How Does Trusting God’s Rule Bring Peace?

Question 02084.

God’s rule over all things is one of the most comforting truths in the Bible, and one of the most misunderstood. We live in an anxious age. People lie awake over money, health, their children, the news, and the thousand things they cannot control. Into that restlessness Scripture speaks a simple word: the Lord reigns. But what does that mean, and how does believing it bring peace instead of a kind of fatalism?

I should explain my choice of words. Many books discuss it under a heading I tend to avoid, because that word now carries a good deal of Reformed theology I do not share. I prefer the Bible’s own titles for him, King, Lord, the Almighty and the Most High. The truth I want to set out is as old as the Psalms. Only the vocabulary is different.

What Scripture means by God’s rule

The Bible’s first word about God is that he made everything, and its constant testimony is that he has never ceased to govern what he made. “The LORD has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all,” says Psalm 103:19. Daniel learned it the hard way through Nebuchadnezzar, who was humbled until he confessed that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will. Nothing lies outside God’s knowledge, and nothing can finally defeat his purpose.

That is a different claim from saying that God causes everything that happens. Scripture is careful here, and so should we be. God is not the author of evil. He does not make men lie, steal or murder, and he does not tempt anyone. He has made creatures with real wills, and he allows the consequences of their choices to run. Within that, he acts. He intervenes, guides, restrains and permits, and he works even through what is evil to bring about good, as Joseph discovered. I have described this more fully in what is God’s providence. God’s rule is the rule of a King who governs free subjects. A puppeteer pulling strings is a different picture altogether, and it is not the one the Bible paints.

How far God’s rule extends

It reaches the largest things. The nations are like a drop from a bucket before him. He sets the boundaries of peoples and determines the times of empires. Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome rose and fell as Daniel had foretold, and the God who saw them coming has a plan for history that ends with his Son reigning on the earth.

It reaches the smallest things too. Jesus said that not a sparrow falls to the ground apart from the Father, and that the hairs of our heads are numbered. He told his disciples not to be anxious about food and clothing, because the Father who feeds the birds and clothes the lilies knows what they need. I find that remarkable. The one who holds the galaxies is not too busy for the price of bread in your kitchen. God’s rule is not distant management from a great height. It is the care of a Father who knows his children by name.

Think of the history of Israel. Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus and Caesar Augustus each pursued his own plans, and each found that he had served God’s. Augustus ordered a census for reasons of tax and power, and in doing so brought a carpenter and his wife to Bethlehem in time for a prophecy to be fulfilled. Nobody in Rome knew it. That is how God’s rule usually works, quietly and through people who have no idea they are part of something larger.

Why God’s rule brings peace

Why should this make a difference to how we feel? Because so much anxiety comes from a sense that everything depends on us. If the future rests on my ability to foresee and control it, I have every reason to be afraid, since I can do neither. The truth of God’s rule lifts that weight. I am responsible for my choices. I am not responsible for holding the universe together.

Paul put it into practice in Philippians 4:6-7. “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” He promises in return a peace that surpasses understanding, guarding our hearts and minds. The Greek word for peace there is eirene, and it carries the full Hebrew sense of wholeness. Notice what Paul does not promise. He does not say the problem will vanish, and in his own case it plainly had not, since he was writing in chains. He says that the one who brings it to God will be guarded by God’s peace. That is possible only if the God we pray to is truly able to act.

Peace in the middle of trouble

The people in Scripture who knew this best were rarely having an easy time. David wrote some of his calmest psalms while being hunted. “In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety.” Isaiah promised that God keeps in perfect peace the one whose mind is stayed on him. Paul wrote Philippians from prison. Jesus slept in the stern of a boat while a storm broke over it, and his disciples, who were awake and in charge of the oars, were terrified.

So the peace that comes from God’s rule is not the peace of circumstances. Circumstances may be dreadful. It is the peace of knowing who is on the throne while they are. Daniel’s friends faced the furnace and said that their God was able to deliver them, “but if not”, they would still not bow. That is what settled trust sounds like. They were not certain of the outcome. They were certain of the King.

When God’s rule seems hard to see

I would be dishonest if I suggested that this truth removes every question. Christians lose children, marriages and livelihoods. Prayers go unanswered for years. The psalmists ask, again and again, how long the Lord will be silent. Job never learned in this life why he suffered. Believing in God’s rule does not mean pretending that suffering makes sense.

What it does mean is that suffering does not have the last word, and that God is not absent from it. I have written on that in does God control or permit evil. Paul’s great promise in Romans 8 that God works all things together for good is followed directly by a list of the worst things that could happen, tribulation, persecution, famine, danger and the sword, and his conclusion that none of them can separate us from the love of God in Christ. The cross is the place where this is clearest. The worst injustice in history was taken up into the purpose of God for the salvation of the world.

God’s rule and our responsibility

There is a wrong way to take this doctrine. Some conclude that because God rules, nothing they do matters. If everything is fixed, why pray, why work, why warn anyone? Scripture never reasons that way. The same Paul who rejoiced in God’s purposes pleaded with people to be reconciled to God, worked night and day, and asked for prayer that doors would be opened.

God’s rule is the ground of our effort, not its replacement. He has chosen to work through the prayers and choices of his people. He gives real freedom and holds us accountable for how we use it, and I explore that tension in if God knows everything, do we have free will. Nehemiah prayed and posted a guard. A farmer plants and trusts God for the rain. Trust in God’s rule takes away the anxiety from our work without taking away the work.

Peace with God first

One more thing needs saying. The peace of God depends on peace with God. A person still at odds with the King cannot find comfort in his rule, because that rule includes judgement. The gospel is the announcement that the King has made peace with rebels through the blood of his Son. “Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Once that is settled, the doctrine of God’s rule changes character entirely. It stops being a threat and becomes a refuge. The one who governs all things is my Father. The future he holds is one in which I am safe. I have offered some practical help in what the Bible says about fear and anxiety.

So, now what?

What are you carrying tonight that is too heavy for you? Name it. Then bring it to God in prayer, with thanks for what he has already done, and leave it with him. That is not a technique for feeling better. It is what it looks like to believe that the Lord reigns.

And if you have never made peace with God, start there. The King of all the earth has opened his arms through Jesus. Have you come to him yet?

do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:6-7 (ESV)