What does it mean that God works in mysterious ways?

What does it mean that God works in mysterious ways? We're going to answer that question. You can also discover more on GotQuestions .org. God works in ways that are often deemed mysterious. That is to say, God's methods often leave people totally bewildered.

Why would God tell Joshua and the children of Israel to march around the city of Jericho for a week? What good could possibly come from Paul and Silas being arrested and beaten without cause? Why would God allow Joni Erikson, a talented, vivacious girl of 17, to break her neck in a diving accident and spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair?

Joseph’s Life as an Example of God’s Mysterious Providence

The processes God uses, the interplay of human freedom and God's sovereignty, and God's ultimate summations are far beyond what the limited mind can understand. The Bible and the testimonies of Christians down through the ages are brimming with true stories of how God turns situation after situation, problem after problem, life after life, completely upside down.

And he often does it in the most unexpected, astonishing, and inexplicable ways. The life of Joseph is a good example of the mysterious way God sometimes works. In Genesis, Joseph says to his brothers, As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.

In this statement, Joseph summarizes the events of his life, beginning with the evil his brothers did to him and ending with his recognition that it was all part of God's beneficent plan to rescue his covenant people.

There was a famine in Canaan where Abraham's descendants, the Hebrew people, had settled. So Joseph brought all of them out of Canaan and into Egypt. Joseph was able to provide food for them, all because he had become governor of Egypt and was in charge of buying and selling food.

Why was Joseph in Egypt? Joseph's brothers had sold him into slavery some 20 years earlier and were now dependent upon him for their sustenance. This irony is only a small part of what happened in Joseph's life.

God's paradoxical movement is obvious through all of Joseph's history. If Joseph had not been governor over Egypt and moved his kinsmen there, there would be no story of Moses, no exodus from Egypt 400 years later.

If Joseph would have had a choice whether or not his brothers sold him into slavery, it's reasonable to assume Joseph would have said no. If Joseph had been given the choice whether or not to be imprisoned on false charges, again, he probably would have said no.

Who would willingly choose such mistreatment? But it was in Egypt that Joseph was able to save his family, and it was in prison that the door opened to the palace. God declares the end from the beginning, and we can be sure every event in the life of a believer serves God's ultimate plan.

Walking by Faith Rather Than Sight

To our minds, the way God weaves remarkable events in and through our lives may seem illogical and beyond our understanding. However, we walk by faith and not by sight. Christians know that God's thoughts are above our own thoughts, and God's ways are higher than ours, as the heavens are higher than the earth.

That answers the question, what does it mean that God works in mysterious ways? On our website, GotQuestions .org, you'll find a deeper discussion and recommended resources. If this helped you, give us a thumbs up and click subscribe.

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