Sermon Passage: Colossians 1:24-29
Matt Dirks
Over the past few months, I’ve been sharing with you some of the ups and downs in the roller-coaster ride we’ve had in caring for our extremely needy foster baby. Things were looking very good for us to be able to adopt him, but on Monday the coaster ride took a steep plunge: a judge ordered our baby to be returned to his birthmother within three months.
Cyndi and I are well-experienced in the setbacks that come in the adoption process, and we’re moving through this shocking disappointment in the same way we always have: first with disbelief, then anger, then resignation. Now we’re starting to laugh about things, and what’s most funny to me is that we received this news less than 18 hours after I opened my big mouth at church and preached on the value of suffering in our journey toward maturity in Christ. Maybe from now on I should preach more like Joel Osteen.
One thing I said Sunday night was that it’s essential to remind ourselves that God has a purpose for our suffering, even if we don’t know what it is. His purpose may be to discipline us and strip away the things in our lives that are unlike Christ. It may be a necessary part of God’s efforts to bless other people (as it was in Paul’s case). It may even be that we catch some collateral damage as God disciplines someone close to us.
Cyndi and I have no idea what God’s purpose is in all this. He’s taken us through countless nights of less than four hours of sleep and countless days when our baby wouldn’t stop crying no matter how much love we gave him. Now it looks like God is taking him away just as he was starting to develop a sense of security and trust. Why God would do that, we just don’t know.
What we do know (and what we’re repeating in our heads over and over) is that God is sovereign. He has a plan that cannot be stopped. And when we start to think otherwise, we’ll remind ourselves what Job said to God after he lost everything, “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.” (42:1-3).