Countless sermons have fed me and kept me alive spiritually. Many sermons have shaped my life to one degree or another. But one particular message comes to mind as a sermon that changed my (everyday) life — because I listened to it over and over and because its effects on me have been so tangible. Almost 25 years later, I still live in its truths every day.
In the winter of 2000–2001, I was a sophomore in college and still getting my bearings as a new Calvinist. As a freshman, I had joined up with a ministry called Campus Outreach. Its theology was “Reformed.” I didn’t grow up with this label, so I didn’t know what this was at first.
In my teens, I heard Christian talk about God being “sovereign,” but I had never wrestled with the extent of his sovereignty — that he was sovereign over all, over good and evil, over angels and demons, over sunny days and natural disasters, over my good deeds and my sin, and (most uncomfortably) over my own will and very real choices. But once I saw the verses, dozens of them (if not hundreds), I couldn’t deny that the Bible taught that God’s sovereignty was absolute, exhaustive, no exceptions.
