SURRENDERING TO THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD

SURRENDERING TO THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD

                Yesterday I was working in my shop. Years ago I used to build these miniature rustic seacoast villages as works of art. They are made to hang on the wall or set on a shelf. They are fairly detailed and take time to build. My son Zach has one on a wall in his living room and was offered $800.fFor it, but wouldn’t sell it, being a family heirloom and all.

                So, for old time’s sake I decided to try another one… not so much for the artistry’s sake, but to get my mind off of my present frustrations and in the silence of it all, to find my purposes in God.

                So I was working away on the particular makings of one of the seacoast houses when the Lord spoke rather loudly into my spirit and said: What are you doing here?

                Well, that’s kind of ironic, because that was the question I was about to ask God. So I unloaded on Him. I said: “I am out here working on this silly village because I am frustrated and I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t know why I am here in Tennessee and I don’t know if I heard your voice rightly. Nothing seems to be working out and we are floundering at the moment.”

                Well, as is common with the Lord, He doesn’t react. A sovereign God never reacts to life or to circumstances simply because all things are already in His hands and there is nothing unknown to Him. So if He is going to answer us, He is going to teach to principle and according to eternal values.

                Sometimes I wish that He would either agree with me or disagree… tell me if I am on the right course or if I missed it, but for Him the issue is much deeper. He is looking at our hearts much more than He is looking at our physical location and it is our hearts and souls that are either in line or out of line with His eternal plans for us. All I knew is that I have not found that place of perfect peace with God concerning this move to Tennessee and that our search for our purpose here is not over yet.

                With God’s question hanging heavy in the air I decided to leave my woodworking for the time and to hear what the Lord wanted to teach me. With notebook in hand I went before the Lord. He was going to teach me about His sovereignty and how to interact with it through faith.

                For God to be infinitely sovereign as the Bible describes Him, it means that He is intimately acquainted with every atom and molecule in the universe as to its location and purpose. It is to know the whereabouts of every sparrow, every hair and every thought and intent of a man’s heart. The question is: How does finite man relate to an infinite God?

                WE NEED TO LEARN HOW TO SURRENDER TO THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. But what does it mean to surrender to His sovereignty and how do we do it in practical terms? After all, if God is absolutely sovereign, then there are no coincidences. Everything has a purpose. However the implications can be confusing and scary. For instance: If God is absolutely sovereign over everything, then should I call a doctor when I am sick? Should I buy insurance? Should I invest in anything? Should I even bother buying a house? After all Jesus said: “The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” Mt. 8:20.

                But a person can literally go looney tunes if he doesn’t know how to rightly connect with God’s sovereignty in this present age.      So the Lord began to teach me about the nature of faith as He desires us to live it.

                So here is principle number one. First of all, faith is not fatalism. In true faith, man is actively involved in doing that which is in his sphere, while trusting that God is fulfilling His promises in His sphere.

                The best demonstration of this is in the arena of farming. God provided the soil, the air, the sunlight, the rain and the seed, but the farmer must till and plant and water, weed and feed. He must bring in the harvest when the crop is ripe. Man has a role to play in this matter of faith.

                The role of the farmer is one of the best ways to describe man’s role and God’s role in matters of faith. This is what James is saying when he says that faith without works is dead. A farmer can sit on his couch and pray for a harvest from now until doomsday but he will have no harvest unless he does the things that are in his sphere to do. Faith works with God, while fatalism has us sitting and waiting for God to do something and fatalism is not God’s way. We are neither robots, nor puppets. We are sons and daughters in training to reign.

                While God is pictured as being seated on His throne, this is really a metaphor representing His kingship and lordship. In reality, God is non-local, which is to say that He is everywhere present. But to say that He is everywhere present is to say as well that He is everywhere aware. If He dwells in our hearts, then He is just as aware of us as He is of His angels in heaven. He is just as aware of us as He is of Jesus who is seated at His right hand. We cannot possibly be alone because He is with us just as much as He is in heaven. But this brings up a question. If He is everywhere present and everywhere aware, then how can darkness and evil exist?

                The truth of the matter is that in this fallen world that has rejected God and sold our realm to Satan, if we want to benefit from the immediate presence of God we need to engage with Him by faith. Air is everywhere but it only benefits those who breathe. Water is everywhere but it only benefits those who drink. Soil is everywhere but it only benefits those who plant seed. God’s promises are everywhere, but they only benefit those who claim them.  Salvation is everywhere available, but it only benefits those that receive it. Prayer is available to everyone, but it only benefits those who pray. Jesus is the Way, but it only benefits those who walk in it. He is the Truth, but it only benefits those who believe it. He is the Life, but it only benefits those who live it. 

                So God is sovereign and everything He does He is doing all the time.  He doesn’t wake up in the morning and remember to turn on the sun. The sun is shining all the time even though we experience both day and night.

                Likewise God’s grace and mercy and all of His promises are flowing all the time and we, by faith engage in and receive those things that would otherwise pass us by. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1 In other words, the invisible attributes of God are flowing by us all the time, but faith reaches out and grabs them.

                It is tempting at times to ask why we need to pray. What is the point? The point is that all that God is and all that He has is flowing all around us and by us, but we have to engage in it by faith… to appropriate it… to act on it and to do everything that is within our sphere to cooperate with it so that the seed planted will bring forth fruit. Faith grabs hold. Faith says “Yes.” Faith engages. Faith studies God’s Word to find out how to apply it and to benefit from it.

                We are told to wait upon the Lord in Isaiah 40:31, but this is not a fatalistic waiting on the couch, for they that wait in the biblical way will have their strength renewed and they will mount up with wings as eagles. They will run and not grow weary and they will walk and not faint. This then is an active waiting, like a waitress at the Lord’s table. We, as His servants, wait upon the Lord and He in return sends us out refreshed, renewed and ready to fly once again as eagles. Eagles see the big picture as they soar in the heavenly realms.

                Walking by faith isn’t always easy. Hearing God’s voice is also difficult. We must learn to sort His voice out from all of the other voices in our heads including our own voice… especially our own voice.

                Satan’s voice is usually pretty easy to tell for those who know the Lord, but even at that, many will be deceived in the end because they had not a love of the truth. They always took the easy way out and so when Satan comes offering a way out of persecution and trouble, many will take it.

                Satan offered Jesus the kingdoms of this world apart from dying. The future of the universe hung upon Yeshua’s choice in that moment. Would Jesus take the easy way out? Satan again tried to divert Jesus from the way of the cross through Peter, but Jesus said to him: “Get behind me Satan.”

                But Satan tries the same thing with us and we don’t always give the right answer. For instance:  Right now, at this very moment Satan is offering the church salvation apart from the cross. He is offering us a bloodless salvation with no cross, no repentance, no self-denial, no crucified life and no overcoming faith. He is creating a new Christianity for which Galatians 2:20 no longer applies. They are embracing another Gospel, another faith, another form of grace.

                Even as we see final events forming in the world some are resorting to a fatalistic kind of faith saying: “Whatever will, be will be.” Why study Bible prophecy. It’s all going to happen anyway. Anyway, we will be out of here, so why learn all of that stuff? But others are learning true faith, engaging with God…calling upon His name… fighting the good fight… learning how to tune into God’s prophetic agenda.

                The church is in a most critical time ad we are the church. There is a word in the Bible that is used only once in all of Scripture and it is applied to the last days. The word is “seducing.” And it is used in 1 Tim. 4:1 saying: “But the Spirit explicitly says that in the latter times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons…” It is this same “Falling away or apostasy” that makes way for the man of lawlessness, the antichrist to rise to world leadership.

                We as Christians are being offered a bloodless, cross-less salvation right now that will carry us right into the worship of the Beast. He will offer us a way out of persecution. All we have to do is to take the Mark and we will be part of the system. Refuse the Mark and we will be hunted down like animals.

                In God’s sovereignty He has outlined precisely what the issues will be in the last days, but many have never learned how to interact with God’s sovereignty. People say: Oh I don’t need to understand all of that prophecy stuff.  I just want to love Jesus and let Him sort everything out. But that is fatalism and not faith. God gave us prophecy for very important reasons, just like He gave us Sabbath and appointed times and signs in the sun, moon and stars… just as He outlined for us the events that will carry the world into the tribulation. True faith engages in God’s Word. True faith cooperates, obeys, chooses, listens, believes, receives and acts upon God’s Word.

                True faith does what is to be done in man’s sphere and then trusts God to do what He has promised to do in His sphere. In this divine/human interaction we deny self and take up our cross and follow after Jesus until we can say with Paul:

                “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me, and the life that I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave His life for me. Gal. 2:20. We embrace the crucified life in order that we may live by a power greater than our own. Satan is now offering us an easier way, but if Christ is my new life, then Christ in me will also say: “Get behind me Satan.”

                In all of our arguments about pre, mid and post Tribulation, in reality we don’t know how much of it we will have to go through… but we can know this: True faith begins with a cross… and a declaration of “Not my will, but Thine be done.”

                We may stumble and fall. We may hear Him wrong… make some wrong turns… but the way of the cross leads home. We have a covenant signed in the blood of Yeshua and sealed by His Holy Spirit that guarantees that we will make it to the finish line if we keep our eyes on Him.

                Friday was a low point for Bonnie and me because it seemed that everything that could go wrong was going wrong and it was getting so frustrating that we were actually beginning to turn on each other. The insurance company was forcing us to put a new roof on the house. Two contractors had made bids to do the job and then disappeared. The sale of our motorhome fell through at the last moment and the sale of our car dolly as well.

                And yet somehow during the night the Holy Spirit ministered to both of us and we woke up in the morning with a whole new lease on life… a new uniting of our spirits and a positive sense that we had turned a corner. Everything is going to work out because we are engaged in the sovereignty of a sovereign God and for those who are engaged, all things work together for good to those who love God and who are called according to His purposes.” Romans 8:28