The Sovereignty of God

Today, one of my Facebook friends posted that she "is trying to grasp what the "sovereignty of God" really means.".
That is a very good concept for us to better understand. The dictionary defines Sovereign as "a monarch; a king, queen, or other supreme ruler.". It simply tells us that God is the ultimate authority over all of his creation. That still tells absolutely nothing about the character of God. After all, a king could be good or he could be evil.

To better understand how God uses his authority we need to know more about God. If we get a good overview of God from the bible, we learn that God is living, personal, relational, good and loving. How does that effect how God exercises his authority?

Since he is living, personal, relational, good and loving God desires to have a genuine love relationship with human beings. To have a genuine love relationship he gave humans the freedom to actually make a choice whether to love God or hate God. Love that is not freely given is not really love at all.

To be truly loved, God needed to risk being hated. He chose to not retain all authority because he chose to delegate some of that authority to us. Because he wants a loving relationship with us, he delegated to us the authority to make all of our own decisions. Because he is good, he reveals to us what is truly right and what is wrong, what is wise and what is unwise... but he always lets us choose whether we are going to do the right thing or the wrong thing. He also allows the natural consequences for our actions to takes place.

God delegates authority to parents to "train up their children in the way should they go." If the parents don't take this authority seriously, the children will suffer and the parents will be responsible for that outcome. If the parents delegate this responsibility to an unGodly authority, the children will suffer and the parents will be responsible for that.

God also delegates authority to human government to protect the it's people through the military, police, criminal justice system, etc... and he delegated the authority to build infrastructure, such as roads, bridges, etc.
God gave governments a template in his law for what is criminal and what are the proper effective punishments for those crimes. If The government ignores the wisdom of God in this area the nation will have a crime epidemic and the people will suffer. If the government takes money from the people to spend it to take authority for areas that were not delegated by God, the people will suffer.

God know that if they government takes over the responsibility to feed kids, that many parents will no longer feel any responsibility in that area and those parents will soon come to believe it is the governments responsibility and the less they will do for their own children.

If you send a government welfare check to an adult who is unwilling to work, that person will soon believe that it is a "paycheck" that is somehow owed to that person just for existing. That person is ultimately damaged by that check, just as they would be damaged if they were no longer responsible to pay their medical and other bills.

God delegates spiritual authority to church leaders over their local church. If they misuse that authority by not equipping the church as God intended, the people of the church will suffer... and society will suffer because the church will not be the witness that God intends.

A good and loving God will not remove the consequences when his children make bad decisions.

A good and loving Parent will not remove the consequences when their children make bad decisions.

A good and loving Government will not remove the consequences when their people make bad decisions.

A good and loving Church will not remove the consequences when their members make bad decisions... just as God will not remove the consequences to the members if the leadership makes bad decisions.

We have a God who is willing to relinquish some authority so that he can have a true love relationship with us.

"Jesus, Take the Wheel" might be a moving country song, but Jesus does not take the wheel. He always leaves the driving to us... but he is the perfect "GPS". He shows where we should go, but he allows us to make the decision whether to take that road.