God’s In Control?

I'm sure you have heard someone say, "We know God is in control." As an example, someone loses their job and a friend tells them, "We know God is in control." I remember after the presidential election of 2016, some who didn't like the outcome consoled one another with the thought that God is in control. After the presidential election of 2020 the roles were reversed, but there were still people consoling each other with the idea that God is in control.

My question is if God is in control, does He get His way? After all, He is God. If He desires a certain outcome then what is to stop Him from getting His way? An interesting interpretation of someone observing that God is in control in the situations above, is that God worked to cause someone to lose their job. God wanted Donald Trump to be president. Then God wanted Joe Biden to be president.

In fact, if God is in control and He gets His way, consider the many conclusions that follow from that throughout history. To name a few, God wanted Hitler to control Germany, start World War 2, exterminate millions of Jews and cause widespread calamity throughout Europe, and with the help of Japan (yes, God placed Hirohito in power in Japan in this scenario) in Asia and the Pacific as well. Years later God enabled Isis to murder 3,000 people on 9/11. More recently God placed Hamas in a position to massacre thousands of Jewish people on October 7, 2023.

Those statements should seem unthinkable to you, but if God is in control and He gets His way then the implication is clear. So, if you don't think those results were precipitated by God (and to be clear, I do not think so) then there is a different implication to consider. Either God is not in control, or God does not always get His way, or both.

The Bible solves this seeming mystery for us. We are told in 2 Peter 3:9 that "[God is] not willling that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." However, in Matthew 7:13-14 we are told "wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it." So God wants everyone to be saved, but there are many who will choose the path to destruction. It looks like God doesn't always get His way,

How is it that this omniscient, omnipotent creator of the universe and everything in it can be kept from getting His way? What's stopping Him? You may want to sit down for this. You are. I am. People are stopping God from having "all come to repentance." This is the case because God created people with the ability to make their own choices, to choose their own path. The fancy term for this is 'free moral agency.' So God created people with the ability to thwart God's will. Right?

The answer is both yes, and no. Understand that God wants people to love Him. He could easily have made us robots that performed as programmed, but there is no love in such a situation. In order for love to be real, it has to come from free choice, so God gave us the ability to choose to love Him. Along with that comes the ability to choose to do all the things that God makes clear are a part of loving Him. Or to choose not to do those things as well as choose not to love God. God gave us the ability to be whoever we wanted to be.

He did not force us to be the people He wanted us to be. In fact, that is something God, in all His power and glory, could not do. He wants us to be people who love Him. Love has to come from the heart of the individual, it cannot be forced by an outside power. So God does not always get His way.

Think about it. If God always got His way, Jesus would not have had to die. God didn't want Jesus to die. God wanted mankind to be saved and His perfect Son was the only hope of bringing that salvation about. And God was willing to do that, Jesus was willing to do that, in order that you and I (the ones who are stopping God from getting His way) could be eternally saved with God in Heaven.

Just as the Bible makes it clear that God does not always get His way in particular circumstances, it also states unequivocally that He is in control. Phillipians 2:10-11, "that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God, the Father." But if we can stop God from getting His way, getting what He wants, how can we say that He is in control?

Solomon probably gave the best answer for that question that can be given. In the book of Ecclesiastes 11:8-11, "Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth; Walk in the ways of your heart and in the sight of your eyes. But know that for all these God will bring you into Judgment. Therefore remove sorrow from your heart, and put away evil from your flesh." As Solomon says we have a period of time in which we can exercise our free will to do whatever we please. We can use that time to thwart God's will regarding us. But that time will come to an end, and God will call us into judgment regarding all the choices we made during our lives and at that time we will not thwart His will. We will bow to it (see Phil. 2 above). We will fully realize that God is in control just as He always has been while we foolishly disobeyed His will.

What about national affairs and nations? What about the election of presidents or other representatives? It's clear from the Old Testament that God was active in controlling the business of nations. Some examples are; the destruction of the Egyptian army in the Red Sea, the work of most any of the judges of Israel in its infancy, the destruction of the Syrian army in 2 Kings 7, all of the prophecies in Daniel regarding Babylonians and Medes and Persians.

God was concerned with and intervened in the affairs of nations when His people were a nation. God's people are no longer a nation today. Instead, His followers come from all nations. Matthew 28:19-20, "Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father , and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you . . ." All nations are to be baptized into Jesus' church. Notice what Jesus told Pilate in John 18:36 " . . . My kingdom is not of this world: If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight . . ." God has no interest in the earthly kingdoms of this world, because His people are not determined by such a definition. His people are those of every nation that have been added to His church because they did what was asked of them to be added to His church. See Acts 2:37-47.

So what have we learned? God does not always get His way because He gave people free moral agency to make their own choices. That means things can, and sometimes do, get wildly different from what God would have imposed. Yet God is in control because we'll have to answer for all of our choices. God also does not as a matter of course interfere in the processes of earthly governments because His people are not defined as an earthly nation. (Notice, I am not saying He cannot or will not.)

Does any of this negate God's providence acting in this world and in our lives? No. God's providence has not been the issue of this article. What should be said about God's providence is that we do not know when it is active and when it is not. We do not know how it is working or necessarily what it is doing. We should not be so presumptuous as to make definitive statements that we know this or that happened because of God's providence. Maybe that's the case, but we don't know.