I create the light and make the darkness.  I send good times and bad times.
I, the Lord, am the one who does these things. (Isaiah 45:7NLT)

Into the lives of every Christian will come times of peacefulness and calamity. The God of the universe is sovereign over the good and bad times in our lives.

One thing I love about God and his Word is that he tells it like it is. We, as believers in Christ, often try to candy-coat Christianity. Indeed love, joy, and peace are a promise from the Bible, but we also see much pain and suffering mentioned on the pages of this book. Joy and sorrow are not mutually exclusive; they often coexist in the Bible and the real world. One of the keys to living a victorious Christian life is understanding that God is sovereign over the good and bad things that might happen to us.

God and man often have different connotations of good and bad. Often, good to man is what gives us a pleasant feeling. Good to God is not about just feelings but the long-term benefit for us. That is why God can say in 1 Corinthians 8:28 NLT, “And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.”  That means all things, the good and the bad, through the sovereignty of God, can work for our benefit.

The last segment of this verse is the most pivotal. We often emphasize “work together for good” and forget about “who love God and called according to his purpose.” If we believe that God is good all the time, in times of blessing and struggles, watch our sovereign God work the things we like and don’t together for our highest possible good.

I worked for seventeen years as a missionary with Youth With A Mission.  My missionary work has taken me to Mexico, Canada, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Spain, and Ukraine.  I hold a Masters of Education in curriculum and instruction from Virginia Commonwealth University.  [email protected]