To continue the idea that God is on our side, touching it from different angles, I must raise the following question: How is it with God’s sovereignty?

This is a fundamental doctrine of Christianity that must be understood properly if you want victory in your life.

Religion has resulted in the invention of a new meaning for the word “sovereign,” which basically means God controls everything. Nothing can happen but what He wills or allows. However, there is nothing in the actual definition that states that.

For the sake of clarity, I looked up “sovereign” on www.dictionary.com. Here’s how it defines the adjective form of the word:

  • royal
  • having supreme rank, power, or authority
  • supreme; preeminent; indisputable
  • greatest in degree; utmost or extreme
  • being above all others in character, importance, excellence, etc.
  • efficacious; potent…

 

I completely agree that God is Sovereign, if we’re talking about these dictionary definitions. God is royal. God has supreme rank, power, and authority (there is none higher or more powerful than He). He is the greatest, the utmost. He is above all others in character, importance, and excellence. He is efficacious (effective) and potent (powerful).

However, when some people say, “God is Sovereign,” they mean that they can chalk any kind of weirdness that happens up to a mysterious God they don’t know very well. When others say “God is Sovereign,” they actually mean that everything that happens is the will of God. It doesn’t matter if this occurrence is totally against common sense, against the Biblical picture of God and His Character and Nature, against all His promises, against what we see in Heaven and in the Garden, against the perfect picture of God that Jesus provided, and against all that Christ accomplished for us on the cross— they think God did it all.

 

Sovereign Does Not Mean Inconsistent

Some people think that “sovereignty” means God is some kind of cosmic loose cannon. Regarding healing, for instance, some people say that sometimes God heals and sometimes He doesn’t. “How can you pretend to know what God wants? You’re not God! God is Sovereign, after all.” In other words, they’re saying, “God is inconsistent.” But they must not know that God has already clearly revealed in His Word that His will is always healing. Period. And He never goes back on His Word. I can therefore confidently state that God will do what He says He will do.

 

My covenant I will not break, nor alter the word that has gone out of My lips. (Psalm 89:34)

Forever, O Lord, Your word is settled in heaven. (Psalm 119:89)

The grass withers, the flower fades, But the word of our God stands forever. (Isaiah 40:8)

God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good? (Numbers 23:19)

When God says something, we can bank on it! When God declared that He gave earth to the children of men, and that we are to have dominion over all the works of His hands, He meant it, and He won’t change that. When He says that Healing is His will, and that it’s the children’s bread, He meant it, and He won’t change it!

Listen, “sovereign” does not mean, “unreliable,” or “inconsistent.” God does not just do random, unpredictable things— some good, some bad, some indifferent. God is steady. God is sure. God never changes. His Holy and Loving Character and Nature can be clearly seen and known. He has clearly revealed many aspects of His will in His Word. His Word contains promises of what He will do for us. His Word is the basis for true faith. If we believe His Word, we can confidently expect God to come through. God is reliable!

I want to address three lies or half-truths that may need to be rooted out of your belief-set.

 

Lie #1: “God is in control of everything”

There is perhaps no more damaging lie than the belief that God is in control of everything and that he is the reason everything happens. You hear stuff like this all time:

“I got cancer but God is sovereign. He permitted this to happen to teach me something.”
“God took my baby. I guess he needed another angel in heaven.”
“I lost my job. Perhaps God took it because I was enjoying it too much.”

Statements like these are ignorant.  If God was in control of everything, then he would be responsible for all the evil in our world – rape, murder, child molestation, sickening torturous diseases, genocides, pornography, sex trafficking— it doesn’t matter what it is— they say He decreed and ordained all of it. But God is not the author of evil. In him there is no shadow at all.

The Bible never says God is in control. Instead, it says stuff like this:

 

We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one. (1 Jn 5:19)

Much of the world is under the influence of evil. It remains captive to what the New Testament writers called “the power of darkness.” Yes, Satan was defeated and disarmed at the cross, but his influence persists wherever the light of the gospel is not seen.

The problem with thinking “God is in control” is it makes us passive spectators in the ride of life. We’ll just sit there and take whatever life hands us saying, “C’est la vie. God is in control. It’ll work out.”

The truth is that God is not in control of everything. The good news is that His sphere of influence increases as we, His children, shine in a dark world. He has given us His authority to resist the devil and his evil influence. We have been empowered to heal the sick, raise the dead, drive out demons and otherwise reveal the gospel of His kingdom in dark places.

 

Lie #2: “God is sovereign”

Sovereign Does Not Mean “Control Freak”

When some people say, “God is Sovereign,” they mean that “Everything that happens is God’s will.” They believe that people are essentially puppets and pawns with no influence on the world whatsoever. In other words, they think that God’s will is automatic and unavoidable— that everything that happens is the will of God, by His decree and command.

To say something is God’s will is to say that He chose it; and to say that He chose it is to say that He is responsible for it. To say He is responsible for it… is… Be careful!!!

To break this theory down to its most basic idea: If everything that happens is God’s decree and will, then God is responsible for— and therefore guilty of— sin. Come on, does that make any Biblical sense whatsoever? Is God Holy or not? A Holy God is the God of the Bible, and a Holy God is not guilty of sin.

Consider the following:

  • It was not God’s will for Adam to eat from the forbidden tree [simple_tooltip content=’but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”’](Genesis 2:17)[/simple_tooltip], but Adam ate.
  • God is not willing that any perish [simple_tooltip content=’The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.’](2 Peter 3:9)[/simple_tooltip], yet people perish.
  • God commands all people everywhere to repent [simple_tooltip content=’Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent,’](Acts 17:30)[/simple_tooltip], yet many don’t.

You don’t have to read more than three chapters into the Bible to realize that Almighty God, the Supreme Ruler of all, does not always get what He wants. How is this possible? This verse explains it:

 

The highest heavens belong to the Lord, but the earth He has given to man.  (Psalms 115:16)

God is Lord of the universe but we are little lords of our own little worlds. This is God’s gift to us – the freedom to choose how we live. The problem is, we often make choices contrary to God’s will.

Why would Jesus tell us to pray, “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven” [simple_tooltip content=’So He said to them, “When you pray, say: Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”’](Luke 11:2)[/simple_tooltip], if His will were already being done? Why would He tell us to pray for something we are already experiencing? That would make this prayer a purposeless exercise. Heaven looks like God’s will. He wants it to be that way on earth. We have to pray in order for it to be done, which means it isn’t already being done. There are things happening here that are not the will of God, or the Lord’s prayer would be meaningless. There are opposing influences (Satan and demons, fallen Creation, and the will of men not yielded to God) still to be brought in line with His will.

Also, there are 10 times in the New Testament where the Lord mentions those believers who “overcome” [simple_tooltip content=’4 For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. 5 Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?’](1 John 5:4-5[/simple_tooltip]; [simple_tooltip content=’“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God.”’]Rev.2:7[/simple_tooltip], [simple_tooltip content=’“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who overcomes shall not be hurt by the second death.”’]11[/simple_tooltip], [simple_tooltip content=’“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give some of the hidden manna to eat. And I will give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written which no one knows except him who receives it.”’]17[/simple_tooltip], [simple_tooltip content=’And he who overcomes, and keeps My works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations—’]26[/simple_tooltip], [simple_tooltip content=’He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life; but I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.’]3:5[/simple_tooltip], [simple_tooltip content=’He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go out no more. I will write on him the name of My God and the name of the city of My God, the New Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God. And I will write on him My new name.’]12[/simple_tooltip], [simple_tooltip content=’To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.’]21[/simple_tooltip]; [simple_tooltip content=’And He said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts.’]21:6)[/simple_tooltip]. In [simple_tooltip content=’Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.’]Romans 8:37[/simple_tooltip], He calls us “more than conquerors.” The obvious question is— If God’s will is already being done, then what are we overcoming and conquering? God? His will? Of course not! We are overcoming and conquering the forces that oppose God, His will, and us— His people.

Look at what the Scripture says in Ephesians:

 

 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 6:12)

Why are we wrestling? If God’s will is automatic, then there is no need to fight the devil, right? Wrong! These “spiritual hosts of wickedness” are obviously doing something God opposes, or He wouldn’t be having us “wrestle against” them. If they were doing God’s will, and we wrestled against them, then we would be wrestling against God Himself. Was God saying we should fight against Him? Of course not!

The truth is that God is not sovereign in the sense that He always gets what He wants. Fact is, His will is not always done. The good news is that He will write the final chapter of human history and for those who trust Him all things will work out for good. And the really good news is that we can walk in the will of God here and now with the aid of the Holy Spirit. It’s the best way to live.

 

Lie #3: “God could’ve stopped this from happening but He didn’t”

A boy takes a loaded gun to school and God doesn’t stop him. An earthquake flattens a city and God apparently does nothing. What kind of God is this?!

The “God could’ve stopped this but didn’t” chestnut is another way of saying, “This bad thing is God’s fault. He allowed it to happen.”

Like all the lies from above, there’s a measure of truth behind this. Everything that happens, happens because God gave us the freedom to do what we like, even the freedom to hate Him, kill our brothers, and then blame Him for what we did. Of course, we look like fools when we do this. We look like Adam who blamed God for giving him a woman who led him into sin [simple_tooltip content=’Then the man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.”’](Gen 3:12)[/simple_tooltip].

We are masters at playing the blame game. When something bad happens we blame our genes, our parents, our spouses, or our kids. We blame the government, the system, immigrants, Communists, so we might as well go the whole hog and blame God. “I got sick. God allowed this to happen. God is at fault.”

Jesus, on the other hand, never blamed anyone. He just took responsibility for other people’s messes and fixed them.

Believe the lie that God is behind everything that happens and you’ll end up in the ash heap of life licking your wounds like a perplexed Job. You’ll bend over whenever the devil wants to kick you. Who wants to live like that?

The truth is God doesn’t always stop bad things from happening. The good news is that sometimes you can. You can bring the weight of His purposes to bear on your circumstances simply by trusting in Him. You can walk through the valley of the shadow of death without fear knowing that He is with you. Life doesn’t have the last word when you’re walking in the spirit.

 

A simple test

To see how well you are getting this, ask yourself this question: Which of the following two Jesuses is found the Bible?

  • Jesus #1 sat around powerless, making excuses and doing nothing to help those who had been made sick by God.
  • Jesus #2 went around in the power of the Spirit doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil.

 

Hopefully you know the second Jesus is true [simple_tooltip content=’how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.’](Acts 10:38)[/simple_tooltip]. Yet many of us look more like the first Jesus. We’re not walking in the power of the Spirit, we’re not healing the sick, but we’re making excuses. Chief among them is this one, “God is in control. It’s His fault, not ours.”

James said, “resist the devil and he will flee from you.” It really is that simple. We resist, he flees. But we won’t resist if we think God is doing the devil’s work and making us sick, killing our kids, and robbing us blind.

God is not making you sick and poor! He is not the reason you lost your money, your job, your marriage, or your kids. These are the tragedies of a life cursed by Adam’s sin. But the good news is that one greater than Adam has come and He has given you authority to proclaim the good news of His kingship to all creation.

  • Are you sick? Talk to your sickness about Jesus by whose stripes you are healed [simple_tooltip content=’who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness— by whose stripes you were healed.’](1 Pet 2:24)[/simple_tooltip].
  • Are you poor? Talk to your bank account about your rich King who became poor so that through his poverty you might become rich [simple_tooltip content=’For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich.’](2 Cor 8:9)[/simple_tooltip].
  • Have you been robbed, discouraged, and beaten by life? Then be like David and strengthen yourself in the Lord your mighty God [simple_tooltip content=’Now David was greatly distressed, for the people spoke of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his sons and his daughters. But David strengthened himself in the LORD his God.’](1 Sam 30:6)[/simple_tooltip].

Why did Jesus come? Did He come to help us understand why God never lifts a finger to help? No! Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil [simple_tooltip content=’He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.’](1 John 3:8)[/simple_tooltip]. In His name go and do likewise.