God is in control...

In January I was going home from university on the train to see my girl friend, as the train was going through the countryside I saw some lambs in the fields by the track, I love lambs, they are so lively and happy – bounding around without a care in the world. I can remember seeing them on nature programs with the sun shining as it only can in the spring – but it wasn’t spring, it was January – the middle of the winter!! I was then thinking how strange that was, how much we must have ruined the planet with our consumption of natural resources and our production of carbon dioxide as if it is going out of fashion (which it should by the way!). I didn’t think anything else of it, except maybe thinking that if we ruin the planet then Jesus might come back sooner, which would be amazing.

When I was walking from the station to my house I remembered how around Christmas time a lady from my church was amazed that she had daffodils, at Christmas, the time of holly and berries, again I concluded that our constant need for electricity had caused this imbalance in nature. This does not seem like a big problem, but the idea of wrecking the planet means God isn’t in control anymore surely, that by doing what we have we have messed up things for God.

Thinking about it now this was stupid. How could I have thought that by burning things we could ruin this planet? It is not that we have ruined nature by any human means to cause lambs to be born in January of spring flowers to come up in December. It is that God wanted it that way, not in the usual sense of the word, but if he didn’t it wouldn’t happen, would it? Do we really think that we can do anything to change the will of God or by our own actions we can cause an unbalance in his eternal purpose?

The other night I was at a prayer meeting and at one point the lady who was running it gave out newspapers to groups and said people should pray for the people in the stories. To be honest when she said it my head just thought the idea was stupid, but God nudged me and said it was a good idea. I have come to realise if God thinks it is good then it is!

When we had the papers my first reaction was to how bad the world was, how much trouble we have got into – and even though I know God is in control – I just thought how much the worlds needs God. However after a while of looking though and not feeling led to pray for anything I asked God why it was so important that I took this seriously, and he told me. He said, “Look at what is in the papers, that’s what I want to be in there”. Now me being not bold enough said to the people we were with something like, “I feel God says he knows what is in the papers and so we shouldn’t worry because what we will have in heaven is so much better it isn’t worth getting caught up in – we need to look to heaven no earth”.

To this they were like, cool, and I thought it was good, but I knew God was trying to say so much more.

Then an amazing thing happened, a very wise boy in my group said God had given him a verse before, it didn’t make sense then – but now it did. It was Romans 8:18-27. The bit important for now is 20 and 21, it says,

“For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.”

It is amazing, read it again, and properly,

“For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.”

Ok, basically it is saying that the world is frustrated, not because of some stupid earthly reason, or because man has messed it up – but because God wills it. He wants it to be like that. Why? So that heaven is even more amazing.

I know it does raise a question about God’s justness and grace, and here's where I am going to give a rubbish answer I would normally hate people to give. But here goes, I just know that God is just and true. No matter what happens in the world, I know God is in control, and I know that he can see so much more than me.

The world isn’t falling apart, our job isn’t to try and fix it – our job is to live with it and wait to the kingdom to come while following Gods way!

Sorry the last bit was a bit of a cop out, maybe one day I will have a real answer. The whole thing is something I don’t think churches teach though, I haven’t heard it – we are so concerned with trying to make people good, when really we should be concerned with just making them Christians. If God wants something to happen, we won’t stop him, and why would we want to.

Think about it, it is actually incredibly freeing isn’t it – we no longer have to worry about trying to make the world better in the way we do, we don’t have to get caught up in making people get on – we have to devote ourselves to God, and he will do what he wants. How much more would you get done if you realised God was actually in complete control, how much freer would you be.

Amazing!