Are You Proud? God Moment by Moment Upholds You

How should this truth of the providence of God affect our lives?

First of all: This ought to fill all of us with great humility. Great humility. Everything we have. Everything we are. Everything we have accomplished. Even the fact that you are alive here tonight, sitting here tonight, is hanging from the slenderest thread of God’s merciful providence.

You have a strong body? So did Christopher Reeve, Superman, till he got thrown from a horse and became a quadriplegic who had to be on a breathing apparatus for the rest of his life.

You have good eyes? So did Fanny Crosby till the doctor put the wrong thing in her eyes when she was a little girl, and made her go blind.

Are you athletic? So was Joni Eareckson until she jumped into that water that was too shallow and broke her neck.

Mona and I were in a coma unit a number of years ago there was a fellow in there maybe in his forties. We said what happened to him? Well the wife and husband were out riding their bikes and they got tangled up somehow and fell down. They were not going fast. They were just out for a little bike ride. Fell down he hit his head on the pavement and he’d been in a coma ever since. One little chance accident.

You have financial prosperity? There are so many people in human history that thought they had it made they lost everything just like that. And you could too.

Paul says in in 1 Corinthians 4:7 “What do you have that you had not received?” And we might well add to that, “What have you received that God hasn’t sustained moment by moment or you would have lost it by now.”

So I want to say to you beloved: What are you tempted to be proud of tonight? Are you girls, tempted to be proud of your beauty? Do you realize you could lose that in a second? Are you proud of how smart you are? One little thing and it could be gone and you can’t even put sentences together.

Beloved, we’re being upheld by this slender thread of providence all the time. Everything, everything you have, everything you are, everything that you’ve accomplished, its been accomplished through grace, grace, grace all along the way. And every little individual thing that has kept you alive to get you here tonight.

If you’re not a Christian, don’t go out of here without crying out to God.

If you are a Christian, God have mercy on you if you’ve got pride welling up in you. Moment by moment sustained by unspeakable, slender, thread of providence.