Pillar #6 (Part 2) / Admit and Confess God is Sovereign
And It Came to Pass
Pillar #7: Admit / Confess
Opening Thought
One of the most hopeful phrases in Scripture is also one of the simplest: “and it came to pass.”Those five words remind us that what we are walking through is real, but it is not forever.
The Bible uses this phrase hundreds of times—commonly noted as about 453 times in the King James Version—and each time it points us to a powerful truth: seasons change, circumstances pass, and God remains sovereign through it all.
What feels overwhelming today will one day be part of a testimony. What feels permanent in the moment may someday be remembered as the very place where God formed us, refined us, and drew us closer to Himself.
Scripture Foundations
You may want to anchor the teaching in these passages:
Romans 8:28 — God works all things together for good
Genesis 50:20 — what was meant for harm, God meant for good
Psalm 139:1-16 — God knew us before we were formed
Philippians 1:6 — He who began a good work will complete it
James 5:16 — confess your sins to one another and pray for one another
James 4:7 — resist the devil
Proverbs 3:5-6 — trust in the Lord and lean not on your own understanding
1. “And it came to pass” reminds us that this moment is not forever
When Scripture says, “and it came to pass,” it tells us that:
pain is not permanent
grief is not endless
fear is not final
shame is not your identity
hardship does not get the last word
We often speak as if our current situation will last forever. But God’s Word tells another story. Seasons move. Hearts heal. Minds renew. Lives change.
Thrive connection
This is important in recovery and discovery work because many people believe:
“I will always be this way.”
“I will never change.”
“My past has already decided my future.”
But the phrase “and it came to pass” teaches us to see through a Kingdom lens: what is happening now is a season, not a sentence.
2. “And it came to pass” means God is still writing the story
One of the hardest parts of suffering is that we only see one page at a time. We judge the entire story by the chapter we are currently in.
But God is not limited to our moment. He sees:
the beginning
the middle
the ending
and everything in between
He knew us before we were formed. He knew our wounds, our choices, our failures, our struggles, and even the places where we would need rescue.
That does not mean He approves of everything that has happened. It means nothing has caught Him off guard, and nothing is beyond His ability to redeem.
Thrive connection
This is where Pillar #7 becomes more than confession of wrongdoing. It becomes confession of trust:
God knew
God saw
God allowed
God can redeem
God is still in control
3. Confession includes admitting our weakness and God’s sovereignty
At Thrive, we do not only confess sins. We also confess truth:
I am not in control
I do not always understand
I need God
I cannot heal myself
I need His mercy, His wisdom, and His leadership
Pillar #7 is about admitting what is true and confessing what must be brought into the light.
That includes:
the mistakes of our past
the wounds we carry
the coping mechanisms we built
the lies we believed
the ways we tried to survive
and the truth that God was there through all of it
Important balance
We are not saying every painful event was good.We are saying God is so sovereign that He can work through both our sin and our suffering to produce something redemptive.
4. “And it came to pass” becomes our testimony in hindsight
Hindsight often reveals what fear could not see.
There are moments in life when all we can say is:
“I do not understand this.”
“I cannot see the purpose.”
“This hurts too much to explain.”
But later, by God’s grace, we begin to see:
how He protected us
how He corrected us
how He humbled us
how He taught us to depend on Him
how He brought us closer to Jesus
Then we can look back and say: “And it came to pass.”
It came to pass that:
we learned to trust Him more
we leaned less on our own understanding
our shame began to lose its grip
the old self no longer defined us
our faith deepened through hardship
our witness became stronger
5. “And it came to pass” helps us speak about the past with honesty and hope
This connects beautifully with Thrive’s discovery focus.
We do not deny the past. We do not pretend the wound was small. We do not minimize the damage. We do not hide the truth.
But we also do not let the past name us.
So we can say:
“That happened to me.”
“That was the old pattern.”
“That was the old John.”
“That was the old way of thinking.”
“That was the season when I did not yet know what I know now.”
This is not denial. It is redemption.
Thrive connection
Discovery means we identify:
the trauma
the lie
the coping mechanism
the sin
the consequence
But discovery also reveals:
God’s hand
God’s timing
God’s truth
God’s purpose
God’s transforming power
6. “And it came to pass” points us toward Christlike growth
The greatest testimony is not just that we survived. It is that we were changed.
And it came to pass:
that we became more humble
that we became more honest
that we became more dependent on the Lord
that we became slower to judge and quicker to repent
that we became more compassionate toward others
that we became less ruled by shame
that we became more aware of God’s grace
The goal is not just relief from pain.The goal is transformation into the likeness of Christ.
Thrive connection
This is exactly what discovery is after: not merely stopping bad behaviors, but discovering what God is doing in us through them and beyond them.
Discussion Questions
What current circumstance feels like it may never end?
How does the phrase “and it came to pass” challenge that belief?
Where has God already shown you hindsight mercy?
What past event can you now see differently than you could in the moment?
How does Pillar #7 help us both confess our mistakes and surrender our story to God?
What is one area where you need to trust God’s sovereignty more deeply?
How has hardship helped you lean more on Christ and less on yourself?
Application Exercise
It may be helpful to reflect on a resolved situation from your past that was of great concern and complete these statements:
And it came to pass that I learned…
And it came to pass that God showed me…
And it came to pass that I no longer believed…
And it came to pass that I began to trust…
And it came to pass that I became more like Christ…
This would fit Thrive’s discovery style really well.
Closing Declaration
“We confess that God is sovereign over every part of our story. He was not surprised by our wounds, our failures, or our seasons of pain. He knew us before we were formed, and He is able to redeem what we cannot yet understand. What feels permanent now will one day be remembered as a season. And when we look back, we will say, ‘And it came to pass.’ It came to pass that we trusted Him more. It came to pass that shame lost its voice. It came to pass that we became more like Jesus.”
“Lord, help us trust You in the middle of what we do not understand. Teach us to confess what is true, surrender what we cannot control, and believe that You are working even now. Let our lives become a testimony that says, ‘And it came to pass.’”
Full Article
And It Came to Pass
A Teaching for Discover Thrive
Five words. 453 times. Everything you need to know about your present circumstances.
_______________________________________________
Opening: Five Words. Four Hundred and Fifty-Three Times. God Is Trying to Tell Us Something.
The most frequently overlooked phrase in all of Scripture may also be its most quietly powerful. Not a prophecy. Not a command. Not a vision or a warning. Just a transitional note — a bridge between what was and what came next. And it came to pass.
Notice what it does not say. It does not say "and it came to stay." It does not say "and it settled in and made itself comfortable and moved in furniture and put its name on the mailbox." Whatever the moment was — triumphant or devastating, miraculous or heartbreaking — it passed. That is not an accident of translation. That is the voice of God woven deliberately into the grammar of Scripture.
The King James Version of the Bible uses the phrase "and it came to pass" 453 times — appearing in 452 verses, including 39 times in the Gospel of Luke alone. That number is not a coincidence. God did not use it once or twice as a stylistic flourish. He wove it into the narrative of Scripture nearly five hundred times because He wants us to understand something fundamental and foundational about the nature of our circumstances: they are temporary. They are moving. They are passing.
And so are yours.
_______________________________________________
Part One: The Phrase That Tells the Whole Story
In Hebrew, the phrase is wayehi — a narrative marker that simply means "and then it happened" or "and it was." It is one of the most common transitional devices in the entire Old Testament. Scholars and translators encountered it so frequently that the King James translators rendered it across hundreds of verses as "and it came to pass" — and in doing so, they preserved something that modern translations often strip away in the interest of smoother reading. They preserved the theological weight.
What makes this phrase remarkable is not its literary function. What makes it remarkable is what it implies every single time it appears: history moves. Life moves. Seasons change. Even the hard ones. Especially the hard ones.
Consider the extraordinary range of moments this phrase introduces in Scripture. It is not reserved for moments of triumph. It is not saved for the miraculous. It appears over suffering and over victory, over betrayal and over breakthrough, over wandering and over homecoming. It is the same five words regardless of what follows, because the message is the same regardless of what follows: this moment is in motion. It is not your permanent address.
It introduced suffering
Joseph was thrown into a pit by his own brothers. He was stripped of his coat and sold into slavery. He was falsely accused by Potiphar's wife and thrown into prison. Chapter after chapter of that story opens with "and it came to pass" — and then records pain, injustice, isolation, and silence from God. And yet the story does not end in the pit. It does not end in the prison. It ends at the throne of Egypt, and it ends with Joseph looking back at every one of those terrible chapters and saying, "You meant it for evil. God meant it for good."
"And it came to pass, when Joseph was come unto his brethren, that they stript Joseph out of his coat, his coat of many colours that was on him..." Genesis 37:23 (KJV)
It introduced victory
The walls of Jericho fell. The Red Sea parted. The stone from David's sling found the giant's forehead. Every one of those moments was preceded by the same phrase. "And it came to pass" — God showed up, and the impossible became a footnote. The thing that seemed immovable was moved. The thing that seemed undefeatable was defeated. And then it passed — not into nothing, but into testimony.
It introduced redemption
The most important "and it came to pass" in all of human history is found in the second chapter of Luke. Caesar Augustus issued a decree. A census was called. A young couple had to travel nearly a hundred miles. None of it looked like the movement of God. All of it looked like ordinary government bureaucracy and inconvenient timing. But Proverbs 19:21 tells us that many are the plans in the mind of man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that stands. And what stood that night in Bethlehem was the fulfillment of centuries of prophecy.
"And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed... And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn." Luke 2:1, 7 (KJV)
Even the Incarnation — God putting on flesh and stepping into our world — came to pass. The very hinge of all of human history was introduced with the same five words used to describe every other passing moment in Scripture. Because from God's perspective, even the most world-altering events are part of a story that is still moving. Still going somewhere. Still being written.
The phrase is not a footnote. It is a theological statement: all of human experience — grief and glory alike — is temporary and moving toward something. And that something has a name, and He is good.
_______________________________________________
Part Two: What Passes — and What Doesn't
Four great categories of trial run through Scripture under this phrase. Every struggle we will ever face in this life falls into one of them. And Scripture addresses each one not with a quick fix or a tidy answer, but with the deep comfort of a God who has seen it all before and is still on the throne.
1. Sorrow and grief came to pass
David lost his son Absalom — a son he loved in spite of everything that son had done against him. Job lost his children, his health, his wealth, and very nearly his faith. Naomi lost her husband and both of her sons in a foreign land and told people to call her Mara — bitter — because she felt the hand of the Lord had gone out against her. These were not small griefs. These were the kind of losses that hollow a person out.
And yet Scripture speaks to each of them with the same steady voice: weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. That is Psalm 30:5. David wrote it. The same David who wept so hard over Absalom that his mourning became a stumbling block to his entire army. He knew grief from the inside. And he still wrote that it comes to pass — that it does not get the final word.
God does not forbid sorrow. He does not tell us to be strong and move on. He does not minimize the reality of loss or pain. But He does forbid us from sorrowing as those who have no hope. Because we do have hope. We have a God who promises that He will wipe away every tear — which means He sees them, He keeps track of them, and He has a plan to address every single one of them.
2. Temptation and harassment came to pass
Jesus Himself was led by the Spirit into the wilderness and tempted by the devil for forty days. Forty days of direct, sustained, personal attack from the enemy of our souls. And Luke 4:13 tells us what happened when it was finished: the devil departed from Him for a season. Even the temptation of the Son of God came to pass. The enemy could not sustain his assault. He had to leave.
"And it came to pass, when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season." Luke 4:13 (KJV)
James 4:7 makes this a promise available to every believer: resist the devil and he will flee from you. Not maybe. Not eventually. He will flee. The harassment has an expiration date. The constant noise, the relentless attack, the feeling that the pressure will never let up — it came to pass. It did not come to stay. The enemy does not have the stamina to outlast a child of God who keeps standing.
3. Confusion and wilderness came to pass
Israel wandered in the wilderness for forty years. Not because God forgot them. Not because God abandoned the plan. But because there was something that needed to happen in the people before they were ready for the promise. The wilderness is never the destination in Scripture. It is the passage. It is the place where God does the work that the comfort of Egypt never could.
Proverbs 3:5-6 speaks directly to the person in the middle of a season they cannot understand: "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths." Lean not unto thine own understanding. In the natural, wilderness makes no sense. In the economy of God, wilderness makes perfect sense — because God is doing something in the wilderness that cannot be done anywhere else. He is establishing trust. He is building dependence. He is replacing the false foundations with Himself.
4. Even life itself came to pass
James 4:14 asks, "What is your life?" And then answers: "It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away." The entire span of a human life — all its joys and sorrows, its achievements and failures, its seasons and chapters — is described in Scripture as a vapor. A morning mist that appears briefly and then is gone.
This is not meant to discourage us. It is meant to give us perspective. Because what does not pass is the soul. What does not pass is the Word of God. What does not pass is the love of the Father. Jesus said in Matthew 24:35, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." That is the one thing in all of creation that is not described as coming to pass. Everything else moves. The Word of God stands.
_______________________________________________
Part Three: "This Too Shall Pass" — and Why the Bible's Version Is Better
Before we go further, it is worth addressing a phrase that almost everyone in this room has heard and probably used: "This too shall pass." It is comforting. It is true. But here is what many people do not know: it is not in the Bible.
"This too shall pass" is not a Scripture. It has been attributed to King Solomon over the years, but it appears nowhere in the Word of God. There is no definitive answer to the exact origin of the saying, though some believe it stems from a fable written by Persian Sufi poets, while others credit Jewish folklore. Whatever its origin, it is not a biblical text.
What is in the Bible — 453 times — is the principle behind it. "This too shall pass" is essentially a paraphrase of the phrase "and it came to pass." The concept is thoroughly biblical, even if that exact wording is not.
But here is why the distinction matters for us tonight: "This too shall pass" is a coping mechanism. It is four words of wishful hope that things will get better. It is a feeling, a sentiment, an expression of optimism. But "and it came to pass" is a theological statement. It is 453 witnesses across the whole of Scripture testifying that God is actively narrating a story, that every moment is in motion under His hand, and that the Author of the story has already written the ending.
The world borrowed the idea, stripped it down to four words, and turned it into a bumper sticker. But Scripture gives us something infinitely deeper — not just the comfort that hard things end, but the narrative of a God who is personally, sovereignly, purposefully moving us through them toward something. One is wishful thinking. The other is 453 witnesses to the faithfulness of God.
_______________________________________________
Part Four: Perspective Is a Weapon
Think about what you were worried about five years ago. Think about what kept you up at night three years ago. Think about the thing that felt like it would crush you, that you were sure you would not survive, that seemed like it would define you forever. Where is it now? Most of it has passed. Not because you were strong enough to power through it. Not because you had the right strategy or the right therapist or finally figured out the right combination of effort and willpower. It passed because God was faithful enough to carry you through it.
The struggle that feels like your whole world right now — the thing that feels permanent, the thing that feels like it is going to define everything about you and your future — will one day be reduced to five words: and it came to pass. That is not minimizing your pain. That is maximizing your God.
Ask yourself tonight: What circumstance have I been treating as permanent that God has been calling temporary? Where have I built my identity around something that only came to pass? Where have I allowed the hardest chapter of my story to become the title of my story?
Paul understood this perspective better than almost anyone. He was beaten with rods three times. He was shipwrecked three times. He spent a night and a day adrift in the open sea. He was in danger in cities, in danger in the wilderness, in danger from false brothers. He was in labor and toil, through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And then on top of all of that, he carried the daily pressure and anxiety of his concern for all the churches.
And yet he wrote in 2 Corinthians 4:16-17: "For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all." He called all of that — all of it — light and momentary. Not because it wasn't real. Not because it didn't hurt. But because he had learned to see his life from God's perspective. He had learned to read his own story the way God narrates it: as a story that is still moving, still being written, and heading somewhere glorious.
That is not denial. That is not pretending the pain isn't real. It is choosing to see your life the way God sees it — as a narrative authored by Someone who knows the ending and has promised it is good.
_______________________________________________
Part Five: The Sovereignty of God — He Was Never Surprised
We look at our past and we see wreckage. We see choices we wish we could take back, seasons we wish we could redo, wounds we carry from things done to us that we did not deserve. We see the evidence of our own brokenness and the brokenness of others scattered across the chapters of our lives. And from inside the story, it can look like chaos. It can look like things went off the rails — like God must have looked away for a moment, or that circumstances slipped outside of His control.
But here is the theological backbone of every "and it came to pass" in all of Scripture: God is sovereign. He is not reacting. He is not improvising. He is not trying to redeem something that caught Him off guard. From before the foundation of the world, He has been authoring every chapter of your story — including the ones that shame you most. Including the ones that broke you. Including the ones you wish no one would ever find out about.
"Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations." Jeremiah 1:5 (KJV)
He did not say "I will get to know you." He did not say "I will figure out who you are as you grow and develop." He said "I knew thee." Past tense. Before the first cell of your body was formed, before your mother knew she was pregnant, before anyone on earth had any idea that you were coming — God had already read every chapter of your life. He had already seen your best moments and your worst. He had already witnessed every mistake you would make, every wound you would receive, every valley you would walk through. And He chose you anyway. He called you anyway. He has been moving you toward His purpose anyway.
"For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end." Jeremiah 29:11 (KJV)
Notice the word "expected." God is not surprised by where you are tonight. The end of your story is not in question — it has been expected. Planned. Prepared. The destination was established before the journey began. And every "and it came to pass" along the way — every hard chapter, every painful season, every moment of wandering — is part of that plan moving forward, not off the rails.
He knew the beginning and the end
Isaiah 46:10 tells us that God declares the end from the beginning. He is not bound by time the way we are. He does not experience your story sequentially, chapter by chapter, hoping each one turns out okay. He sees it whole. He sees the person you are becoming at the end of all of this — the version of you that has been refined by fire, that has been shaped by suffering, that has been deepened by the very things that felt like they were destroying you — and that is who He has been working toward all along.
Psalm 139:15-16 says, "My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them." Before there was a you, there was a book. And in that book, everything about you — every day, every season, every chapter — was already written.
What sovereignty does with the mess
Here is the hard and holy truth: a sovereign God does not just redeem the good parts of your story. He does not take the chapters you are proud of and weave those into His purposes while the shameful chapters sit outside the narrative, unusable. He redeems all of it. The mistakes were not a detour from the plan — they were factored into it. The pain was not a gap in God's awareness — it was in the book. The things that were done to you were not outside of His sight — He saw them, He was present in them, and He has been working through them from the very beginning.
Joseph's brothers did not derail God's purposes for Joseph. They were, without knowing it, the mechanism God used to get Joseph to Egypt — and Egypt to salvation. They meant it for evil. God meant it for good. That is Genesis 50:20, and it is one of the most extraordinary statements in all of Scripture.
"But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive." Genesis 50:20 (KJV)
"To bring to pass." There it is again. Even betrayal — even deliberate, premeditated evil done by the people who were supposed to love him most — God brought it to pass. Not to excuse it. Not to minimize the suffering Joseph endured. But to insist that it does not have the final word. God does. And the same is true of everything that has been done to you, everything you have done, and every season you have walked through that made no sense at all.
What was done to you
The wounds inflicted by others — abuse, abandonment, betrayal, neglect, cruelty. God was not absent when those things happened to you. He was not asleep. He was not distracted. He was present in every one of those moments, and He has been working through every one of them to bring you to this room, this season, this turning point. That does not mean those things were okay. It means that nothing done to you falls outside of God's redemptive reach.
What you did
The choices that brought destruction — the addiction, the sin, the running from God, the decisions that hurt you and hurt others. God was not surprised by any of it. He did not lose track of you in your worst moments. He was already in your future, waiting for this moment of return, having purposed this moment of return before you were even born. Your failure is not too catastrophic for His purposes. Your brokenness is not too deep for His reach. Romans 8:28 is not a maybe: "We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." All things. Not the easy things. Not the things you are proud of. All things.
What you didn't understand
The seasons of confusion, of unanswered prayer, of wandering, of silence from God. The times when you prayed and felt nothing, when you reached for Him and could not find Him, when you did everything right and things still fell apart. Those seasons were not God's absence. They were often God's most intense work — the work that happens beneath the surface, in the deep places, in the ways that will only make sense in hindsight. He was not absent. He was building something in you that could not be built any other way.
_______________________________________________
Part Six: Pillar 7 — Admit and Confess (A New Dimension)
Most people understand Pillar 7 as owning what they have done. And that is true, and it is necessary, and we should never soften or minimize that. We cannot move forward carrying the weight of unacknowledged sin. Confession to God and to one another breaks the power of secrecy. It brings what has been hidden into the light, and in the light, it loses its power over us. James 5:16 says, "Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed." That is not a suggestion. That is a pathway to healing. And it runs directly through the uncomfortable, humbling, freedom-bringing act of saying out loud the things we have done.
But tonight, in the context of everything we have been talking about — the sovereignty of God, the authorship of God, the phrase "and it came to pass" woven 453 times through the Scripture — we want to expand what we understand Pillar 7 to mean. Because if God is truly sovereign, if He knew you before you were born, if He has numbered your days, if He is working all things together for your good, if He declared the end from the beginning and your ending is an expected one — then confession is not only about your failures. It is also about your faith.
We must also admit and confess that God was in it. All of it. We must confess the sovereignty of God over our entire story, not just the parts we chose. We must confess that He was not surprised by anything we have done or failed to do, anything that was done to us, any season we walked through, any chapter we are ashamed of. And we must confess that He has been using all of it — the good and the bad, the choices and the wounds, the achievements and the failures — to write a story that is still going somewhere, and that somewhere is good.
What Pillar 7 asks us to confess
I confess that God was not surprised by anything I have done, said, or become.
I confess that God was not absent in the things that were done to me.
I confess that I have tried to carry the weight of a story that belongs to Him.
I confess that I have treated my past as too broken for His purposes — and I was wrong.
I confess that He was sovereign over the dark chapters, not just the bright ones.
I confess that I have leaned on my own understanding when I should have been trusting His.
I confess that I have looked at the hardest chapter of my life and called it an accident, a detour, a mistake — when God was calling it part of the plan.
I confess that "and it came to pass" is not a coincidence. It is His authorship.
I confess that I can trust the One who already knows the ending.
"Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths." Proverbs 3:5-6 (KJV)
"Lean not unto thine own understanding." That is the invitation and the command of Proverbs 3. In the natural, none of this makes sense. Why would a sovereign God allow this kind of pain, this kind of wandering, this kind of loss? We cannot answer that fully from inside the chapter. We were not given the view from eternity. We were given the view from here, from today, from this room, from this season. But faithfulness — staying in it, trusting Him through it, refusing to abandon the story just because we cannot see the ending from where we are standing — means that in time, we will look back and see the thread. We will see the hand. We will see that even this, even the worst of this, even the most senseless chapter of this — came to pass according to plan.
_______________________________________________
Closing: Hindsight as an Act of Worship
There will come a day — maybe it has already come for some of you, and maybe it is still somewhere ahead for others — when you look back at the hardest chapter of your life and you see God in it. Not just surviving it beside you. Not just patiently waiting for it to be over. Working in it. Purposing it. Using the very thing that felt like it was going to destroy you to shape the exact person He needed you to become. Using the very wound to create the very compassion that will one day help someone else find their way through the same thing.
That moment of hindsight — when the veil lifts and you finally see what He has been doing — is not just relief. It is not just healing. It is an act of worship. Because it means you finally see what He has seen all along. It means you finally see your story the way your Author sees it: whole, purposeful, moving forward, and worth every word.
This is the promise of Philippians 1:6: "Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." He began something in you. And He is not a God who starts things and abandons them. He will perform it. He will complete it. He will bring it to pass.
The story does not end in the hard chapter. It never has. Not once in 453 times.
The New "And It Came to Pass" — Being Written in You Right Now
Here is where it gets deeply personal. Because "and it came to pass" is not just about what we have endured in the past. It is about who we are becoming on the other side of it. It is about the chapter that God is writing in you right now — tonight, in this room, in this season — that will one day be part of someone else's testimony.
There is a chapter being written about your life right now that you cannot fully read yet because you are still living it. You are still in the middle of it. The ink is not dry. And one day — not too far from tonight — someone will look back at this season of your life, at everything you walked through, everything you fought, everything you surrendered to God, and they will say:
And it came to pass... that the chains they wore became the testimony that set others free.
And it came to pass... that the constant harassment they endured could not outlast the God they served.
And it came to pass... that they learned to lean on Him more and more, and less and less on their own understanding.
And it came to pass... that they stopped white-knuckling the trial and started trusting the One who already knew the ending.
And it came to pass... that they drew closer to the Lord — not in spite of the pain, but through it.
And it came to pass... that the very things they were most ashamed of became the very things God used most powerfully.
And it came to pass... that they became people who could look someone in the eye — someone drowning in the exact same darkness they once knew — and say with full conviction: hold on. This too shall pass. And I know because I've been there. And I know because He brought me through. And I know because the God who authored my story is authoring yours.
"Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." Philippians 1:6 (KJV)
Whatever you are walking through tonight — it came to pass. Not to stay. Not to define you. Not to have the final word over your life. To pass. And the Lord walks through every step of it with you.
_______________________________________________
Key Scripture References for This Teaching
On the transience of circumstances:
"And it came to pass in those days..." — Luke 2:1 (KJV)
"Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." Psalm 30:5 (KJV)
"What is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away." James 4:14 (KJV)
On resisting the enemy:
"And it came to pass, when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season." Luke 4:13 (KJV)
"Resist the devil and he will flee from you." James 4:7 (KJV)
On the sovereignty and foreknowledge of God:
"Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee." Jeremiah 1:5 (KJV)
"For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end." Jeremiah 29:11 (KJV)
"Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand." Isaiah 46:10 (KJV)
"Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them." Psalm 139:16 (KJV)
"We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." Romans 8:28 (KJV)
On God redeeming the whole story:
"But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive." Genesis 50:20 (KJV)
On trusting God rather than our own understanding:
"Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths." Proverbs 3:5-6 (KJV)
On God completing His work in us:
"Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." Philippians 1:6 (KJV)
On the eternal nature of God's Word:
"Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." Matthew 24:35 (KJV)
On the healing power of confession (Pillar 7):
"Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed." James 5:16 (KJV)