The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. (John 3:8)

Stephen Charnock
The Existence & Attributes of God
Discourse 13, pp. 1453-1455.

God’s sovereignty is manifest in the various influences of the means of grace. He saith to these waters of the sanctuary, as to the floods of the sea, “Hitherto you shall go, and no further” (Job 38:11). Sometimes they wash away the filth of the flesh, and outward man, but not that of the spirit. The gospel spiritualizes some and only moralizes others; some are by the power of it struck down to conviction, but not raised up to conversion. Some have only the gleams of it in their consciences, and others more powerful flashes; some remain in their thick darkness under the beaming of the gospel every day in their face, and after a long insensibleness, are roused by its light and warmth. Sometimes there is such a powerful breath in it, that it levels the haughty imaginations of men, and lays them at its feet, that before strutted against it in the pride of their heart.

The foundation of this is not in the gospel itself, which is always the same, nor in the ordinances, which are channels as sound at one time as at another, but divine sovereignty, that spirits them as he pleases, and “bloweth when and where it listeth” (John 3:8). It has sometimes conquered its thousands (Acts 2:41), at another time scarce its tens; sometimes the harvest hath been great when the laborers have been but few, at another time, it hath been small when the laborers have been many; sometimes whole sheaves, at another time scarce gleanings. The evangelical net hath been sometimes full at a cast, and at every cast, at another time many have labored all night and day too, and caught nothing: “The Lord added to the church daily” (Acts 2:47).

The gospel chariot doth not always return with captives chained to the sides of it, but sometimes blurred and reproached, wearing the marks of hell’s spite, instead of imprinting the marks of its own beauty. In Corinth, it triumphed over many people (Acts 18:10). In Athens, it is mocked, and gathers but a few clusters (Acts 17:32-34). God keeps the key of the heart as well as of the womb. The apostles had a power of publishing the gospel, and working miracles, but under the divine conduct. It was an instrumentality durante bene placito [“while it is pleasing”], and as God saw it convenient. Miracles were not upon every occasion allowed to them to be wrought, nor success upon every administration granted to them. God sometimes lent them the key, but to take out no more treasure than was allotted to them.

There is a variety in the time of gospel operation: some rise out of their graves of sin and beds of sluggishness at the first appearance of this sun, others lie snorting longer. Why doth not God spirit it at one season at well as at another, but set his distinct periods of time, but because he will shew his absolute freedom?

And do we not sometimes experience that after the most solemn preparations of the heart, we are frustrated of those incomes we expected. Perhaps it was because we thought divine returns were due to our preparations, and God stops up the channel, and we return drier than we came, that God may confute our false opinion, and preserve the honour of his own sovereignty. Sometimes we leap with John Baptist in the womb at the appearance of Christ; sometimes we lie upon a lazy bed when he knocks from heaven; sometimes the fleece is dry and sometimes wet, and God withholds to drop down his dew of the morning upon it. The dews of his word, as well as the droppings of the clouds, belong to his royalty. Light will not shine into the heart, though it shine round about us, without the sovereign order of that God “who commanded light to shine out of the darkness” of the chaos (2 Cor. 4:6).

And is it not seen also in regard of the refreshing influences of the word? Sometimes the strongest arguments and clearest promises prevail nothing towards the quelling black and despairing imaginations, when afterwards we have found them frighted away by an unexpected word, that seemed to have less virtue in itself than any that passed in vain before it. The reasonings of wisdom have dropped down like arrows against a brazen wall, when the speech of a weaker person hath found an efficacy. It is God, by his sovereignty, spirits one word and not another. Sometimes a secret word comes in, which was not thought of before, as dropped from heaven, and gives a refreshing, when emptiness was found in all the rest. One word from the lips of a sovereign prince is a greater cordial than all the harangues of subjects without it. What is the reason of this variety, but that God would increase the proofs of his own sovereignty; that, as it was a part of his dominion to create the beauty of a world, so it is no less to create the peace as well as the grace of the heart? “I create the fruit of the lips, peace” (Isa. 57:19).

Let us learn from hence to have adoring thoughts of, not murmuring fancies against, the sovereignty of God; to acknowledge it with thankfulness in what we have, to implore it with a holy submission in what we want. To own God as a sovereign in a way of dependence, is the way to be owned by him as subjects in a way of favour.