A few years ago, I was having a conversation in a casual setting with a handful of people, and someone mentioned the fact that a building, which a church had bought with the hope of restoring it and moving into it, was part of the mudslide and was destroyed. I put my two cents worth in by saying, “God must have a better building for them then.” There was someone with us who is a very wonderful and godly man looked at me and then in kind of an unflattering tone said, “You must have a reformed theology.” I simply quipped in response in a joking way, “I hope it’s not unreformed.” I knew what he was saying to me, but I did not want to get into a theological discussion in such a casual setting. There is this big divide out there and has been for a long time concerning whether or not God’s sovereignty dictates, or man’s free will. Those who heavily lean towards man’s free will as the most significant determining factor are called “Arminian” in their theology, and those who lean heavily towards God’s sovereignty ruling are called “Calvinists.” The problem with Westerners, and Western theology, is that we want all the dots to connect so that we can logically explain the ways of God and the part that man plays, and the role of the devil. As I have said before, I believe there is a devil, but I refused to believe in the devil. The enemy does bad things, and then God causes all things to work together for the good. Put simply, Satan is a rat, yet God reigns.
Because God reigns, does that mean that everything is inevitable because God is sovereign? No! Man has a free will, and God has called us through our union with Christ to partner with Him in governing the affairs of this world, while the Rat is constantly trying to create havoc. Therefore, does God’s sovereignty ultimately determine outcomes, or does man’s free will in the context of spiritual battle with the powers of darkness? The answer is YES!! How can both of those things be true? Because they are. We can rest in the fact that God is able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond anything we ever ask or imagine. God declares the end from the beginning, and yet our choices impact outcomes. Huh?
We see it working out today in the circumstances that are happening in this country. The enemy of our souls is creating so much conflict, and chaos and Christians are being confronted with deeply spiritual choices as to whether they will live from the inside out, responding to the conflict from their union with Christ, or will they will live from the outside in, reacting to everything that the enemy does, internalizing the chaos. The church is the light of the world, and the salt of the earth, and whether or not the church chooses to run towards the darkness carrying light Christ as the agent of healing, or become part of the chaos will result in significantly different kind of outcomes on the earth. Having said all that, our God reigns! I am so convinced that whenever the enemy pours it on this much, there must be a great and glorious outcome that Sovereign God intends to emerge from all this, that I am standing on my spiritual tiptoes fixing my eyes on the One does “exceedingly more.” All of us, as believers, have a heavenly calling. We were baptized into Christ and have therefore clothed ourselves with Jesus and placed into a world of potentially cataclysmic cosmic conflict. We were born into a BIG story, called and equipped in Christ to play a heroic in manifesting and enforcing the great victory of the Cross in the emerging of a whole new CREATION under the reign of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. There is never been a time like this. The greatest heroes were created for the greatest battles. The great hero is Jesus, and you and I are the body through which the Savior of all things lives. Is the enemy real are the things that he does terrible? Yes. Did Jesus totally defeat him 2000 years ago at the Cross, and do we get to make choices every day that allows Jesus to enforce that victory on the earth through us? Yes! Finally, is God sovereign, and does He Reign? Yes!!!