I believe that God both wills and is able to bring good out of everything, even the worst. For this He needs people who are prepared to allow everything to be served for the best. I believe that in every crisis God wants to provide us with as much power of resistance as we need. But God never gives it in advance so that we will entrust ourselves. I believe that even our mistakes and wrongdoing are not fruitless and that it is no more difficult for God to cope with them than with our presumed good deeds. I believe that God is no “timeless fate” but, rather, that he waits upon and responds to our sincere prayer and responsible deeds.
Sovereign
Sean Smith
There’s nothing happening in your life, your nation, or the world, that God can’t use for His glory; He reigns.
C.S. Lewis
God will invade. But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realise what it will be like when He does. When that happens, it is the end of the world. When the author walks on to the stage the play is over. God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else – something it never entered your head to conceive – comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? For this time it will God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing; it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last for ever. We must take it or leave it.
N.T. Wright
We expect God to be, as we might say, ‘in charge’: taking control, sorting things out, getting things done. But the God we see in Jesus is the God who wept at the tomb of his friend. The God we see in Jesus is the God-the-Spirit who groans without words. The God we see in Jesus is the one who, to demonstrate what his kind of ‘being in charge’ would look like, did the job of a slave and washed his disciples’ feet.
Julie Maw
Jesus flipped the tables. But He never once instructed His disciples to do the same. God is in the God seat.
Timothy Z Witmer
April 5, 2020
Sometimes we too feel like we’re in a maze and don’t know which way to turn. We fear that if we take a wrong turn, it will lead to a dead-end from which we might not be able to escape. When we’re feeling lost and frustrated, the Lord knows our circumstances and is eager to direct us if we’ll just ask him. Prayer puts us in touch with the One who sees the beginning from the end.
David Ruis
January 17 2020
He is not a president who is voted into power via a democratic process. He is not a prime minister acting on behalf of some heavenly parliament, nor is He a CEO. God does not rule as a dictator, usurping authority and maintaining power through a reign of terror. No. He is King.
N.T. Wright
So often when people look out on the world and its disasters they wonder, why God doesn’t just march in and take over. Why, they ask, does he permit it? Why doesn’t he send a thunderbolt (or perhaps something a little less like what a pagan deity might do, but still) and put things right? The answer is that God does send thunderbolts – human ones. He sends in the poor in Spirit, the meek, the mourners, the peacemakers, the hungry-for-justice people. They are the way God wants to act in his world. They are more effective than any lightning flashes or actual thunderbolts. They will use their initiative; they will see where the real needs are, and go to meet them.
Warren W Wiersbe
Man’s will is free because God is sovereign. A God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so.
Mike Clay
We don’t always need to know where we are going as long as we know whom we are following. God is in control. Even when we wind up in strange places or unusual circumstances, the Father is not caught by surprise.