It’s not typically the big things I worry about. It’s the small details that get me. I know God holds my family. I know He provides, sustains, keeps, loves, and cares for me more than I can understand. I have no qualms over my eternal destination.
But when it comes to the nitty-gritty details of life, I don’t act as confident.
I agonize over decisions and propagate various outcomes in my head. I fret over scheduling uncertainties and stew over the inevitable need to make dinner. Then when conflicts arise, and the kids all need help, and every grocery store within a fifty-mile radius has only rock-hard avocados we could better utilize as baseballs, I fall apart.
Stirred up, caught up, and more than a little consumed with how things are going, you’d never know I firmly believe God reigns over my life. Because here’s the thing: arduous daily details can quickly derail my dependence on God.
But have you seen a microscopic picture of a snowflake? Or the Coral reef? Or scanned a large crowd of people? Or meandered through a flower garden? There is just no doubt God is all about the details.
There is purpose in ants and bees and spiders and forest fires and the slimy coating on a slug. Every snowflake, even the ones sent to melt on contact, is an artistic masterpiece. And did you know the same is true of zebras? Not one zebra has the same stripes as another.
Not to mention, there are more than seventeen thousand species of butterflies, each with various patterns, two thousand types of fruit, each with unique flavors, and over a thousand different vegetable varieties with a wide array of texture, taste, and growth forms. And we’re just getting started.
The Lord Holds All Things
Colossians 1:16–18 tells us that “all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities” by the Lord Jesus Christ. “And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. That in everything he might be preeminent.”
“All things” doesn’t just include some things, but everything. The entire world belongs to Christ, right down to the creepy-looking things dwelling on the ocean floor.
For he looks to the ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens. (Job 28:24)
For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. (Rom. 11:36)
Jesus Christ holds power over all things, even the minute details tying me up in knots. The fine points do not take Christ by surprise. Ephesians 1:11 says that God “works all things according to the counsel of his will.” This means that right now, God is working the particulars of life according to His will (not ours), fabricating for His use the most minuscule of details.
Yet we’re upside down and inside out due to the things we have no control over because what if God doesn’t do what we want? Our real issue is not the copious details derailing our days. The real issue is our lack of trust and unquenchable desire for control. But God’s will, inside and out, is always better than mine.
Christ is not only actively involved in everything around us, but He’s also actively involved in all that’s within us. I think we sometimes forget that “all things” includes our hearts and minds as well. “For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13).
We Can Go to God with Anything
The fact that Christ is holding all things means we can go to Him with anything. His everything is over our anything. His all things constitute our small things. His totality never fails to touch our reality.
Therefore, “do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Phil. 4:6). Anything is an affiliate of everything. They have a partnership that should honestly leave us peace-filled all the time.
“And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us” (1 John 5:14). Anything!
Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh. Is anything too hard for me? (Jer. 32:27)
God’s promise of anything includes both the things I understand and the things I don’t. It consists of the mountains that look impossible to climb and the valleys that feel too wide. It includes those seasons of life that leave us feeling like an uninhabitable landscape or a weary, war-torn traveler, as well as our successes. Circumstances might lift us or bring us down, but nothing hinders God’s perspective.
Nothing Is Too Hard for God
“Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control” (Heb. 2:8, emphasis added). Nothing, not even the pint-sized details we’re worried about. These are all-inclusive words, my friend. We like to pluck things from Christ’s grasp when we’re afraid and anxious, but nothing means nothing. There is nothing we need to worry about because there is nothing outside of His control.
“And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love” (Rom. 8:38 NLT). Nothing in all of creation (v. 39). That’s a powerful statement by a powerful God—a God who works all things together for the good of those who love Him (Rom. 8:28). For with God, nothing is impossible (Luke 1:37). Not even the defeat of the devil, whom Jesus will one day bring to nothing (2 Thess. 2:8).
He who “stretches out the north over the void and hangs the earth on nothing” (Job 26:7) can handle our problems. In Christ, we are in a secure place. Even when life unravels like a spool of thread dropped out of a third-story window, we still have a God who is over everything, so we can go to Him with anything and know that nothing is too hard for Him.
My prayer for the church is that we’ll echo Job’s words, who at the end of his days, after enduring much suffering, proclaimed before the Lord, “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted” (Job 42:2).
We have nothing to worry about; this is our God. He alone is over everything, so we can confidently lay all things at His feet. So feel free to take a deep breath today, or even take a little rest, because God’s got it under control. The arbitrator of details told us not to worry. If Christ can intricately weave the promise of the gospel through thousands of years of human failures, then I know He can handle today’s concerns.
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