The Two Greatest Words: "...But God"

I'm going to cut to the chase. John Calvin says that the fallen human heart is an “idol-making factory,” always producing new idols for worship and veneration. When God awakens the eyes of our souls to new depths of self-centeredness and the other-godness to which we look for peace, happiness, joy, and life-fulfillment, we find ourselves in a quite pitiable state. 


As the Lord was appointing this self-awareness on my spirit yesterday, I did a quick search for the two words "but God". I began to tear up as I saw this form of "but God" movement being reiterated again and again through the progression of Biblical history. 


Here are a few of those gems. 


Before you read this short list, please take a moment (I strongly suggest that you quickly pray right now!) to ask the Holy Spirit to stir your affections and warm your heart to see the greatness and the insurmountable amount of love that God has for His children. 

(All passages are quoted from the English Standard Version)

He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens. They were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ark. And the waters prevailed on the earth 150 days. But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided.

(Genesis 7:23-8:2)

You know that I have served your father with all my strength, yet your father has cheated me and changed my wages ten times. But God did not permit him to harm me.

(Genesis 31:6-7)

As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.

(Genesis 50:20)

And David remained in the strongholds in the wilderness, in the hill country of the wilderness of Ziph. And Saul sought him every day, but God did not give him into his hand.

(1 Samuel 23:14)

We must all die; we are like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again. But God will not take away life, and he devises means so that the banished one will not remain an outcast.

(2 Samuel 14:14)

Like sheep they are appointed for Sheol; death shall be their shepherd, and the upright shall rule over them in the morning. Their form shall be consumed in Sheol, with no place to dwell. But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me.

(Psalm 49:14-15)

“And the patriarchs, jealous of Joseph, sold him into Egypt; but God was with him and rescued him out of all his afflictions and gave him favor and wisdom before Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who made him ruler over Egypt and over all his household.

(Acts 7:9-10)

And we are witnesses of all that he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him on the third day and made him to appear, not to all the people but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.

(Acts 10:39-41)

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

(Romans 5:6-8)

For [Epaphroditus] has been longing for you all and has been distressed because you heard that he was ill. Indeed he was ill, near to death. But God had mercy on him, and not only on him but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow.

(Philippians 2:26-27)

And finally, perhaps one of the most glorious passages on Scripture, Ephesians 2:1-10:

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 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.

           

God is our hope.

.DSN.