God’s Sovereignty

It is a very difficult thing to have your plans changed when you have worked them out carefully. It is especially difficult when you are criticized as a result of having to change them. I am able to identify with the Apostle Paul a bit, who obviously was a very organized person and did not like to have his plans changed.

Yesterday we saw that Paul’s change of plans gave rise to unreasonable and destructive criticism. It is hard to believe that people who had benefited by Paul’s ministry would be as petty as that or, even if they were not the ones who made the slander, that they were petty enough to at least listen to it. But, that is the way it is. This is true in Christian work. I regret to say it, but there is a great deal of petty criticism leveled.

 One of my predecessors at Tenth Presbyterian Church, Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse, used to compare the conscience to a sundial. A sundial gives a good approximation of time when the sun is shining on it. But, if the sun is not shining on it, it does not give good time at all. If you go out in the garden at night and look at a sundial when the moon is shining on it, it might say, 7 a.m., but it is not 7 a.m.; it is the middle of the night.