Predestination: Why I Sleep Like a Calvinist

At 6 A.M. in the morning, roughly 15 hours before I leave to spend my summer planting trees and writing blogs from within my tent, I am in an interesting mood. There is so much left that needs to be done: I need to get everything packed; I need to put in a full day at work; I need to buy some last-minute items before I go; I need to have a talk with Kendra; I need to leave instructions for other people to take care of my apartment, car, and bills before I take off for three or four months. There is so much that can go wrong. My boss has agreed to pay me out in cash at the end of the day, but he could end up backing out of that agreement; My roommate could move everything around this summer so that I can't find anything when I get back; Kendra and I could get into an argument before I leave; the other contributors to this blog could lose their vision and end up abandoning the project, especially since it can usually take 4-5 months before something like this even starts to draw attention.

God Stands as King Over All Things
In times of anxiety like these, my comfort is that God is good (1 John 1:5) and that He is in complete control of all situations, "work[ing] all things according to the counsel of His will" (Ephesians 1:11). Knowing this helps me to get through the day. If God is good, and if He is in control, then He will not allow anything bad to happen to me without first having a plan to bring something positive out of my predicament. This means that I can trust God and follow the example of Jesus, who in His moment of greatest trial was able to pray "Father, not my will, but yours be done" (Luke 22:42). This is because Jesus trusted that God is good, and that therefore His will is good even in the midst of our anxiety. It also means that I can declare with Jesus the control that God has over all things: when Pilate told Jesus that he could have Him crucified, Jesus responded by saying "You would have no authority at all unless it had been given to you from above" (John 19:11). I agree with Jesus that God is control over all situations, and that nothing happens even in the political realm apart from His will. If God has control over the political realm, then He has control over every other sphere of life as well. And that is a good thing.

Why Predestination Gives Me Peace
As I prepare to leave, I am conscious of all of the things that can go wrong. There are a lot of things that could, and I am very aware of them. But because I believe that God is good, and because I believe that God is in control, and because I believe that nothing happens unless God has a reason for it to happen, I can rest easy on the bus tonight. Kendra and I might argue, but God has something good planned for how that will turn out. My roommate might completely change my apartment while I'm gone, but God is in control over that situation too. I might get eaten by bears, but if I am, then God has a plan for how that is going to ultimately result in good. Because I trust God, I can breathe easy as one who trusts in the sovereignty and providence of God: as the popular preacher Mark Driscoll sometimes says, I can sleep like a Calvinist.

-SEAN