The Sovereignty of God in Our Daily Lives
Revised Edition
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Disciples, Apostles, and Pharisees.
This book aims to guide you in your biblical studies in seeing God’s work in your life, in the steps He had explicitly designed for you before the world began. So that in knowing it is God who is working within you. His calling, His revealing, in His enabling, saving, and sanctifying you. To the wisdom given to you of His Son Jesus Christ by His Spirit working within you. Through you - to the good works He has prepared for you to walk in. In your living each day. In your walking - through His holding you. To His keeping you and making you a part of the people, He has sanctified you for Himself. And in sanctification, He did so before He created you. You now know you belong to Jesus Christ and are in Christ. That is in His revelation and wisdom enabling you to seek, see and understand His Gospel call for you. To live in obedience and rest in His assurance - that your joy, now known deeper in Christ, will be complete. So by His Spirit, you may fully understand the wonder of your salvation, with His wisdom and knowledge of how precious and joyful Jesus is to you.
The apostles daily walked with Jesus while Jesus was alive in teaching and preaching the Gospel of salvation. Yet, they did not fully comprehend who Jesus was until He opened their minds to the scriptures.
And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. (Luke 24:27, 44-45, emphasis added)
Conversely, the Pharisees, Scribes, and Sadducees of the day - the ones who were supposed to know the scriptures and understand what they meant - did not know (or maybe better stated, did not want to believe) that Jesus was their Messiah standing before them. For they wallowed in their stature in society and their self-religiosity; for they despised what Jesus was doing to upset their religious position by constantly trying to trap Jesus, for which Jesus always pointed back to their ignorance of the scriptures:
He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.” (Matthew 12:3-8, emphasis added)
Without God’s Enablement, Scriptures Are Just Words.
As the Pharisees used Scripture to add to their stature and wealth, they lacked need – humility. For they received what they saw and not what Scripture showed.
For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1:21-24)
For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 1:26-31)
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:8-10)
The Wisdom of God, the Wisdom from God.
His Spirit opening our minds to the truth of the Gospel is God’s workings in us, not in ourselves.
Returning to John 6, when the vast crowds were following Jesus, Jesus called them out for why they were following, for provision and food, and not for repentance and Jesus’s righteousness. He took the step of separation to say to the crowd,
It is written in the Prophets, “And they will all be taught by God.” Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me
And then He speaks to them spiritually by saying that He is the bread of life and that they need to eat of His flesh and drink of His blood, and not the manna from Heaven, which is symbolic of the body of Christ. And even to that, Jesus says, Moses did not feed them the actual food of Heaven, for the Father gave them the true manna from Heaven, Jesus.
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About the Book
You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.
-Psalms 139:3-5
The sovereignty of God. Actively working. Every day. In every way. And He is actively working in you - you who believe in Jesus!
The Gospel of Christ, seeing God’s sovereignty within salvation and now also within our lives, this study should help you see the glory of Christ in your daily walk of faith. Salvation is not a one-time event, and I challenge conventional wisdom -- it is not solely because of your or my efforts. For it is a gift of grace through faith given by God. For beneath our faith in Jesus is God’s active working within our hearts. Now with the Holy Spirit living within us, He works daily in us to the council of His will toward, in, and through us - giving us His grace, wisdom, and comfort each day.
This book, with the Bible in hand, highlights scriptures - with my comments as a flashlight - to showcase the glory of God and to help reveal to believers and seekers alike the high value of Jesus!
About the Author
David retired from the corporate IT sales world at the end of 2018, which spanned a thirty-two-year career. And he was blessed by God in all the roles he held during this time. David also spent time in his early work years as a machinist in a steel mill and as a trained musician at Carnegie Mellon University.
Today, as with David’s vocations of his past, God is now leading him - this time to write. Although not a pastor nor formally trained at a Bible college, David is a disciple of Jesus, with 51 years and counting of faith. A faith not of his own merit, he would say, but one of Christ’s holding him each day. So within these pages are of David’s love of Jesus, in his notes in study through the years. From his notes of teaching adult Sunday school lessons to sharing the gospel at work, neighborhood, or in the grocery store. And of his passion for the Gospel to reach all who will believe!
Since writing this second edition to his first book, David has authored two other Christian bible study books. The next book he authored is entitled “En Route to the Mount of Olives – (Matthew 24),” and is a bible study to Jesus‘s words to the signs of His return and the end of the age.
And his next book, “At Heaven’s Door,” is about life upon death for a Christian, and what does the bible say happens next at our last breath.
So the three books happen to fit as a trilogy. The first deals with Jesus actions within our daily lives. The second details the signs to His second coming. And the third book is living life eternally with Jesus
David was married to a wonderful wife, Sandy, of almost 40 years until her passing in late 2021. And God blessed them with two children and four grandchildren. When not writing, he enjoys going to car cruises and hearing all the stories that people tell about their cars, for life’s journey involves people and not the cars, per se, although he has a car of his own.