I am so thankful to my great God and Savior, my Lord and King, Jesus Christ.

I rejoice in the sovereignty of God. My salvation is contingent upon nothing within me or anything accomplished by me. Nothing. Not my desire; not my abilities; not my religion; not my lot in life; and most certainly not my own will.

Yes, I rejoice in the sovereignty of God. I am saved because God is sovereign. I am saved because God, from eternity-past, had predetermined and preordained to call me His own. Only the kind intention of His will, and not the gratuitous and selfish intentions of my sin-marred will, made it not only possible but also certain that He would adopt me as one of His beloved children.

Yes, I rejoice in the sovereignty of God. For apart from His sovereignty I could have no hope of forgiveness, reconciliation, and regeneration. If my will was necessary, even in the slightest cooperative sense, to somehow contribute to my salvation, I would never be saved. I could never be saved. For my will, deathly marred by my depravity, which I inherited from the first Adam, would never, could never seek or even desire to cooperate with God in anything–let alone my salvation.

Yes, I rejoice in the sovereignty of God. I am saved because God, for reasons known only to Him, has elected to pardon me from my iniquity–pardon me from an inherited, wanton rampage of sin that would seek to go as far as to murder the Judge as He sat on His bench, if I ever had the present ability to carry out the act. So deep was my hatred for God, although shrouded in false piety and self-perceived goodness. I deserve nothing but an undelayed, unappealable execution of God’s good and holy wrath. Yet the Judge–the Judge of the Universe–stepped down from His high, holy, heavenly bench, sending His eternal Son who humbled Himself to take on the form of human flesh in the person of my Lord and Savior, Jesus of Nazareth. He humbled Himself, allowing Himself to be executed by His sinful creation; and yes, to be mutilated and humiliated on the cross. Yes, even death on the cross.

Yes, I rejoice in the sovereignty of God. For had not the Father, by His own divine desire and decree, allowed His one and only Son to be so mistreated–so rejected by men, so hated that his appearance was marred beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the children of mankind–there would be no hope for me. It pleased the Sovereign Creator to crush the very One who was with Him in creation and for whom all Creation was made. It pleased God the Father to make Him, God the Son, who knew no sin, to become sin on my behalf–by His will alone and for His glory alone. I could never hope to dress my self in the imputed righteousness of Christ–the sinless spotless robes of the Righteous Branch. If God, as a means of meting out His judicious wrath against my sin, left me in the putrefied garments of my sin, I would be eternally clothed in the ever-burning filth of my garments of fallen humanness. I would have no hope of every being grafted into the True Vine. I would be nothing more than a dried, lifeless twig to be throne into the fire and burned.

Yes, I rejoice in the sovereignty of God. For because of His sovereignty I have no fear of death, because He did clothe me in the righteousness of His Son. I have no fear of separation. I have no fear of losing that which was never mine to win, earn, deserve, or keep by my own will and tainted strength of character. I rejoice knowing that because of God’s sovereignty my salvation is secure, kept and guarded in Heaven for me, by the one who made my calling and election sure–the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, my God, my King, my Savior, my Lord, my Deliverer, my Comforter, my Mediator, my Propitiation, my Justification, my Sanctification, my Glorification…..Jesus.

Yes, I rejoice in the sovereignty of God. For apart from His sovereignty, I could never rest. I could never have peace. I could never experience His love, grace, and mercy. I could never know Him, desire to be with Him, love Him. And I would never see Him, as He is now, face-to-face. But I will! I will one-day see Him face-to-face!

Yes, I rejoice in the sovereignty of God. Do you?