WHAT ABOUT THAT PHRASE “GOD
IS IN CONTROL”?
I was listening to a
preacher yesterday who used the phrase, “God is in control.” He has the right
to use it because he has 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 lazy 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 sit here 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 the times He asks
us to sit on the sidelines.
The
Israelites were supposed to go into the Promised Land after the eleven days,
but since ten of the twelve spies saw obstacles, the people got 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
do it. (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. Let’s sign with Him
in contract, be with Him in action.
Be bold. No more sitting on the sidelines thinking
God is going to do all the work. We’re a team.
Love,
Carolyn
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