Quotes by Derek Thomas
The idea is not so much that God breathed into the Scriptures, but that the Scriptures are the product of His breathing out.
There are various kinds of depression, to be sure, and some are the result of complex physical and psychological disorders. But there are times when we are spiritually depressed for no good reason. There are times when the best thing to do with our feelings is to challenge them: “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise Him, my salvation and my God” (Ps. 42:11).
No matter how dark things may appear to be, we must reckon with the invisible hand of God that works all things – yes, “all things” for our good (Rom. 8:28). As God’s children, we may not always appreciate what it is that God may be doing in our lives; but we are to trust that in every aspect of it God is fulfilling the best of plans that ultimately will be for our good. The alternative is too terrible to contemplate: things may contrive to negate the hand of God and ensure our doom. No! That can never be!
God loves details! It is in the details that we discern His hand of providence – ruling, directing, providing, sustaining, preventing, surprising. What may look catastrophic from one point of view will appear from another angle to be the outworking of a plan in which God is in full control.
Unbelief assumes a certainty of its own.
[Providence] insists that everything (yes, everything) that happens does so because God wills it to happen, wills it to happen before it happens, wills it to happen in the way that it happens. Such a view signals immediately that history is not arbitrary or fortuitous; neither is it “simple determinism,” “Que Sera, Sera” or, “whatever will be, will be,” as though our own choices and involvement have no relevance whatsoever, a fatalistic view more reflective of Islam than biblical Christianity.
It only requires one errant molecule in the universe to question the certainty of the future and unless we can be assured that everything is submissive to God’s sovereign rule, there is always the possibility that the future may not be as we have believed it to be.
Providence has wider issues in mind than merely our personal comfort or gain.
Only in the context of a firm belief in Scripture’s inerrancy has expository preaching thrived.