There is an undeniable intricacy to God’s world. There is an inescapable predictability to the universe God has made. The stars and planets follow their course day after day, year after year, millennium after millennium. We can predict with absolute certainty the next time we will have a full or partial eclipse. We can gaze thousands of years into the past or future and know when human beings did see (or next will see) Halley’s Comet. We can forecast down to the second when the sun will rise and when it will set whether days from now or centuries, whether on this side of the globe or the other. The heavens declare the glory of God not just in their immensity but also in their orderliness.

God is nothing if not concerned with details, an artist whose hand is displayed not merely in broad strokes but in fine lines, a designer whose mind is exhibited in both the greatest macro and the smallest micro. Any field of science depends upon this consistency, any field of engineering, any field of construction. None of these would be feasible if there was the least element of randomness in the universe, the smallest element of the arbitrary.
A new year has opened before us and like a watchman gazing into dense fog, we see just a few steps ahead and only vague shadows looming beyond. We do not know what the year will bring, whether great triumphs or great failures, great joys or great sorrows, great gains or great losses. It could be the best of all years or the worst, the easiest or the hardest, the most heart-warming or the most heart-breaking.
But this fog is a blessing for it compels us to shift our gaze from our circumstances and to fix them on our God. For if this God is so concerned with precision in the functioning of his universe, wouldn’t it stand to reason that he is equally concerned with precision in the unfolding of his providence? If he has planned the finest details of the structure of his creation, shouldn’t we also believe that he has planned the finest details of our circumstances?
If this is the case, we can have tremendous confidence in all that the year will bring.
If it brings unparalleled pleasures, these will come by God’s decree and must be accepted with joyful humility. If it brings singular sorrows, these will equally come by God’s decree and must be accepted with meek submission. The hand that guides the stars also guides our circumstances and it does so with meaning and purpose.
If this year brings significant successes, we can be certain that these are God’s will for us and we must return all praise and thanks to him. If this year brings grievous failures, we can be certain that these, too, are somehow part of God’s will for us and we must bow the knee and receive them with willing hearts. The mind that has planned the structure of the universe has also planned the unfolding of our lives.
If this is the year of our dreams or our nightmares, the year we have longed for or the year we have dreaded, the easiest year of our lives or the most difficult, we can be certain that it in some way God is involved in our every circumstance, that the very same precision that keeps the stars following their courses is keeping the events of our lives unfolding according to his plan. We can have every confidence that there is no event beyond his jurisdiction, no joy or sorrow unknown to him, no gain or loss that falls outside of his will. We can know beyond any shadow of a doubt that whatever this year brings, it will be exactly the year God has planned for us, exactly the year God means for us to live out for the good of others and the glory of his name. And with all that in mind I can truly say: Happy new year.

There are some things I’m good at. Whether by nature, nurture, or hard practice, I have accumulated some skills and been given some talents. But I’m not good at everything of course. Not nearly. One thing I’m very poor at is waiting. I’m restless, impatient, and eager to be active and this leaves me prone to pray too little and act too impulsively. It leaves me prone to complain when Providence dictates that I must move slowly or not move at all.

I have read many books in my lifetime, but never have I read a book about waiting. Never, that is, until I picked up Mark Vroegop’s Waiting Isn’t a Waste: The Surprising Comfort of Trusting God in the Uncertainties of Life. Vroegop has written his book for people like me who are sometimes forced to wait but who tend to see waiting as a waste, as a time that is meant to be conquered or bypassed or figured out as quickly as possible. The fact is that life is full of gaps, moments, and seasons when all we can do is wait—wait for clarity, wait for answers, wait for changes, wait for God to make his will clear to us and to others. The question is, what are we meant to do with these times?
Throughout the book, Vroegop shows that waiting is a surprisingly common theme in both the Old Testament and the New. The Bible, it turns out, has a lot to say about it. Waiting, he insists, is not just a necessary component of our humanity but a vital component of our Christian faith. Waiting is not a time when God is absent from our lives, but a time when he may be very present and even accomplishing great things within us. “That’s why the Old and New Testaments talk about it so often. Like many other things, including suffering and the crucifixion, God aims to transform what is painful and confusing. That’s also why believers are commanded to wait. From God’s perspective, it’s good.”
Of course, just because waiting is good does not mean that it is easy or that it comes naturally. And that’s the reason Vroegop provides clear instruction on it. Throughout six chapters he shows that we are called to wait on God

honestly, acknowledging that waiting is hard;
frequently, acknowledging that waiting is common
thoughtfully, acknowledging that waiting is biblical
patiently, acknowledging that waiting is slow
intentionally, acknowledging that waiting is commanded
collectively, acknowledging that waiting is relational.

In short, he wants to help us redeem our waiting, to stop dreading it, and to learn to embrace the gaps in life as an opportunity to pursue the Lord, embrace his purposes, and become like his Son. There is no if about waiting—we will most certainly have times when God decrees we will wait for opportunities, answers to prayer, the growth of character, the salvation of our loved ones, and so much else. The issue is not if but how—how we will wait when God’s decree forces us to come to a screeching halt.
I believe Waiting Isn’t a Waste will do exactly what it is intended to do—to help Christians make the most of their waiting and to agree with the author that waiting isn’t a waste. I highly recommend it.

There are a number of Christian doctrines that, though important, do not necessarily have a significant impact on our lives or relationships. It may be good to have convictions about infralapsarianism over against supralapsarianism, but that conviction will probably not make a great difference to day-to-day living or to life in the local church. There are other doctrines, though, that have a seismic impact so that your convictions will have significant consequences to your life, to your family, and to your church. An obvious example is gender roles and whether your convictions lead you to complementarianism or egalitarianism.

My convictions align with complementarianism—the view that God, while creating men and women equal in value and dignity, has ordained a kind of complementarity between them so that in the home and church men are to take a position of Christ-like leadership. But while I find the Bible leading me to complementarian convictions in a relatively straightforward way, what has been far more difficult is working out exactly what this looks like in real life. It is one thing to have complementarian doctrine, but another thing to have a complementarian life and church. In other words, it is one thing to acknowledge the doctrine, but another to truly embrace it.
Let’s not act as if this is the easiest challenge we will ever face, because as we attempt to be consistently complementarian, we will face a host of questions that will need to be answered: Does God mean for only men to be elders? Does God mean for only men to be deacons? If only men are to be teachers in the church, can a woman lead a Bible study? What about a youth group? Can a woman lead worship on a Sunday morning or would that be to exercise authority over the men of the congregation? And what if my understanding of some of these questions differs from another nearby church or from the teaching of a well-known “celebrity” pastor?
This is exactly where a new book from Graham Beynon and Jane Tooher has proven so helpful. Embracing Complementarianism is meant to help Christians—and Christian leaders in particular—turn biblical convictions into a positive church culture. “Our conviction,” they say, “is that teaching and practising a robust complementarianism leads people from a reluctant acceptance to a joyful embracing of God’s word in this area.” Their strategy is not so much to defend complementarianism—something that has been done elsewhere and often—but to advance it by helping Christians work it out in the life of their church.
They begin with a lay of the land—an assessment of where culture is at with its understanding of gender and gender roles and they are blunt in describing how both the wider culture and the Christian church have often failed in protecting women and in freeing them to do all God desires them to do. They describe some of the debates in the church and explain how a teacher like John Piper differs from one like Carl Trueman. With this done, they provide a relatively brief defense of the complementarian position and its understandings of both equality and distinction.
The heart of the book begins in chapter 4 where the authors show that we tend to fall into two equal and opposite dangers—the danger of overemphasizing the differences between men and women and the danger of underemphasizing them. They want their readers to understand that, though there are some gender-specific commands in the Bible, the great majority are given to men and women alike. Yet with gender being so fundamental to who we are, we must expect that these commands will be fulfilled in gendered ways. “The way in which we are kind, or express encouragement, or love our neighbor, and so on, will be shown through our gender—and that will, on average, look somewhat different between men and women. And that is a good, right and enriching thing to be embraced.” There are implications to this. While some roles in the church may be reserved for men, the church must be a place where life together welcomes and displays expressions that vary according to gender.
A chapter about the goodness of men leading in ministry shows how and why God has called men to lead in the church, but introduces questions that leaders will need to wrestle with: Does this include deacons? Does this include ministry leaders? And so on. Chapters on understanding church and understanding ministry continue to answer some questions while introducing others, to solve some of the biggest issues but to leave the peripheral ones to be worked out according to context and conviction. Two final chapters continue to guide leaders in faithfully working out complementarian doctrine in their churches. Here they describe and urge a “mapping exercise” in which leaders will think carefully about how convictions can be expressed in the whole life of the church.
To be complementarian has always been to be counter-cultural. If that was true a few years ago, how much more today when society’s questions have progressed from “what can women do as well as men?” to “what is a woman, anyway?” Yet I agree with these authors that church members tend to respond to a confident, convictional, and robust complementarianism. I very much appreciate their desire to encourage believers to truly embrace complementarianism by practicing it in a way that is worth embracing—one that is faithful to God’s Word, that celebrates both the distinction and equality of the genders, and that frees both men and women to serve in all the ways God permits and invites them to. It’s my hope that many church leaders will read this book and carefully work through it as they attempt to implement a complementarianism that honors God and is faithful to the Scriptures.

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