Robert, Restless and Always Reforming

This week the Associated Press story about Matt Chandler pastor of The Village Church is the featured article on MSNBC.com. Chandler’s cancer has led to the gospel being proclaimed in the news on MSNBC. He says a number of things in the article that bring Glory to God who never surprised, sovereign, and loves Matt. Keep him and his family in prayer. Some quotes from the article  

His theology teaches that all men are wicked, that human beings have offended a loving and sovereign God, and that God saves through Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection — not because people do good deeds. In short, Chandler is a Calvinist, holding to a belief system growing more popular with young evangelicals.

“Lord, you gave this to me for a reason. Let me run with it and do the best I can with it.”

“This has not surprised God,” Chandler says on the drive home. “He is not in a panic right now trying to figure out what to do with me or this disease. Those things have been warm blankets, man.”

Chandler has, however, wrestled with the tension between belief in an all-powerful God and what he, as a mere mortal, can do about his situation. He believes he has responsibilities: to use his brain, to take advantage of technology, to walk in faith and hope, to pray for healing and then “see what God wants to do.”

“Knowing that if God is outside time and I am inside time, that puts some severe limitations on my ability to crack all the codes,” he says. “The more I’ve studied, the more I go, ‘Yes, God is sovereign, and he does ask us to pray … and he does change his mind.’ How all that will work is in some aspects a mystery.”

“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”   Romans 8:18