Pray For God to Open the Door for Our Message

Col. 4: 2-4. 5

Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving;

With all praying also for us, that God would open unto us a door of the utterance, to speak the mystery of Christ, for which I am also in bonds:

That I may make it manifest, as I ought to speak.

Walk in wisdom toward them that are without, redeeming the time.

Let my speech be, always with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer every man.

Jesus Christ is preeminent in the church as its creator and savior. He is its life and leader, and to him alone may the church submit. The whole body must remain rooted and grounded in him.

Rather than become enchanted with empty speculation and traditions. Jesus Christ is supreme in salvation. Man and church doctrine have become the real savior as if God just supplies the words and the atmosphere.

In him (Jesus) all man-made distinctions fade and barriers fall. Man is deciding what is truth for the day. The barriers that God has put up, man is busy pulling down.   

The devil has created what the bible declares as an abomination and many men and women participate in today, and the government has made legal God still says in his word NO! NO! NO!

He has made all Christians into one family in which all members are equal in forgiveness when seeking through repentance the forgiving and turning away from sins. When he becomes all that matters, first and last. The Alpha and Omega.

The description of what is going on in many areas of the church can only be said as a total lack of holiness and plain old secular humanism.

This brings us to the over looked subject of the Doctrine of the Providence of God:

1.      1.  Definition of Providence

Providence is that continuous agency of God by which he makes all the events of the physical and moral universe fulfills the original design with which he created it.

(ai.) Providence is not to be taken merely in its “etymological” sense of “foreseeing.” It is foreseeing also, or a positive agency in connection with all the events of history.

(bi.) Providence is to be distinguished from preservation. While preservation is a maintenance of the existence and powers of created things, providence is an actual care and control of them.

(c.) Since the original plan of God is all-comprehending, the providence which executes the plan is all-comprehending also, embracing within its scope things small and great, and exercising care over individuals as well as over classes.

(d.) In respect to the good acts of men, providence embraces all those natural influences of birth and surroundings which prepare men for the operation of God’s word and spirit and which constitute motives to obedience.

(e.) In respect to the evil acts of men, providence is never the efficient cause of sin, but is by turns preventative, permissive, directive, and determinative.

(f.) Since Christ is the only revealer of God, and he is the medium of every divine activity, providence is to be regarded as the work of Christ;

See 1 Cor. 8:6-one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things.

6- But to us there is but one God, The Father, of whom are all things, and we in him: and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things and we by him.

See John 5:17-“My father worketh even until now, and I work”

These problems that men ask of God’s providential dealings are intelligible only when we consider that Christ is the revealer of God, the sent Holy Spirit that their suffering for sin opens to us the heart of God. All history is the progressive manifestation of Christ’s holiness and love, and in the cross we have the key that unlocks the secret of the universe. With the cross in view, we can believe that love rules over all, and that “all things work together for the good to them that love God, and are called, to them who the called by the fulfilling to his purpose.

God’s providence with respect to men’s evil acts is described in scripture as of four sorts:

(a.) Preventive- God by his providence prevents sin which would otherwise be committed. That he thus prevents sin is to be regarded as matter, not of obligation, but of grace. Whether a gift or a mercy.

There are times when God restraints, and interferes with the pains and sufferings caused by sins. He mercifully checks the fatal pursuits of sin. Parents, church, biblical teachings, laws, age with wisdom, diseases, death, are all of them preventative influences. Although the enemy has come up with clever deal that corrupts the power of free speech, and if that’s not enough add to that the doctrine of humanism. The both raise their evil voices everywhere.

Man sometimes finds himself on the brink of a precipice of sin and strong temptations which will try to hurry him on to make the fatal leap. Suddenly every nerve relaxes, all desire for the evil things are gone, and he recoils from the fearful brink over which he was just now going to plunge

(b.)Permissive- 2 Chron. 32:31; Deut 8:2 ; Psa. 17: 13,14

God gives Men in his training of them to cherish and manifest the evil dispositions of their hearts. God’s permissive providence is simply the negative act of withholding impediments from the path of the sinner, instead of preventing his sin by the exercise of divine power. It implies no ignorance, passivity, or indulgence, but consists with hatred of the sin and determination to punish it. 

Psa. 81: 12, 13

(c.) Directive- Gen. 50:20; Psa. 16:10

God directs the evil acts of men to ends unforeseen and unintended by the agents. When evil is in the heart and will certainly come out, God orders its flow in one direction rather than in another, so that its course can be best controlled and least harm may result. This is sometimes called overruling providence.

(d.) Determinative- Job 1:12; Job 2:6; Psa. 124:2

God determines the bounds reached by the evil passions of his creatures, and the measure of their effects. Since moral evil is a germ capable of indefinite expansion, God’s determining the measure of its growth does not alter its character or involve God’s complicity with the perverse wills which cherish it.

The union of God’s will and man’s  will such that, while in one view all can be ascribed to god, in another all can be ascribed to the creature. But how God and the creature are united in operation is doubtless known and knowable only to God. A very dim analogy is furnished in the union of the soul and body in Men. The hand retains its own physical laws, yet is obedient to the human will. The theory I pose recognizes the veracity of consciousness in its witness to personal freedom, and yet the completeness of God’s control of both the bad and the good. Free beings are ruled, but are rues as free and in their freedom. The freedom is not sacrificed to the control. The two coexist, each in its integrity. Any doctrine which not allow this is false to scripture and destructive of religion.

P.S

I pray that you all would pray for me and the ministry I pastor according to Col. 4: 2-5, that a door would open unto us to minister the word of God, and the barriers that would try to stop that move would be stopped.

Ps.119:121-132-

Plns-126: It is time for the Lord to act; they have frustrated your word.

121: I have done justice and righteousness; Leave me not to those who would express me.

123: My eyes fail anything for your salvation, and for the fulfillment of your righteous promise.

128: Therefore I esteem as right all, yes, all your precepts; I hate every false way.

130: The entrance of your word, and the unfolding of your word bring light; it gives authoritative light understanding, discernment, and comprehension to the simple.

134: Deliver me from the oppression of man; so will I keep your precepts hearing, receiving, loving and obeying them.

2 Sam 22:4- I call on the Lord, who is worthy to be praised, and I am saved from my enemies.

Rev. 4:11- Worthy are you; our Lord and God, to receive the glory and the honor and dominion, for you created all things; by your will they were(brought into being) and were created. 

Thank you for reading!
Pastor James P. Norman Jr.