This Is God's Plan?! How We Can Be Certain In Days of Uncertainty

By Bob Jennerich

Is THIS God's Plan?

Are you wondering how disease, disunity, disorder, disappointment, and disaster can be part of a loving God's plan for the world? If you are, this book is for you.

 

God is good, all-powerful, and has a plan. It's hard to see by looking at the world today. Let's face it. The world is a mess. How can we possibly make sense of it?

 

If you are a Christian and struggling with doubt, this book may strengthen your wavering faith in these uncertain days. If you're on the fence, maybe believing in a God who permits evil and suffering is hard for you. If you're willing to consider the possibility that God exists and is working out His plan, this book is for you. God is much bigger than any single event He allows. By studying God's works in creation, the Fall, redemption, and the prophecy of promised future restoration, we can have confidence that He is in control.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bob Jennerich
• Release date: Feb 26, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201136956

Book preview

Prologue

Proper perspective

It would be silly to try to use a microscope to examine Saturn’s rings, Jupiter’s moons, or distant galaxies. A microscope can magnify small objects, but it can’t help you observe planets, stars, or galaxies. To see large, far away objects, you need a telescope. The Hubble telescope has multiple lenses and a 2.4-meter mirror that can detect and observe stars and galaxies billions of light years away. When scientists focus Hubble on distant galaxies, they are literally looking back in time.

When we ask a question like, This is God’s plan?! we need the proper perspective. We must use a telescopic rather than a microscopic mindset. We need to look at the big picture. If we seek the answer microscopically, using only the narrow focus of our present historical moment, we won’t be able to gather enough evidence to provide proper perspective. Our natural tendency as time-and-space-bound humans is to think microscopically. We want to know why God would allow an event like 9/11 or a global pandemic. We ask, How can this be God’s plan?

Just as we can’t see the full beauty of the Mona Lisa if we stand an inch from the canvas, we can’t understand God’s plan for the world by looking only at current events. God is eternal. How could any event in our present historical moment serve as an adequate sample size to answer the question? Only a telescopic viewpoint can account for everything God has already done and has promised to do in the future. We are a blip on the timeline of eternity. We must think bigger than our present moment to have a clue about God’s plan. To approach the question telescopically, we need to study Creation, the Fall, Redemption, and Restoration. The Bible describes these events, even if sometimes only in broad strokes.

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My Goals for This Book

If you’re a Christian dismayed by the current state of the world, I wrote this book for you. Let it remind you that God is good, God is sovereign, and He has a plan. We can trust God’s plan, even if we can’t see how the events of our historical moment fit into it. If you’re not a Christian, my hopeful term for you is future Christian. If you can’t believe in a God who would allow all that He does in the world, I wrote this book for you. My goal is to persuade you not to judge God based on current events. God is much bigger than any single event He allows. He’s been working out His plan since eternity past. I hope this book will show you that if God were a forest, you can miss Him by looking at a single tree. I know that from personal experience.

I was an atheist until my mid-30’s. I used to argue with Christians that there couldn’t be a God because of the existence of evil in the world. What changed my mind was Jesus’ resurrection, which we’ll consider later. The resurrection of Jesus gave me telescopic perspective. God does allow evil, disease, and natural disaster; however, if God loved me enough to give His own Son to die to pay for my sins, then God must have a plan for the world today, even if I don’t understand.

Whether you’re a Christian or not, we must take the long view if we’re going to see how God works out his purposes. God’s goal throughout the ages is to bring Jesus glory. Jesus receives glory when people worship Him. God allows every circumstance to encourage all people to repent of their sins, to receive His gracious offer of salvation, and worship Jesus.

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The Problem with a Microscopic Perspective

Let me illustrate some problems with a narrow focus. How will history judge the year 2020? We might say it was the worst year we can remember. In mid-March, COVID-19 essentially shut down the world. Terms like sheltering in place, and quarantining, entered our vocabulary. People were dying by the thousands, and scientists had no answers to questions such as: What is this virus? How contagious and how deadly is it? Will it be like the Black Plague of the Middle Ages? What can we do to stop it or slow its progress? Early in the pandemic, there weren’t enough hospitals for the infected and not enough ventilators for people in need. Doctors had the uncomfortable task of deciding who got one and who didn’t. It was a full-blown crisis almost from day one.

Researchers worked around the clock to develop a vaccine. Once created, pharmaceutical companies scrambled to produce doses as quickly as possible. Because of the shortage of vaccines in the first few months, doctors developed a formula that ranked people according to age and risk. People waited to receive the vaccine. Over two million people died worldwide in 2020 from this virus, and as of this writing, the crisis is ongoing.

Besides the staggering death toll, the virus also caused immeasurable collateral damage. Stay-at-home orders and mandatory quarantine for those exposed triggered severe feelings of isolation and loneliness. Elderly people died alone in nursing homes, separated from their families. The economy suffered gravely. Small businesses closed. Millions of people lost their jobs, making them dependent on others for their survival. Churches closed; some permanently. Others settled on an online-only format, further isolating people. Depression, alcohol use, spousal abuse, and even suicide skyrocketed during the pandemic.

Covid affected the entire world. Experts say it originated in China. How it began is another matter. Did it develop naturally or was it intentionally developed in a lab? Was it released accidentally or was there a sinister motive? What did Chinese authorities know about the virus and when? These questions heightened international tensions and increased mistrust among the world’s largest powers. The United States, under Presidents Trump and Biden, insisted that the U.S. would hold China accountable. The possibility of war loomed.

If the pandemic weren’t enough, the world witnessed the most polarizing presidential election in American history in 2020. Relations between Republicans and Democrats moved from civil disagreement to open animosity, even hatred. Gone were the days when politicians disagreed while still respecting each other and the offices they held. To the dismay and horror of Republicans,