God Stuff - Big "Aha" Moments -- God Has No "Plan B"

So, throughout my walk with Christ, every now and then I will discover something new and life-changing about God.

The first one I remembered to write down in a journal somewhere was in 2007, and it is this:

God has no "Plan B".

There is never a moment where God sits back, does a face-palm, sighs, and says, "Well, shoot. I did not see THAT coming! Let's see... how can I fix this, now?"

No. God is completely in charge (the Christian buzzword, for you muggles, is "sovereign"). It's His bat, His ball, His field, His dirt, His grass, His everything. He runs the show. There is nothing that takes Him by surprise, nothing that He didn't fore-ordain before this planet and all of its history was even a twinkle in His infinite imagination.

I have a friend, Laura, who has experienced so much loss, heartache and tragedy in her life. Her parents died in a car crash when she was a teen. Her brother died from cancer. Her husband left her. Yet her faith in our very good God is unswerving. She explained it well once. She said she'd rather serve a God who had every single detail under His total control than a God who had turned His back or checked out briefly, which caused something to happen that He wasn't in charge of.  She said it much more eloquently, but you get the picture...

This realization has had enormous applications in my life. I spent much of my early walk with Christ afraid to share my faith. What if I said the wrong thing, and someone who was just on the brink of becoming a believer suddenly got offended and turned away from God forever? Or what if someone sees MY mess of a life, and thinks, "Um, no thanks, God." And all because I screwed up??

Um, sorry, Doreen. You're just not that powerful.

There is nothing I (or anyone else, for that matter) can do or say that is going to "de-rail" God's plan for someone's life.  In short, I CAN'T get it wrong -- well, of course I can, but not badly enough to do any lasting damage or to keep God from reaching someone.

This has given me enormous relief, and way more courage in sharing my faith. If I screw it up, or if I chicken out and don't speak up for Christ, or even if I'm just a terrible example of what it means to follow Christ (I can't remember where I read it, but I've stolen the motto: "If I can't be a good example, I strive to be a horrible warning."), God has it all under control.  He'll either send someone along who's better at this than I am to undo the mess I made, or He'll give me another shot at it later. In the process, He uses my fumbling attempts at talking about Him to refine me, to draw me closer to Him. and to sharpen my skills at sharing my heart and His boundless love with people.

I read a wonderful piece on this by John Piper. He's talking about Psalm 115:3

God is never constrained to do a thing that he despises. He is never backed into a corner where his only recourse is to do something he hates to do. He does whatever he pleases. And therefore, in some sense, he has pleasure in all that he does. 

This should lead us to bow before God and praise his sovereign freedom, that in some sense at least he always acts in freedom, according to his own "good pleasure," following the dictates of his own delights. 

God never becomes the victim of circumstance. He is never forced into a situation where he must do something in which he cannot rejoice. He is not mocked. He is not trapped or cornered or coerced. 

Even at the one point in history where he did what in one sense was the hardest thing for God to do, "not spare his own Son" (Romans 8:32), God was free and doing what pleased him. Paul says that the self-sacrifice of Jesus in death was "a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God" (Ephesians 5:2). The greatest sin and the greatest death and the hardest act of God was pleasing to the Father. 

And on his way to Calvary, Jesus himself had legions at his disposal. "No one takes my life from me; I lay it down of my own accord" - of his own good pleasure, for the joy that is set before him. At the one point in the history of the universe where Jesus looked trapped, he was totally in charge doing precisely what he pleased - dying to justify the ungodly like you and me. 

So let us stand in awe and wonder. And let us tremble that not only our praises of God's sovereignty but also our salvation through the death of Christ for us, hang on this: "Our God is in heaven; he does whatever he pleases."

 There's a whole other side to this that's super confusing, at times, for me. That is, how can we have truly free will, if God is running everything? How are we not puppets, constrained to follow the exact path He ordained? And how can there be evil in the world, but God's not the author of it? I don't believe God set the whole thing spinning (I think some call this the "blind watchmaker" theory?), and then He watches our path and our choices and alters His plan to accommodate our random steps. No, He either IS or He ISN'T a God who's totally in charge. And He is TOTALLY good. There is no evil in Him at all. I've read so many essays, listened to so many sermons, and each time I finish, I think I've finally grasped that both of these are true at the same time, without it being a logical contradiction. He's TOTALLY in charge, and I have TOTAL free will. And it's funny... it's like when you pick up a big handful of sand at the beach. You think, "I've got this!" And then, slowly, the sand starts to slip through your fingers, until not much of it is left. So you scoop up more sand, and then you think, "Okay, now I've got it!" The cycle goes on. Someday, I'll have read enough that I can publish my own insightful and brilliant analysis of man's free will and God's sovereignty. For now, I'll just keep picking up handfuls of sand and being very glad that God has it all figured out, even if I don't.