Sovereignty

"All that exists is God's gift to man and exists...to make man's life communion with God, it is divine love made food." -Alexander Schmemann -

The question was, “How do God’s Sovereign ways encourage me?” My first thought was His Sovereignty instead of encouraging was confusing me. I am reading, This Beautiful Truth by Sarah Clarkson. The subtitle is, How God’s Goodness Breaks Into Our Darkness.

This book opens up the idea that we were never created to live with struggle and pain, death, and loneliness. From the very beginning, God created us for His love and communion. We are the image of God and God is love. It is so easy to forget how it all began.

God the Creator created us to flourish. When Pride, the cast out Enemy, stole all that was good from us, flourishing ceased. Sovereignty relies on no one while Pride relies on everyone. The very essence of God is love and sovereignty. The very essence of the Enemy of our soul is pride and wandering about for anything that ends the life of the body or the soul.

To answer the question of how God’s sovereignty encourages me. My soul is lifted as I witness God’s love in small and ordinary things. Why would a sovereign God who could injury me instead injury himself and give more and more of his character and attributes to me? But I am still scared and unsure even when I know this because our minds are complex and our emotions can be complicated.

I will lift up my soul to the One who created me for pure beauty and heartwrenching truths. A God that is love will rescue me and never abandon me, while an Enemy that is hate may look like a rescue and feel like safety but in reality, it is neither. You can tell the difference by the way God seems to let us pause before the world gets too close. Before we step into the chaos, whatever that may look like for each of us.

God lifts the heaviest things off our shoulders, not to be ignored forever but dealt with later. On a new day when God’s grace is given for it. The Lord God does not take us out of dark things, I know for sure he pulls me close and walks me through all that is dark and deluded. But still, even with the best of friends walking beside you, through unknown things, if you are both walking on fire, you both will be hurt. Not because God wants to hurt himself or us but because that cast out enemy of our soul, Pride himself stalks us.

God’s sovereignty looks like truth revealed and my mind protected and my heart held tight. God in his sovereignty never needs to apologize because we were never created for evil and destruction- but for God’s love and fellowship. He only pulls us closer if we allow him, showing us more of all he is and who we were always meant to be unto him.