God’s Will

We have a sort of pop mishmash of ideas about God and what He’s doing in the world that is, as my dad says, about as clear as mud.  In situations like the present one in Ukraine, these ideas either stand as serious slander against God’s character or force us to properly re-evaluate who God truly is.  So, I’d like to take a look at a couple of things in hopes of clearing things up.

First, not everything that happens is God’s will.  I often hear people claim it is when some tragedy strikes.  Who do we think God is??  Do we truly believe God is happy about the pain people feel every time something bad happens?  Someone loses a child – God’s will.  Someone gets cancer – God’s will.  Someone declares war on an innocent nation – God’s will.  Let’s be clear – none of this has anything remotely to do with God’s will.  That’s why Jesus, when teaching us how to pray, tells us to say, “Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.”  Why?  Because so much of what happens here is not God’s will.  The world is at war with God’s will and only aligns with it when His people, living by His Spirit, bring justice, mercy, joy, grace, love, peace, holiness, reconciliation, and all those things into their spheres of influence.  It is a prayer that His Lordship will be recognized and realized in the lives of more and more people.  And this leads me to another muddy concept….

“Everything happens for a reason.”  Do me a favor.  Go to biblegateway.com and put that into the search bar.  I’ll tell you what you get.  Nothing.  It’s not in the Bible.  Oh, you might get something close, and I’ll deal with in a minute.  But to debunk this reason thing… the world, as described in the Bible, has a master and it’s not God.  It’s the father of lies.  There is no reason in him.  None.  Nada.  Zippo.  Zilch.  Think about it.  Have you ever been dumb struck by some evil reported in the news?  Have you ever said, “I just can’t get my mind around this”?  Well, there’s a reason for that, and the reason is there is no reason.  Evil doesn’t operate on the level of reason.  Evil has no logic.  Now… the father of lies likes to make sin look like it has some sense, he likes to trick people into doing his twisted will by connecting dots, but it’s total illusion and if we’re holding to God, we’ll find no sense in it.

But here is the wonderfully miraculous thing – God can take all this and transform it into something beautiful.  That’s what Paul is saying in Romans 8:28, which may have come up in your search; “And we know that God works all things together for the good of those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose” (Berean Study Bible).  God can take the chaos and hatred Satan throws at us through war and sickness and loss and pain and poverty and want and bring meaning to the meaningless.

Example?  Currently, there is an absolutely senseless war going on.  Not God’s will.  Yet God is already weaving meaning by moving hearts towards justice, compassion, and mercy.  May we be instruments of His will.