Sermon, May 15, 2011 - No Easy Answers: The Problem of Strange Answers to Our Prayers
Habakkuk 1.5-11
No Easy Answers: The Problem of Strange Answers to Our Prayers
What can we know for sure?
A. GOD IS AT WORK
1. God IS at work
2. GOD is at work
3. Watch for God to work
B. GOD IS AT WORK EVERYWHERE & IN EVERYTHING
1. God’s plan
His eternal purpose, according to the counsel of His own will,
whereby, for His own glory, He foreordains whatever comes to pass.
2. God’s control
Providence is the almighty and ever present power of God by which
he upholds, as with his hand, heaven and earth and all creatures,
and so rules them that leaf and blade, rain and drought,
fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness,
prosperity and poverty — all things, in fact, come to us
not by chance but from his fatherly hand.
3. God’s timetable
4. God’s kingdom
C. GOD IS AT WORK IN A MYSTERIOUS WAY
The plain teaching of the prophet is that God may use very strange instruments indeed,
and sometimes the very last instrument that we would have expected.
The forces which today are most antagonistic to the Christian church
are possibly being used by God for His own purpose. [M Lloyd-Jones]
John Olson
