This week, we consider matters which, on one side, offer great hope to Christians—while, on the other, lead to lots of confusion. What am I talking about?
• God is good, all-powerful, and in control of all that transpires while, at the same time, evil is real and sometimes seems to be in control.
• God is sovereign over all things while, at the same time, we human beings make real decisions that have consequences.
• God is working out a plan that, according to the Bible, will end up just the way Revelation 21 describes things while, at the same time, we are called to pray with the assurance that prayer actually changes things.
If you have never struggled with these kinds of issues, I apologize (though only a moderate kind of apology) for introducing you to them. Throughout my own walk with God, I've wrestled with these and related issues repeatedly. And, just as much, I think that these questions have been the ones at the root of most of the struggles people have brought to me as their pastor.
C.S. Lewis wrote about this topic perhaps more than anyone. Again and again, he said that the foundation for understanding these questions is grasping more and more about the nature of God. We must learn how God has revealed himself to be in Scripture and then trust that he was, is, and will be who he is. In his autobiography Surprised by Joy, Lewis wrote how he learned: "God was to be obeyed simply because he was God. Long since (before Lewis' conversion)..., God had taught me how a thing can be revered not for what it can do to us but for what it is in itself. That is why, though it was a terror, it was no surprise to learn that God is to be obeyed because of what He is in Himself. If you ask why we should obey God, in the last resort the answer is, 'I am.'"
And, if you wonder, "What on earth does that mean?" I say to you, "Read Acts 12." Many things about how decision-making human beings understand a world controlled by God come together in this one chapter. One evil man (Herod) seems to be in control, but God proves (at the end) that he is in control. One Christian dies, and another experiences a dramatic miraculous rescue. Praying people experience God's saying "no" in one instance and "yes" in the next. In one situation, God seems to be far away, and in the next he clearly is present. I read this chapter and feel that it is a compressed version of how I experience life as a believer.
Let's let Acts 12 teach us. I pray that we all will respond by seeking to learn more about God, praying more fervently, and trusting God more fully—until his eternal plan is complete.
To His Glory,
Dr. Greg Waybright
Senior Pastor