Is my future up to me or God?

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I think we get confused by God’s sovereignty.

We say God is in control, but what we often mean is that because God is in control, we can be apathetic.

In the book of Exodus when the Israelites were told to “be still,” (Exodus 14:14) one verse later God says, “Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on.” (verse 15)

Moses says be still, but God says get moving. But people usually don’t bring up verse 15 when they quote verse 14.

Maybe we’ve misunderstood what it means to “be still.”

The Hebrew word translated as “be still” in Hebrew means don’t panic, don’t be anxious. One translation is “hold your peace.”

It does not mean “don’t do anything.”

The Israelites were panicking because they were being pressured and there was a barrier in front of them. And Moses told them to be still, not God. God said to move.

Now God did say, “be still and know that I am God,” but it was centuries later when Psalm 46 was written, and in that psalm he’s commanding courage in the face of fear, not apathy in the middle of a war.

It’s very tempting to use God’s sovereignty as an excuse for apathy. It’s easy to think, “God is in control, and he’ll make things happen when the time is right.”

There’s just enough truth in that to make it dangerous.

There’s a burden on us. In God’s very first recorded interaction with mankind, he told Adam to have dominion and subdue the earth. (Genesis 1:28)

God was completely in control, yet he wanted Adam to have dominion. Another word for that is responsibility.

We can’t fall into the trap of thinking that “if it’s meant to be, it will be.” That’s not the way God operates.

True power is shown through delegation. A CEO’s job is to lead, inspire, and delegate, not to do everything for their team. And the CEO is happy when members of the team take action.

The more aware you are of God’s control of your life, the more action it should drive you to take, not the other way around.

Because God is in control, we should be emboldened to act.

The God of the universe is so powerful that He delegated authority to you in the form of free will. Now what will you do with it?