GOD IS IN CONTROL

I realize the statement “God is in control” applies most directly to those who have entered into covenant with Him. But in another sense God must be in control of everything to be “God.” I can’t find the scriptures to support the story that somehow God lost control of his creation in the garden when man sinned. The Bible clearly and repeatedly states God created everything, and holds everything together.  The God who created the universe also created love... joy ...peace... reason... free will... We only know and learn within the boundaries of God’s creative framework. And He speaks specifically of creating evil in Isaiah and other passages: "I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create calamity (evil); I, the Lord, do all these things."  “Calamity” is the Hebrew “ra” which covers all forms of adversity, affliction, misfortune, trouble, difficulty, disaster... all forms of Bad, and is the primary Old Testament word translated evil. In the Garden of Eden... the paradise of God, there was a tree whose fruit summed up experiential knowledge giving conceptual understanding of moral and ethical choices of both Good and Ra... Good and Evil. This tree bearing two distinctly different kinds of fruit is a natural marvel defying God’s natural laws. Who could create such a tree but God? No one!

Evil is not the opposite of God... God has no opposites. Evil is the opposite of good, defining good as “Good”, much like the Law defined sin as sin. God in His foreknowledge anticipated the need for evil to consummate His redemptive plan for freewill beings. God created the heavens, but He is not the heavens. God created the earth, but He is not the earth. God created evil and many other things, in fact all "things", but He is not evil or any of these "things"... He is God. You see, God does not have to will evil to accomplish His purposes, but He does allow it. He has satan, who is evil incarnate, on a leash, unwittingly and unwillingly serving His purposes, tempting Self-centered hearts to “give place”… to allow satan influence. He hardened pharaoh’s heart (which was already hard). He predestined every saint to be conformed into the image (nature) of Christ, before the foundations of the world. Our transformation involves adversity as our Self’s desires collide with God’s holiness. The “Bad” things of life are, in a sense, God shouting at us for attention. He wants us to surrender Self to the cross so He can give us something much better -- Him-Self, living His life through us as our life – while turning our bad into His purposeful good.  

Just look around at all the “western cultural Christians”; in fact, maybe we should look at our own heart. The four characteristics of Thornbushers as documented in the Sower Parables all deal with the allure of the world:  The desire for riches, the desire for worldly pleasures, the desire for other non-spiritual things, and preoccupation with the cares of this life, all of which divide our mind, distract us from God’s purposes, and ultimately leave us worried, unstable and anxious. Thorn cluttered hearts have good intensions but they are deceived, thinking they can concurrently abide in Christ and abide in the world... the very thing Christ died to save us from. Evil abounds and knows the Pied Piper’s tunes, but God’s grace superabounds. God will transform hearts that are willing -- even hearts willing to be made willing – for God is in control!

HE IS MAKING US HIS JEWELS!

KNOWLEDGE + FAITH = EXPERIENCE

"In the beginning was “The Word”, and “The Word” was with God, and “The Word” was God.” This phrase “The Word” is, among other things, referring to the knowledge of God conveyed by His written word, scripture, which includes knowledge of “The Word” which became flesh, the incarnate Word… Jesus. “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son…” The Old Testament is God’s self-disclosure, and the New Testament is God speaking forth the revelation of His Son, both of which make up “The Word”, The Knowledge of God to mankind.

Hebrews chapter four establishes a spiritual principle within the context of receiving a promise from God. In this passage God is chiding Israel for failing to enter Canaan, which He calls His “rest”, because of unbelief. “For indeed the gospel was preached to us (New Covenant believers) as well as to them (Israel); but “The Word” which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it.” Notice “The Word”, the knowledge of God’s promise of a rest for His people, did not profit them. They did not receive God’s promise because they did not mix the knowledge of His promise with faith.

It is the knowledge of God mixed with faith in that knowledge that enables our spiritual experiences. This is how God engages and intervenes in our life. The promise in Hebrews is the rest of God, which for New Covenant believers is the experience of one who has fully surrender to the Lordship of Christ and is totally controlled by the Holy Spirit. “For we who have believed do enter that rest”: To access this promise experientially we must first know the promise then believe it, mixing our knowledge with faith. We are called to be “partakers of Christ” -- not imitators – and to be the temple of the Godhead: It is faith in the knowledge of these promises that produce the indwelling Christ-Life.  Salvation becomes a living reality through faith in the knowledge that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” – wherein we recognize our need for God – and faith in the knowledge of who and what Jesus is that leads us to confess with our mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in our heart that God has raised Him from the dead, which produces the salvation experience. And so it is with all the promises, blessings, and commandments of God. We must do the “mixing”: We must put our faith into the knowledge of God, His Word, to ever experience the life He has planned for us.

There are those who want to elevate spiritual experience by the belittling of spiritual knowledge. This is simply wrong! Without “The Word”, without the knowledge of God, we can have no meaningful experience of God – no understanding. Knowledge always precedes spiritual experience and defines it for our understanding… and, ultimately, for our spiritual wisdom. This is why it is so very important to make partaking of “The Word” of God a daily lifelong passion.

We cannot believe in “something” without knowledge of the “something”! We cannot experience God without knowledge of and faith in that which we are to experience.

(John 1:1; Heb. 1:1-2; Heb. 4:1-10; Heb. 3:14; 1 Cor. 3:16, 6:19; Rom. 3:23, 6:9-10)