Lightbulb Moment

I came across a Bible verse that hit me like a blinding light which revealed all the corners of darkness and confusion I had in my mind and heart. I have read this verse, literally 100+ times and never seen it in the light that I did only recently.

I work at a Christian school; grades preK-12 but I am in the high school office. It's not uncommon for me to have deep, theological conversations with students on a daily basis. And it's amazing that I get to do so at my workplace! It's challenging. It's convicting. It's sobering to hear the student's hungry-souls struggle over the hard truths of the Bible. And there are hard things to mentally grasp in God's Word. But the amazing thing about the Bible is that it is able to regenerate a 4 year old and able to regenerate a 90 year old heart. It's that personal. It's that illuminating. It's that diverse and relevant.

Philippians 2 verses 12-13 says, "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure."

How could I not have seen it before? God's sovereignty displayed in this verse. The age-old discussion of 'Choice v. Divine Will'; 'Free-will v. Pre-Destination'. It all makes sense when we realize what verse 13 says, "for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure."

"So my working and willing are necessary. They are real. But they are not first or ultimately decisive. God’s willing and working is decisively under and in my willing and working. The word “for” is crucial. I work because he is working in me. I will, because he is willing in me."

[and this is crucial] "Believing this precedes understanding how it works. God says it. I believe it. Now I am spending a lifetime learning what it is like to live this way.

Paul did not just tell me to live this way. He modeled living this way one chapter later. He said in Philippians 3:12,'Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.'

His pressing on to secure the resurrection from the dead (v. 11) is rooted in Christ’s decisively securing him for the resurrection from the dead. In other words, all Paul’s striving is real, and it is certain because Christ makes it certain. He modeled the same thing in 1 Corinthians 15:10, 'I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.' So abandon any anti-Bible intellectual baggage you have inherited from planet earth, and recalibrate your brain to embrace the paradoxes of real human choice and decisive divine sway." - John Piper

We have an impossibly gracious, powerful, loving God who is in control of all things. Praise be to God!