Unbroken

Church Family: I just finished reading Unbroken on the Fourth of July. It is the riveting story of Louis Zamperini, a B24 bombardier in World War II, and his near-daily escapes from death over two and half years (May 1943–August 1945). After he survived his B24 plane crashing into the Pacific Ocean after being shot down by Japanese Zeros, he endured 47 days adrift in shark-infested waters, surviving starvation, dehydration, and exposure. He survived daily shark attacks, with some sharks even jumping into his raft, and shootings from the Japanese toward his same little raft. Captured by the Japanese, he survived POW malnutrition and disease, and he even survived his execution date.

While God sustained Louis through these hardships day after day for over two years, he never saw God’s hand working, sustaining and protecting him. It was not until four years after his release from Japan, in the midst of a life consumed by alcoholism, when his wife coaxed him into going to a Billy Graham Crusade, that he responded to Jesus’s call to believe and repent and submit to God’s loving Lordship on his life (1949). Only then did Louis finally see God’s sovereign providential protection on his life to sustain him through two and a half years of darkness and torture, unbroken for his day of eternal salvation making him the man God wanted him to be.

Louis, as a Christian, looks back at his suffering saying, “God is a God who transforms. He takes the ashes of pain and creates beauty… He not only repairs, he renews, transforms, and glorifies… The difficulty will be transformed into a blessing, the weight of the struggles will give way to the lightness of joy, and when the breakthrough comes… you will look back and say, ‘God, you were there all the time… thank you for using my pain to bring me closer to you.” Louis quickly embraced the sovereignty and providence of God in his life through all his sufferings and torture to bring about great good for Louis.

Is it really that important to believe in God's providence and make daily decisions knowing He directs all things according to the counsel of His will? Absolutely! What is God’s providence? Providence is God’s sovereign oversight or governance of all things in creation. J.I. Packer writes, “Providence is God’s purposive personal management of your entire life with total ‘hands-on’ control: God is completely in charge of His world. His hand may be hidden, but His rule is absolute.”

It is very easy as a child of God to live and go about your daily affairs like Louis before becoming a Christian. You can go about your daily life without the slightest regard for God’s intimate personal involvement in what happens in your life. You can get up each day and pursue whatever responsibilities you have, all the while presumptuously taking for granted that you are even alive and that you are being cared for by God. You can live a defeated and anxious life, not remembering that He cares about every minor detail of your daily existence, and He is managing it all perfectly. This is why it is crucial for you to follow David’s lead as he was, once again, a hair’s breadth away from being murdered by King Saul in Psalm 57:1-2. David cries out, “Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for in you my soul takes refuge; in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge, till the storms of destruction pass by. I cry out to God Most High, to God who fulfills his purpose for me.”

David remembers that the reason he is being kept alive while Saul is literally 1mm from him, is because God wants him alive. God's providence empowered David to live a life unbroken from all the hardships. David looks back and recalls every time God has delivered and provided and protected him in the past. David remembering God’s providential plan for him emboldens him and fills him with hope that God has a purpose for him to be unbroken in all the turmoil. J.I. Packer says so well, “you are a child of the Most High God, you are never in the grip of blind forces, e.g. fortune, chance, luck, fate; all that happens to you is divinely planned, and each event in your life comes as a new directive to trust, obey, and rejoice, knowing that all that is happening is for your spiritual and eternal good.” A person may take action to harm you, or a troublesome event may be sparked by natural causes, or Satan and his spiritual forces of evil may be at work in your life, yet God overrules them all for your good and His glory. How has God worked perfectly in His providence in your life before? Will He not do it again? Live a life unbroken as you rest and are empowered by the providence of God.

See you Sunday, in the hand of the Most High: Steve