Not a Tame Lion...

It's good to remember that God is Sovereign.

I was thinking this morning about some people who have told me "how God works" and what I must do here or there. Usually they describe a situation from the Bible where God did something. Then they construct a rule based upon their observations of that incident that they then say is "How God Works".

As a specific example, (but not meant as a criticism of those that have said this,) several times I have heard people say that “God will not give you a new “Word” until you’ve obeyed the “Word” He has already given you.” Another specific example would be that the philosophies of psychiatry and counseling have often used this construct to impute the Bible's "approval" onto their ideas. It is easy to deconstruct Bible stories to assert that "principle X" is at play in that story, that "Principle X is obviously part of God's will" and "principle X is just a part of how God made us (or the world or the universe".)

First of all, for that to be true it would require that we understand what God is doing. (This in spite of His declarations that His thinking is way, way above our thoughts, .) Isn't it funny how easy it is to assume we understand God when, if you really sit and think that through, it's almost ridiculous on its face!

It may be true in a given situation that God operated in a certain way, but I just don’t know that He has always declared these instances as rules that bind Him or or that His past action reduces His sovereignty to act differently in the future. I think when He wanted to make us a promise about things, He just went ahead and gave us a promise.

You see, God understands a reality in this world that we cannot see, feel or understand. He acts with absolute sovereignty based on His knowledge of the universe. And we are to serve Him based upon His directions and His control, with absolutely no regard to our understanding, (or approval,) of His actions. As a father wants his child to trust him, so I believe that God shares some insights into His purposes for our sake, but never to be used as a precondition for trust or obedience on our part.

But I understand why we keep coming up with these additional rules. We want God to be safe. We want Him to be predictable. We want God to be a vending machine where if we insert coin “A” He will drop out blessing “B”. We want God to be predictable so that we can use Him to accomplish our plans and desires. God asks us to surrender our plans and desires to Him to shape, change and discard as He directs. He want to be the potter to our clay.

I loved the way C.S. Lewis described Aslan, (the Lion that represents Jesus,) in “The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe”. Lewis went to lengths to make us to understand that our hearts long for Aslan, but to also let us understand that he was not a stuffed children’s toy. Lewis wanted us to know that God is alive and sovereign and dangerous.

God will never break His word. God will never change His mind. God will also never inhabit the conceptual boxes we build to try to hold Him and His will.

Your plans and desires may not survive an encounter with The Living Holy God.

And that, too, is Good News!

Isn’t He wonderful!