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Should God withdraw outward prosperity from His people, and hardships are experienced, there is still a sense in which He is doing good.
Divine Providence is always working THAT WHICH IS GOOD. Being afflicted yields correction for subsequent benefit, and is an exercise in strength, faith, patience, obedience and endurance. Anything that drives man closer to God is for good, therefore, temporary distresses work for the Christian an eternal weight of glory. The ungratifying circumstances can be numbered among God’s good gifts, and the expression of His beneficence if rightly used to lasting profit.
Jacob’s divisive thinking was changed from vanity to profit, through Divine Providence. He is a God of present help, present power, present refuge. Jacob or no other could have thought out that plan for present help – Divine Providence took care of it all, and Jacob must have rejoiced in such a deliverance from a plotting, scheming mind, into the mind of one who could rightly be called Prince of God (Israel). This brought him into the place of a more personal experience with God, thus the expression – THE GOD OF JACOB (the God that Jacob experienced – the God of power and might).
Jesus Christ, our Providence, does not only see ahead, but watches over His people. He has a concentrated attention that extends to every place and circumstance, seeing into the minutest as also the largest situations, caring for the smallest as well as the greatest, watching over the affairs of men (their success and failure, even the most insignificant things), protecting and caring in every way.
Divine Providence has a restricting and preventing hand. Though man may be allowed to cherish and manifest his evil desires, it causes him to either hate and despise the evil, or through God’s providence, submit his will to be united with God’s will in the operation of righteousness, or love and embrace evil to his own destruction.
God is in perfect control of good and evil, yet every man is free, but justice must be meted out to the rebellious and mercy for all who seek mercy.
Divine Providence secures moral order in the world, a power to discourage vice and encourage virtue. The circumstances that govern man from birth (environmental, etc.) are not humanly controlled, and man, being a creature of choice, is able through Divine Providence (God’s intervention) to escape destruction or whatever is determined against him. God is directly involved with His creation, and will always allow particular events to work His perfect will – whether it be in working virtue in, or evil out of us.
Rejoice therefore, and let the circumstances work in us that which nothing else could do. Circumstances change things for good or evil, but God’s intervention will always cause that change to be FOR GOOD.