Are All Things Working Together for Good?

I listened to my car radio on a recent morning and heard a transmitted voice say words like these:

“‘All things work together for good to them who love God....’ Does this promise include tragedy and disasters? It’s easy to see God’s hand when blessings are flowing. It’s tougher when all we sense is bad news.”

The voice was that of Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer, author of over 30 books, including “Hitler’s Cross” and “Oprah, Miracles, and the New Earth.” Born in Canada in 1941, Lutzer serves as senior pastor of Moody Church in Chicago, Illinois. I often hear most of his 15-minute “Running to Win” broadcast while driving to work in Aberdeen, N.C.

Lutzer said two men in his church engaged in extramarital affairs but now want to renew relationships with their wives. He asked his radio audience if “all things were working together for good” for those men. He heard those men cry out to God at a prayer meeting after they proved unfaithful to their wedding vows, he noted, adding that God didn’t cause the men to sin but would use their sins to shape their repentant hearts.

Lutzer also said God allows people to get cancer. I thought about the verse he quoted: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28, KJV).

The Amplified Bible renders that verse this way: “We are assured and know that (God being a partner in their labor) all things work together and are (fitting into a plan) for good to and for those who love God and are called according to (His) design and purpose.”

I’ve heard people say, “All things work together for good,” and leave off the rest of that verse. All things do not work together for good for folk who fail to get under the “umbrella of God’s grace.” If someone dies before placing faith in Christ, his future will be horrible, according to the Bible.

“The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 13:41-42).

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (John 3:16-17).

Those who have not accepted Christ stand “condemned already”! “The Message Bible” offers this explanation of John 3:16-17: “This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn't go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.”

No, all things do not work together for good for everyone. St. Paul wrote, however, that God uses things that happen in the lives of those who love him to somehow work out for overall good in the end.

What does “to them that love God” mean? Nigel Turner says that in Jesus’ teaching “loving God” implies “being unconditionally available.”

What does “to them who are the called according to his purpose” mean? “Church” in the New Testament is translated from the Greek word “ekklesia” which comes from two words: “ek” meaning “out” and “kaleo” meaning to “call.” Christians are called “to be in the world but not of the world.”

Believers sometimes suffer. Wil Pounds says, “Suffering is not always a punishment for sin. Suffering should not produce a spirit of rebellion, but a stronger faith in God. God limits Satan (Job 1:11-12), and he cannot defeat the person who trusts in God.”

During times of prosperity, persecution or pain, each Christian faces this question: Do I believe God is good, that his Word is true and that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are "the called according to his purpose"?

Honoring Fathers

The first reported “Father’s Day” in the U.S. was observed on June 13, 1910, according to Wikipedia, which offers the following information:

Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Washington, heard in 1909 a sermon about the newly recognized Mother’s Day while she sat in Spokane’s Central Methodist Episcopal Church. She felt fatherhood needed recognition, too, and wanted to honor fathers like her father, William Smart, a Civil War veteran who raised his family alone on a rural farm in the state of Washington after his wife died giving birth to their sixth child.

Dodd enlisted Spokane Ministerial Association help in 1909 and arranged for the celebration of fatherhood in that city. On June 19, 1910, young members of the YMCA went to church wearing roses – a red rose to honor a living father and a white rose to honor a deceased father. Dodd traveled through the city in a horse-drawn carriage, carrying gifts to shut-in fathers.

In spite of support from the YWCA and churches, Father’s Day ran the risk of disappearing from the calendar. Mother’s Day was met with enthusiasm, but Father’s Day was often met with laughter. The holiday slowly gathered attention – but for the wrong reasons. It was the target of much satire, parody and derision, including jokes from the local Spokesman-Review newspaper. Many people saw it as the first step in filling the calendar with mindless promotions.

A bill to give national recognition to the holiday was introduced in Congress in 1913. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson traveled to Spokane to speak in a Father’s Day celebration and wanted to make it official, but Congress resisted, fearing it would become commercialized. President Calvin Coolidge recommended in 1924 that the U.S. observe the day but stopped short of issuing a national proclamation. Two earlier attempts to formally recognize the holiday had been defeated by Congress. In 1957, Maine’s Senator Margaret Chase Smith wrote a proposal accusing Congress of ignoring fathers for 40 years while honoring mothers. In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation honoring fathers by designating the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day. In 1972, President Richard Nixon made the day a permanent, legal and official national holiday.

Here are some quotes about fathers:

“A father is a fellow who has replaced the currency in his wallet with the snapshots of his kids,” someone said.

“My father was often angry when I was most like him,” said playwright Lillian Hellman.

American professional baseball player Harmon Killebrew said, “My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say, “You’re tearing up the grass.” Dad would reply, “We’re not raising grass. We’re raising boys.”

“The Christian father is really an instrument in God's hand,” someone said.

“No father is perfect, except “our Father who art in heaven,” a writer noted.

While his children were still young, Robert E. Lee, a West Point graduate who later led the Confederate Army during the U.S. Civil War, reportedly went walking one morning. Snow had fallen the night before. As Lee walked, he heard faint, small footsteps behind him. Looking back, he found Custis, his little boy, walking in the tracks Lee made in the snow. The boy struggled to put his feet in the exact footprints left by his father.

“When I saw this,” Lee told a friend, “I said to myself, ‘It behooves me to walk very straight when this fellow is already following in my tracks.’”

Someone said a “Father’s Orders” are given in Deuteronomy 6:4-9: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.”

Nothing Between

We sometimes let something or someone get between Christ and us, but we should let nothing come between “our souls and our Savior.”

Years ago, I met a lady in her thirties – let’s call her “Jan” – who said she had a Christian upbringing and had gone to some good meetings. She told about a special evening. Our conversation went like this:

“I was slain in the Spirit at a church one night,” Jan said.

“I’ve never had that happen to me,” I said. "What was it like?”

“A young evangelist put his hands on my head and prayed for me,” she said. “I went down on the floor. It was wonderful.”

“That must have been encouraging,” I said. “How are you doing with the Lord, now?”

“Well, I’m not where I should be,” Jan said.

“What happened?” I asked.

She paused and said, “Well, I’m in a relationship.”

She said no more about her “relationship.” I sensed she probably lived with a man who was unwilling to commit to marriage. She had let someone come between her soul and her Savior.

I wondered if Jan was “saved” but living in a “back-slidden condition.” I also wondered if she had ever really been saved. Many of us grow up knowing how to talk the talk about church and Christianity. Some of us, moved by true Holy Spirit conviction, go to altars, shed tears and make commitments, but various things happen to the seed that was sown (Mark 4:1-20).

For the converted, life is not easy. “We tend to live ‘in’ and ‘out’ of the Word,” a friend told me. Fellowship with Christ can wax and wane (strengthen and weaken). One day we we’re “walkin’ on water,” and the next day, we’re hollering, “Jesus, take the wheel!” The writer of Hebrews tells us to “lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us” (Hebrews 12:1).

A song called “Nothing Here to Hinder Me” contains these lyrics: “Many times, I’m tossed about / Many times, I do without / Many times, my heart is burdened down with care / But I know, if I’ll stand true / That some day He’ll see me through / If I won’t let nothing here hinder me.” The chorus contains these words: “I don’t want nothing here to hinder me / For someday his blessed face I long to see / It makes no difference what the cost / Or how heavy my cross / I don’t want nothing here to hinder me.”

Daniel “purposed in his heart” that he would not “spoil’ himself by eating “the king’s meat” in Babylon. Through the Holy Spirit’s power, we can purpose to let nothing hinder our relationships with Christ.

I love the hymn “Nothing Between” by C.A. Tindley. Here are its words:

“Nothing between my soul and the Savior / Naught of this world's delusive dream / I have renounced all sinful pleasure / Jesus is mine! There’s nothing between.

“Nothing between my soul and the Savior / So that His blessed face may be seen / Nothing preventing the least of His favor / Keep the way clear! There’s nothing between.

“Nothing between, like worldly pleasure / Habits of life, though harmless they seem / Must not my heart from Him ever sever / He is my all! There’s nothing between.

“Nothing between, like pride or station / Self or friends shall not intervene / Though it may cost me much tribulation / I am resolved! There’s nothing between.

“Nothing between, e’en many hard trials / Though the whole world against me convene / Watching with prayer and much self-denial / Triumph at last, with nothing between.”