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IS GOD REALLY SOVEREIGN?

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28, NIV)

ONE OF THE MOST difficult questions we as ministers face is “Why did God do this to my child?” Why would God allow such a young life so full of promise to be consumed by any disease? And what makes matters worse is when it is YOUR child that is involved. Some may feel a sense of anger or mistrust in God. Others may feel God is punishing them in some way, or is taking some cosmic sense of delight in watching us suffer. Some feel abandoned and confused, while others allow the situation to stir their faith in God for a miracle. Still others may have even come to a sense of peace over the situation and manage to find contentment.

Each reaction and feeling is normal and is something to acknowledge and work through. But just because we are having an intense feeling toward God, does not necessarily make the conclusions we are reaching about Him or about our lives or about our futures accurate. At times of great confusion in life, the most trustworthy avenue we can take is to study what God’s Word, the Bible, has to say on that subject.

So, as we look at our children who are struggling, the natural question is, “Why, God?” Perhaps a better question for us to ask is, “Is this your plan for my child’s life?” It is hard for many Christians to ask that type of question because there is a basic belief many have that everything that happens on Earth, and especially those things beyond our control, must be God’s will. But is it really? And what about the sovereignty of God? If He wants something to happen, isn’t it a given? The answer is yes and no. Yes, God is indeed sovereign. He is the author and creator of our very existence, capable of intervening in any life at any given time.

Yet even the pages of Scripture tell of how the Lord, through an act of sovereignty, chose to give imperfect human beings dominion over the earth. Genesis 1:28 says, “Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’”
(NKJV).

Within the rules of that dominion, God gave to us the right to make our own choices and live with the consequences. We were given our own free will that, more often than not, seems to contradict God’s will. As a result, God’s perfect will has not necessarily been done on earth since the dawn of the human race. His will was clearly that Adam and Eve live in eternal communion with Him in the Garden of Eden. Yet they sinned. God’s will was not done.

Another example is that the Lord is “not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). Even so, people who have never come to repentance are perishing every minute of every day. God’s will is not being done with each and every death of an unbeliever.

C. S. Lewis has this to say in his classic volume “Mere Christianity”: “God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go either wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong; I cannot. If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible.

Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. …Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently He thought it worth the risk” (Macmillan Publishing, p. 52).

The Lord’s Prayer itself offers further proof that God’s will is not apparently an automatic occurrence, at least here on Earth. Jesus taught the disciples to pray that God’s kingdom would come and His will would be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matt 6:10, Luke 11:2). Apparently, the will of God is not an issue in heaven, yet it is here on Earth. If that were not so, this prayer would be a redundant, powerless ritual. In fact, all prayer outside of that which refreshes our relationship to God would be useless.

So what does our free will have to do with sickness or our children? When the human race fell into sin back in the days of Adam and Eve, one of the devastating consequences attached to sin was sickness and disease in our physical bodies. Since that time, we have all been subject to sickness and death, and that, sadly enough, includes our children.

In the case of autism, many are coming to believe that environmental factors coupled with genetic predispositions may play a role in the onset of the illness. If it is true that external factors may trigger autism, then we cannot in anyway blame God for our children’s disorder, anymore than a someone spending too much time in the sun can blame God for skin cancer, or a heavy drinker can blame God for their liver disorders. I also believe that most illnesses, even those without a specific external cause we can point to, are still not God’s doing, simply because in His original plan for the human race, no sickness or death was meant to be. But, He gave us free will thinking, as C. S. Lewis pointed out, that it was worth the risk.

So where does that leave us now? Does God have any power left? What about Romans 8:28 that says, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”? The answer is yes, God has plenty of power left and He can change situations. But in order to avail ourselves of this power, we must (according to this Scripture) love God and be committed to His purposes on Earth. The other key component is to invite God back into the situation to restore to us that which has been lost. The way to do that is through prayer.

Dutch Sheets, pastor of Springs Harvest Fellowship in Colorado Springs, recently wrote a brilliant book called “Intercessory Prayer”. Here is what he has to say on this issue: “Without question, humans were forever to be God’s link to authority and activity on the earth. Here we have, I believe, the reason for the necessity of prayer. God chose, from the time of the Creation, to work on the earth through humans, not independent of them. He always has and always will, even at the cost of becoming one. Though God is sovereign and all-powerful, Scripture clearly tells us that He limited Himself, concerning the affairs of earth, to working through human beings” (Regal Books, pp. 28-29).

Earlier in Sheets’ book, he quotes E.M. Bounds, “God shapes the world by prayer. The more praying there is in the world the better the world will be, the mightier the forces against evil….The prayers of God’s saints are the capital stock of heaven by which God carries on His great work upon earth. God conditions the very life and prosperity of His cause on prayer” (pp. 23-24).

So what does this mean to us in terms of our children? When every human being is born, God has a plan for their lives. However, if we do not understand God’s plan for us and pray that His will is done in our lives, just as it is in heaven, His plan may never come to pass. That may be very hard to believe, but if we do not somehow come into agreement with God’s plan in prayer, we are living purely in the consequences of our own free will rather than being led by Him. We are not availing ourselves of the promises in Romans 8:28, because we are not allowing God to work all things together. We, instead, are at the helm trying to work things together in our own strength and with our own wisdom.

However, no matter how off course our lives have become, we also serve a faithful, merciful God who has a plan for restoration. Through Jesus, God restored to the human race that which was lost through Adam. Does that necessarily mean that every child we pray for will be miraculously healed? No. But it does mean that some will be healed. And for all the others it means that life will be better and that His plans and purposes for that life, no matter how severe the disability, have a much better chance of coming to full fruition.

As we pray God’s will to be done on Earth as it is in heaven, it means that even in the midst of struggles that we may not understand, we can have great assurance and peace in our hearts. Just as God gave us the authority to have dominion on Earth by an act of His will, we are giving Him back dominion and authority in our lives by an act of the free will He granted us. From that position and perspective, God absolutely will work all things together for our good and we can trust Him to do so. No matter what we have lost or what circumstance we face, God has a plan to restore it, and, once we allow Him to work in our lives, He has all the power to do so.

With blessings,
Jack and Rebecca Sytsema

©2006, Children of Destiny. All rights reserved.

(This article has been adapted from the book, Possessing Your Inheritance, by Chuck D. Pierce and Rebecca Wagner Sytsema, published by Renew Books, 1999).

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