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!
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