Surely you have like me on a beautiful Sunday afternoon wanted to take a picnic and so prayed for good weather, knowing that there's a farmer somewhere praying against you because he hasn't had raised for about three weeks?

What does God do with those competing prayers?

How does God exercise his providence over our competing desires and prayers?

In this episode of Light and Truth, John Piper turns to various scriptures to lead us into the wonder of God's

comprehensive care.

This seminar was originally given at Bethlehem Baptist Church on October 11th, 1995.

Job, where's the way that light is divided or the east wind scattered on the earth?

Who has cleft a channel for the flood or a way for the talk about God doing things where nobody is on a desert without a man in it.

You know the first time I ever saw this was in a literature class with Clyde Kilby in 1968, spring of 68.

And of course, Clyde Kilby was a lover of the romantic poets and he quoted Wordsworth here that, I don't remember the line, but something like many flowers, blooms, blooms,

unscene by man or something.

And he just paused over this.

He was reading Job to us day after day,

saying, isn't marvelous that God is doing his own thing out there where nobody is.

To satisfy the waste and desolate land and to make the seeds of grass sprout has the

reign of father or who has begotten the drops of dew from whose womb has come the ice and the

frost of heaven who has given it birth water becomes hard like stone and the surface of the

deep is imprisoned. Here's what Matthew

Henry comments. The Providence of God is to be acknowledged both by

husbandmen in the fields, travelers upon the road in every shower of rain, whether it does

them a kindness or a diskindness.

Surely you have, like me, on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, wanted to take a picnic and so prayed for good weather knowing that there's a farmer somewhere praying against you because he hasn't that raised for about three weeks?

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