So we must be truthful at all costs knowing that the whole enterprise of salvation is the work of God and God alone.

Because the only way anybody is ever going to be saved is when God does it and His power rides the truth.

Welcome to Grace To You with John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson.

Today John MacArthur is going to take a break from walking you verse by verse through a passage of Scripture.

And instead, today he's going to field questions about the Bible and the Christian life, questions for people at John's home church in Los Angeles.

Maybe some questions you've wondered about. So let's get started. You're going to hear from a man named Marshall and then John will respond.

Good evening. My name is Marshall and I'm here visiting with my brother Travis, who I believe you know he serves here with you.

Absolutely. And I had two quick questions I wanted to ask. One, I was wondering if you could share with us.

You talked this morning about God's providential work in our lives and how that's a common thing.

I was wondering if you could share an example of God's providence in your own life. And number two, I'm wondering if there were any insights over these decades of preaching through the New Testament that really you would say altered the trajectory of your own personal life or altered the trajectory of your ministry here at the church.

Marshall, let's start with the first one. My whole life is a providence of God. My whole life, I mean every single day of my life is an active divine providence.

I am surprised every day of my life. I am almost totally a responder to the providences of God which unfold incessantly in my life in ways that I could never ever comprehend.

It might be meeting a person who fits a compelling need in my own life or a compelling need in our ministry or who is the perfect fit for a very important opportunity that we have somewhere in the ministry.

It might be a...it might be a...what would seem to be a serendipitous meeting of someone somewhere in a restaurant or a gas station or wherever it might be. And might even have them in elevators and hotels and foreign countries.

My whole life is just one amazing providence of God after another. But the whole story of coming to Grace Church, that was the providence of God. I mean the board just said get a young pastor. They had two widows, two pastors who had died of a heart attack and I qualified because I was young.

Things like that that sort of set them up to want somebody young when other churches were saying to me in my late 20s, we're not interested in you're too young, you have no experience.

Well, Grace Church was a growing and effective church that had two very mature and very fine men as pastors. Why would they take a young man?

Well, in the purposes of God and the providence of God when those two men were snatched away into heaven and their widows were left, there was some thought about maybe we could turn to a young man.

From the start, from the very beginning, my life has been an unending process of seeing the hand of God on my life.

I had blood clots and DVT, deep vein thrombosis and blood clots went into my lungs and I wound up in a hospital in critical condition and I was there for eight days and the physician who finally was able to help me as a result of that meeting said I want to hear you preach when you get out of here.

I was 16 and I said, well, I have to wait a few months right before I can preach, I can't get on your feet and whatever. The first Sunday I came back after that was Luke, the beginning of Luke, and he came the first Sunday and my first message was on Luke, the beloved physician, and I preached to him.

And it wasn't long after that that he came to me and professed his faith in Christ.

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