ABOUT THAT PHRASE “GOD IS IN CONTROL”
I was listening to a preacher who used the phrase, “God
is in control.” I felt that he had the right to use it because he had
surrendered his life to the Lord’s leadership on a daily basis. For him, using
that phrase is accurate and justified. But for too many people, it is an excuse
for apathy. “Well, I can’t do that much anyway. I just let God be in control.”
But it doesn’t work that way. If God were in control of everything, Adam and
Eve would have never sinned; David wouldn’t have killed Uriah to steal his
wife; Peter wouldn’t have denied Jesus three times.
There are certain things that God is in control of, but
we need to be sure we are not shirking our responsibilities and apathetically
turning over the tasks at hand to God because we are too tired, lax, or afraid
to take responsibility for what He’s given us to do.
God gave humanity freedom to choose. God inspired Joshua
to make the people decide: “If it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord,
choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers
served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites,
in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord”
(Joshua 24:15).
When the Israelites came to the edge of the Promised Land
in eleven days, Moses sent out twelve spies to check out the situation. God
brought them to the land He’d promised them. But there were obstacles.
When God brings us to a new place in our walk with Him,
there are going to be obstacles, but that’s no reason to give up and lamely
excuse ourselves by saying, “Well, God’s in control, so I’ll just wait and see
what He does.” There’s a time for waiting, but if the Lord is leading us and
we’re yielding to Him, we may discover that there are more times He calls us to
action than to sit on the sidelines. And if we’re unsure, we can always ask Him
to show us more. He is always willing to help us. He is a merciful and
compassionate God.
The Israelites were supposed to enter the Promised Land
after the eleven days, but since ten of the twelve spies saw obstacles, the
people were afraid and wouldn’t go in. And God couldn’t make them go in. God
doesn’t force us. He gave us freedom of will. The Lord wanted them to be bold
and act, but they wouldn’t. (See Numbers 13 and 14.)
Fear and apathy go hand in hand. “The slothful man saith,
‘There is a lion without, I shall be slain in the streets.’ As the door
turneth upon his hinges, so doth the
slothful upon his bed” (Prov. 26:13-14).
“So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold
nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth,” says the Lord in Revelation 3:16.
If we are going to use the phrase, “God is in control,”
let’s mean it in our personal lives and use it in the right way, because we
have chosen to surrender all to Him, daily yielding to His every call to
action.
Be bold. The Lord is with us wherever we go. Hebrews 13:
5b reassures us: “For he hath said, ‘I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee’”.
No more sitting on the sidelines thinking the Lord is
going to do all the work. We’re a team. As God said to His people in Isaiah 41:
8-10:
“But thou, Israel, art my servant, Jacob whom I
have chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend” (Isa. 41:8). That is in the Old
Testament times, but the Lord took care of that, and in the Epistles that are
written to us, we are lovingly told that we are also Abraham’s seed—"and
if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed” (Gal.
3:29a).
Continuing in Isaiah 41: 8-10: “Thou whom I have taken from the ends of
the earth, and called thee. . . and said unto thee, ‘Thou art my
servant; I have chosen thee, and not cast thee away. Fear thou not; for I am
with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God [Elohim]: I will strengthen thee;
yea, I will help thee.’”
The Lord will never ask you to do something scary or new
and then just walk away. NEVER! He is always with us.
Love, Carolyn
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