We need the fuller story to really grasp what is going on – in our own and others’ lives.
The truth of this reality is clearly seen in PGA Touring Pro Ben Crane’s recent victory at the FedEx St. Jude Classic. To understand more of this story, take 2 minutes and watch this interview with Ben, filmed on January 4, 2014, six months before the victory in Memphis. (Credits to Michael Blodgett of College Golf Fellowship.)
I watched the interview with Ben after his victory. He said, “I had to finally be ok with golf not being in the picture…”
When I played professional golf, oh so many years ago, one of the challenges I faced on a very regular basis, in part because of the nature of the game, was “Just how sovereign is God over life – including the flight of a golf ball or the roll of a putt?” This question pushed me to do a topical bible study on the sovereignty of God. While I was deeply challenged by what I found, that study formed a deep foundation upon which I have built my life since then.
Ben’s comment shows the mark of someone who has wrestled with that same idea, that same God.
Jonathan Edwards is considered by many to be the greatest theologian the United States has ever produced. I have read two biographies about him, read several of his books, and read those who have been impacted by him like John Piper, and would thoroughly agree. As he grew up in the Puritan environment of New England in the early 1700s, the sovereignty of God was a troublesome burden for Edwards. However, during his senior year at Yale, his long-held “objections to God’s sovereignty suddenly disappeared”[1] as he came to recognize the larger scope of God’s sovereignty and personal nature of every aspect of the universe. Rather than an impersonal universe, Edwards came to see that “everything, even inanimate matter, was a personal communication from God.”[2] This new insight now turned God’s sovereignty from a horrible doctrine to a “delightful conviction”[3] and brought with it a new spiritual sense, one where he was “overwhelmed by a new sense, quite different from anything I have ever experienced before.”[4] This new sense was a “sort of inward, sweet delight in God and divine things.”[5] He now experienced and responded to the love of God that he longed to experience and which marked true conversion.
Like Ben Crane, Jonathan Edwards wrestled with this idea, this God, and, like Ben Crane, came to the place that accepting God’s sovereignty was not a doleful resignation but a sweet delight! How is your wrestling going these days?
