God's providence is His constant care for and His absolute rule over all His creation for His own glory and the good of His people.-Jerry Bridges (20th century)

If there is a single event in the universe that can occur outside of God?s sovereign control then we cannot trust Him. -Jerry Bridges (20th century)

There is an infinite variety of the works of God in an ordinary providence, and yet they all work in an orderly way. We put these two things together, for God in his providence causes a thousand thousand things to depend one upon another. There are an infinite number of wheels, as I may say, in the works of providence; put together all the works that ever God did from all eternity or ever will do, and they all make up but one work. and they have been as several wheels that have had their orderly motion to attain the end that God from all eternity has appointed. We, indeed, look at things by pieces, we look at one detail and do not consider the relation that one thing has to another, but God looks at all things at once, and sees the relation that one thing has to another. When a child looks at a clock, it looks first at one wheel, and then at another wheel: he does not look at them all together or the dependence that one has upon another; but the workman has his eyes on them all together and sees the dependence of all, one upon another: so it is in God's providence. Now notice how this works to contentment: when a certain passage of providence befalls me, that is one wheel, and it may be that if this wheel were stopped, a thousand other things might come to be stopped by this. In a clock, stop but one wheel and you stop every wheel, because they are dependent upon one another. So when God has ordered a thing for the present to be thus and thus, how do you know how many things depend upon this thing? God may have some work to do twenty years hence that depends on this passage of providence that falls out this day or this week. -Jeremiah Burroughs (1599-1646)

Other men pursue good, and it flies from them, they can never overtake it; but goodness and mercy follow the people of God, and they cannot avoid or escape it. It gives them chase day by day, and finds them out even when they have put themselves by sin out of the way of it. In all the providences that befall them goodness and mercy pursue them. -John Flavel (1627-91)

There are tools of all sorts and sizes in the shop of Providence. -John Flavel (1627-91)

God creates the vine and teaches it to draw up water by its roots and, with the aid of the sun, to turn that water into a juice which will ferment and take on certain qualities. Thus every year, from Noah's time till ours, God turns water into wine. -C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)

How true it is that the wickedest enemies of God are only axes and saws and hammers in his hands and are ignorantly his instruments for doing his work in the world! -J.C. Ryle (1816-1900)

There is as much providence in the creeping of an aphid upon a rose leaf as in the marching of an army to ravage a continent.
-Charles H. Spurgeon (1834-92)

Does God give us a Christ, and will he deny us a crust? -Thomas Watson (1620-86)

Every wind of Providence shall blow them nearer heaven. -Thomas Watson (1620-86)

It is good to observe providence, but we must not make it our rule to walk by. Providence is a Christian's diary, but not his Bible. -Thomas Watson (1620-86)

God does not so much overrule as underrule. -Philip Yancey (20th century)