Sovereignty of God

Anxiety has become an unwelcome companion for many, creeping into everyday life with relentless persistence.

The most striking revelation is the pervasive nature of worry among younger Americans. An overwhelming 62% of Gen Z and millennial respondents report feeling constantly anxious, compared to 38% of older generations. On average, people spend two hours and 18 minutes each day caught in the grip of worrisome thoughts. This is a significant chunk of time that could otherwise fuel productivity, creativity, or personal growth.

The timing of these worry periods reveals interesting patterns. A third of respondents find themselves most anxious when alone. 30% are plagued by worries as they prepare to fall asleep. Another 17% are tormented by anxious thoughts upon waking. 12% experience peak worry while getting ready for bed.

When it comes to specific concerns:

53% of respondents cite money as their primary source of anxiety.
42% worry about their loved ones.
42% fret about pending tasks and to-do lists.
37% have health concerns
22% have sleep anxiety (22%),
19% are concerned by political uncertainties

For parents, the concerns extend far beyond personal anxieties. 77% express profound worry about the world their children are inheriting, with 34% specifically calling out climate change as a significant concern.

One parent’s raw emotion captures this generational anxiety: “Honestly, I worry that there won’t be a world for my child to grow up in.”

Possible Preaching Angle:
How many minutes a day do you spend worrying? Instead, turn your anxieties over to the Lord and pray as David did “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts…and lead me in the way everlasting.” (Psa. 139:23). Jesus knows your tendency to worry and he said, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life… your heavenly Father knows what you need.” (Matt. 6:25-34)

In her book, Aging Faithfully, Alice Fryling writes about what she learned from insomnia:

Sleep has always been difficult for me, but about the time I turned sixty, insomnia came banging at my door. I lay awake every night for hours. Sometimes in anxiety, sometimes in boredom. I prayed every night that God would help me sleep. That didn't work. It only made my insomnia worse because then I would lie awake trying to solve the theological issues around unanswered prayer.

One tired morning as I sat in quiet, I began to wonder why God created us to sleep in the first place. If I were God, I would want people to stay awake to help take care of the world. But for about eight hours out of every twenty-four, God designed us to be asleep.

I realized that when I sleep, I am out of control. When I experience insomnia, I am also out of control. I certainly cannot make myself go to sleep. Perhaps insomnia and sleep accomplish the same purpose. In other words, insomnia was a reminder, like sleep, that we do not control our own lives, let alone the world. God is our Creator and is the one in charge.

My ‘theology of sleep’ is my own personal reminder that God is God and I am not. God is in control of my life, my waking and sleeping hours, in loving, creative, grace-filled ways. Apparently, my being out of control is part of God's design.

Every 13- or 17-years a remarkable event of nature happens - cicadas emerge from more than a decade underground. How do they keep track of time? This is one of the “seven biological wonders of the world,” according to John Cooley, a biologist at the University of Connecticut.

“Seventeen [years] is just an inordinately long time to keep track of anything,” adds John Lill, an insect ecologist at George Washington University. “I can’t keep track of five years let alone 17, myself—so how an insect does it is pretty remarkable.”

During their long stint underground, the insects sip at xylem sap, the nutrient-poor but water-rich liquid that moves from a tree’s root tips up to its canopy. Each year as a tree buds and blossoms, its xylem is briefly richer in amino acids, leading one team of researchers to call it “spring elixir.” Cicadas appear to count each flush of spring elixir.

Another researcher said, “We know that’s what they count. Where they’re putting their little chalk marks on the wall, we don’t know. We really don’t understand how they’re keeping track of it.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

God’s timetable is even more mysterious. James tells us to “be patient until the coming of the Lord” (Jam. 5:7) Peter adds, “A day with the Lord is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promises” (2 Pet 3:8-9). God’s timetable is higher than ours so we must trust in Him and his perfect timing.

Many of us go to extraordinary lengths to avoid learning the endings of films we haven't watched or books we haven't read. We get upset with friends who slip up and spill the surprise ending.

But a study from two researchers at the University of California, San Diego suggests that spoilers don't spoil stories. Instead, contrary to popular wisdom, they might even enhance our enjoyment of a story. The study ran experiments based on 12 short stories. The researchers found that the study participants preferred the "spoiled" versions of suspenseful stories. For example, in one case, participants were told before reading the story that a condemned man's daring escape is all just a fantasy before the noose snaps around his neck. That spoiler alert helped them enjoy the story even more.

Researchers have identified several reasons some of us like to find out what happens in a story before they’ve finished.

In an article for The Washington Post Olga Mecking says some people are happier knowing how the story ends. “After I became a mother, I developed a much lower tolerance for stress and tension. One way I deal with this is to embrace spoilers. If the action on the page or screen is too suspenseful, I go online to look up what happens next and release some of that tension.”

Researchers also explored tension in the 2011 study “Story Spoilers Don’t Spoil Stories.” When study participants were told the outcome of the short story they were about to read, they reported being more satisfied with the overall experience compared with when they read a story unspoiled.

When so much in the world feels uncertain, knowing how a film or a book will end can give audiences a sense of peace and a feeling of control. We don't know what will happen in real life, but at least we can find out what happens in this story.

Possible Preaching Angles:

As followers of Christ, the Bible has many "spoiler alerts" about how the story of our lives or the world will end. Does this diminish our enjoyment of the story? No, the Bible's spoiler alerts can help us "focus on a deeper understanding of the story" and give us peace inside of worry.

When jurors are seated onto a panel for a trial, they’re expected to assist in the pursuit of justice. But rarely does it result in a literal foot pursuit.

However, the trial of Nicholas Carter was the exception to the rule. The Portland Press Herald reported that 31-year-old Carter had just been convicted of aggravated assault against a 14-month-old when he attempted to escape custody by running out of the courtroom while his hands were cuffed.

Detective Jeremy Leal was present in the second-floor courtroom at the time. After Carter bolted, Leal and several judicial marshals immediately gave chase, following Carter down the stairs and toward the exterior door.

“All of sudden, we hear this huge bang. Crash. Boom,” said attorney Dawn DiBlasi. “And this guy comes running down the stairs. He’s handcuffed or shackled. He’s trying to escape. Literally, he’s got his hands on the railing, coming down, trying to jump three stairs at a time. His feet weren’t shackled.”

Security footage from the incident shows another attorney, who happened to be waiting in the hallway, attempting to thwart Carter’s escape, but he was unsuccessful. Carter eventually made it outside, crossed the street, and then tripped and fell in a yard.

That’s when he was apprehended by two other men, bystanders who just happened be to serving the court as jurors in a different case, according to Sheriff Dale Lancaster. As they held him down, Detective Leal was able to bring Carter back into custody.

Nicholas Carter now faces additional charges for the escape attempt.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Just as this guilty man tried to run but was captured, there is no one fast enough or wily enough to escape the Lord’s judgment.

An article in The Wall Street Journal notes that “Some American soldiers returned from Afghanistan bearing scars or missing limbs. Others have wounds invisible to those around them, or even to themselves.”

The article highlights the story of Tyler Koller. Raised in a conservative Christian home, Koller joined the Army at the age of 18, and his first deployment was with Bravo Company. In his Army days, the fire in Koller’s belly was stoked by belief in his mission and faith in a just and loving God. He’d gather his squad to say a prayer before they stepped out of the wire to go on patrol, and he wouldn’t ever say a cuss word, even though his fellow troops used to offer him money to say the F-word out loud. “No way,” he’d say. It would be an affront to the Lord and to his mother, who raised him in the Pentecostal church.

Koller wasn’t physically broken in Afghanistan, but something did happen to him. Like many men and women who went to Iraq and Afghanistan in over 20 years of war, he suffered a moral injury. A soldier heads to a war zone with a carefully tuned moral compass that parents and preachers and teachers and friends have helped to calibrate.

But in a combat zone, soldiers see, hear, and do things that aren’t aligned with the true north of that moral compass. Koller saw horrible things in Afghanistan: the killing of American and Taliban soldiers but also the inadvertent maiming of children. He learned of bacha bazi, a slang term for the sexual abuse of young boys by corrupt Afghan policemen.

“The faith that I had went away,” Koller said, though “I have hope in my heart that there’s a higher being out there.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

This is a negative illustration, but it can raise questions around suffering or the problem of evil. What does your sermon text or biblical theme say about how to maintain your faith in the midst of suffering and evil?

Many have wondered what place AI or robots will have in the future. They will make life easier, but could robots replace the world’s greatest artists?

Filippo Tincolini and Giacomo Massari formed Litix, a company that creates sculptures on commission for artists, architects, and designers. They sell their technology to clients around the world, including three sizes of Litix’s signature robot and proprietary software to program the robot for sculpting.

Massari said, “What used to take months or even years can now be done in days. Machines can run round-the-clock. They don’t get sick or sleep or go on vacation.” One of his favorite stories is about Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss, Antonio Canova’s 1793 neoclassical masterpiece that sits in the Louvre. “It took Canova five years,” Massari said. To make a replica it “took our machine … less than 12 days.”

The robot does not put on the finishing touch. “… the final details will be executed by human sculptors—even Litix’s techno-evangelist owners don’t pretend that its machines can match the finest subtleties of human artisanship.”

“It took the robot four days to complete its work on Flowered Slave. Artisans then spent another 20 days finishing the work by hand—what Tincolini calls ‘“giving life to the sculpture.”’

By contrast, Enzo Pasquini has worked only with hand tools since his days as an apprentice more than 70 years ago. Around town he’s known as a master who can carve the most elaborate details into stone. “I have to do it the old way. But you have to go with the times. There are fewer and fewer young people who want to do the hard physical labor. But machines won’t change the sensitivity of the work. You will always need the sculptor for that.”’

Possible Preaching Angle:

In the same way, no matter how many intelligent computer programs we use to solve problems, or even how many skilled humans are involved, people will always need the Master Sculpture to finish what he started in our lives. “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6).

In CT magazine, Brad East reflects on Olympic athletes sharing their Christian testimony:

The opening ceremonies of the Olympics are extravagant celebrations of national glories and global unity. But if you watch past the opener to the 2024 Games themselves, you’ll notice an unusual pattern: Athletes are always talking about God. Athletes of every kind continuously gave God the credit, often in explicitly Christian terms.

For my money, US track star Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone won. After breaking the world record (again) for women’s 400-meter hurdles, she answered a reporter’s question this way: “Honestly—praise God. I was not expecting that, but he can do anything. Anything is possible in Christ. I’m just amazed, baffled, and in shock.” The reporter laughed nervously and moved on to the next qualifier.

It’s not news that athletes thank the Lord for their success. But watching these public displays of piety made me wonder: Why is this still normal? Unlike other events, like the Oscars, sporting events appear to be the last refuge of “acceptable” public faith in our secular culture. In a time when belief is belittled, ignored, or relegated to one’s private life, athletes are unapologetically faithful in public. But why?

The place to start, I think, is the nature of sports itself. Athletic discipline is rigorously controlled because, when the whistle blows, nothing is under control. It’s chaos, contingency, and chance all the way down. The skies fill with rain clouds; the court is slick with sweat; the track is spongy; your opponents are strategically unpredictable.

With good reason, therefore, athletes turn to God. None but God is sovereign. I can’t control the weather, but he can. I can’t stop my body from failing, but he can. Even the wind and the waves obey him (Matt. 8:27). Shouldn’t footballs and softballs obey him too?

For athletes, God isn’t just in charge of the moment. He’s the governor of history. This is true for all of us, at all times, but elite athletes are viscerally reminded of it with a frequency few of us experience.

It should come as no surprise, then, that a victorious athlete will speak of more than God answering a prayer. Sure, they may be caught up in the moment. Deep down, though, they’re expressing faith in divine providence. It’s one more way to be clear about control. None of us has it, because only God does, and the sooner one recognizes that, the sooner peace is possible when losing and real joy available when winning.

“The first duty of every soul is to find not its freedom but its Master” (P.T. Forsyth, 19th-century Scottish Theologian).

But who wants a master? The answer is: You do if you know what’s good for you. Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson (not yet a Christian) has 40,000 hours of counseling under his belt, and here is what he says he learned from all that listening to people:

You don’t get away with anything. You might think you can bend the fabric of reality … and violate your conscience without cost. But that is just not the case; you will pay the piper. When you pay, you might not even notice the casual connection between the sin and the payment. People’s lives take a twist, and they go very badly wrong. And when you walk back though people’s lives with them, you come to these choice points where you meet the devil at the crossroads, and you find out that you went left, let’s say, and downhill, when you should have gone right and uphill. And now you’re paying the price for that.

President Abraham Lincoln’s biographer, Jon Meacham argues that Lincoln's version of Christian faith was complicated. But Meacham also adds, “There is no doubt, however, that the Lincoln of the White House years became more religiously inclined, attending services with some regularity and meeting with ministers and congregants.” Lincoln became more convinced of the sovereign purposes of a God who oversees world events.

At one point. Lincoln said, “I may not be a great man. I know I'm not a great man—and perhaps it is better than it is so—for it makes me rely upon One who is great and who has the wisdom and power to lead us safely through this great trial [of the Civil War.]”

Pop R&B duo Hall & Oates, hitmakers in the late 70s and early 80s, made their unlikely team-up thanks to a series of unfortunate setbacks, one of which involved an incident of gun violence.

Daryl Hall and John Oates both grew up in suburban Philadelphia and attended Temple University. Hall studied music while Oates majored in journalism, but both remained involved in musical groups during their teenage years. Hall was with a group called the Temptones; Oates was part of The Masters.

In 1967, both groups were invited to play a dance at the Adelphi Ballroom. It was sponsored by radio disc jockey Jerry Bishop, who promised airtime to the groups who played. Oates later said in an interview, “When Jerry Bishop contacted you, you had to go. If you didn’t, your record wouldn’t get played on the radio.”

Daryl and John were at the Adelphi at the same time, but didn’t meet each other until a fracas broke out before the show started. “We were all getting ready for the show to start when we heard screams—and then gunshots,” Oates said in 2016. “It seemed a full-scale riot had erupted out in the theater, not a shocker given the times. Philly was a city where racial tensions had begun to boil over.”

The show was canceled, but because the show was happening on an upper floor, the only way out for the musicians was to take a small service elevator. Daryl and John ended up standing next to each other, striking up a nervous conversation. Hall remembers saying, “Oh, well, you didn’t get to go on, either. How ya doin’?”

By the time they met each other again on campus to reminisce on their brush with tragedy, Oates’ group had been disbanded, so he joined the Temptones as a guitarist. Then later, after the Temptones disbanded, they continued their musical friendship as roommates.

But their partnership didn’t truly solidify until Oates returned from a trip to Europe and found himself in dire need of shelter. With nowhere else to go, John showed up to crash at Daryl’s house. And the rest is history. Oates said, “That was our true birth as a duo.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Even when we don't get what we want, God knows how to use any circumstance to bring us one step closer to our destiny in his will.

Dieunerst Collin is one of the latest collegiate athletes to sign an NIL deal. The 2021 NCAA policy that allows athletes to receive compensation in exchange for sponsors who use their name, image, and/or likeness. Collin, a freshman offensive lineman for the Lake Erie College Storm football team, is now being sponsored by Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen.

It wasn’t only Collin’s stellar play that put him on Popeye’s radar for a sponsorship. Collin has been associated with the brand for a long time because, as a young boy, he was captured on a short video inside of a Popeyes restaurant that ended up as a source of bullying and ridicule.

While he was waiting for his father and brother to return from the restroom, a teenager began filming Collin, claiming he looked like a kid version of a local rapper. The video was uploaded to Vine (a defunct video sharing service), where it went viral. It was eventually turned into various GIFs and memes that people used for comedic purposes. Collin became known as the “Popeyes Meme Kid.”

Collin told CNN,

When it happened, we didn’t want to be in the spotlight. People were coming to my dad and saying, “Hey, we’ve seen your kid on this,” trying to make a joke of it. My dad didn’t like it for his kids to be joked on. But now, the fact that I switched it into a blessing, he likes it.

As a teenager Collin helped win a state championship for East Orange Campus High School in New Jersey, and was given first-team all-conference honors. At the conclusion of his freshman season at Lake Erie, Collin tweeted in affirmation from someone who suggested that Popeyes should sign the young man to an endorsement deal. A few days later, the deal was official.

Collin is now featured on a new video, on the official Popeyes Instagram account, touting his accomplishments as Collin says words of affirmation to his younger self:

This is where the story started, the moment that made us a meme. We didn’t ask for it, but don’t worry, little man, we didn’t let it stop us. We learned to lean in, we turned the attention into motivation, and the motivation into championships. From memes to dreams.

Possible Preaching Angle:

In his grace, God can use episodes of bullying or ridicule and redeem them to show your worth and his goodness.

In a review of A.J. Swoboda’s book Dusty Roads, Leslie Fields writes:

We all have stories of getting lost. Here is one of mine: I crossed the Sahara one year on an expedition truck with 20 others, meandering from Cairo into the heart of Africa. We got lost often, once for three days, wandering farther and farther into the African bush with insufficient water, no GPS, and no people to point the way out. We were tense: we had to get off the dirt roads before the monsoon rains began. For most of those months, we were covered in dust, breathing through bandanas, praying we’d find the right path.

That’s one kind of “lost narrative.” Here’s another: As I write, I am on the brink of major life changes—some prayed for, a few drastic and unwelcome. I find myself stumbling, fearful, uncertain of these new snaking roads and unsure of God’s place in it all. Then I feel guilty. Where is my faith? Why am I not “counting it all joy” and skipping confidently into the sunny future?

A. J. Swoboda’s book, The Dusty Ones: Why Wandering Deepens Your Faith, came to my door at the right time. It is, of course, about the second kind of trek: our pilgrimage toward the city of God, with its painful desert crossings and wanderings.

We all want a life marked by straight paths, smooth roads, and victorious arrivals. But as Swoboda argues, wandering is “an inescapable theme of the Christian experience,” even if the church has often minimized its inevitable role in every pilgrim’s progress.

Returning to my own story, our expedition truck arrived in Mombasa five months later, nearly on schedule. We beat the monsoon rains, but the trip was not just about getting there. Every village, waterhole, and sandpit along the way had purpose and value. So it is with our lives. Swoboda reminds us that “Christian spirituality is a slow train that must inevitably stop at every little Podunk town in our life—nothing can be skipped over.”

Job, Epicurus, Augustine, C.S. Lewis, and other famous thinkers wrestled with explaining why an all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful God would allow suffering.

Amid the pandemic and its 6.4 million reported deaths (as of August, 2022), the Pew Research Center surveyed 6,485 American adults—including 1,421 evangelicals—in September 2021. They were asked about how they philosophically “make sense of suffering and bad things happening to people.”

Among the survey’s main findings:

7 in 10 American adults agree that suffering is “mostly a consequence of people’s own actions.”

7 in 10 agree that suffering is “mostly a result of the way society is structured.”

8 in 10 believe—either in “God as described in the Bible” (58%) or in “a higher power or spiritual force” (32%)—yet say most suffering “comes from the actions of people, not from God.”

7 in 10 believe human beings are “free to act in ways that go against the plans of God or a higher power.”

5 in 10 believe God allows suffering because it is “part of a larger plan.”

4 in 10 believe Satan is responsible for most of the world’s suffering.

Less than 2 in 10 say they have doubted God’s omnipotence, goodness, or existence because of suffering.