questions are so
pressing and fundamental to a true knowledge of our God, many theologians have
attempted in different ways to provide definitive answers.
