Are You Offended by God’s Sovereignty?

Remember I mentioned the greatest defense in Christianity from the beginning of the Bible, that there is a God who creates us, has authority over us to whom we are accountable. Will you tell any person in our culture that today, tell someone that there is a God who sustains, owns, defines rules and will one day judge him or her and that person will balk in offense.

Every person would, because every person has, all of us without exception. This is evident from the very beginning of the Bible, in Genesis 3, the first man and woman ever created who took God’s word and said, “Did God really say that?” And the more they asked the question, the more they convinced themselves that God’s word could not be trusted and that their way was better than God’s way. And they went with what they felt and what they thought over what God said. And that is the same story for every single one of us.

Are You Offended by God’s Sovereignty?

None of us are alone in this. Sure, it looks different in each one of our lives. Specifically, some are attracted to men, others are attracted to women. Some of us feel this desire for that. Other of us feel that desire for this. And the challenge in our culture is that we have said, “If you have a desire, then you should fulfill it. Have a right to fulfill it. No one should stop you from fulfilling it, especially if you were born with that desire. If it is attributable in some way to your genetic makeup, you can’t help that you desire this.

So of course fulfill that desire, you were made to.” But let’s just state the obvious. We all know this. There are many desires we have that we choose not to fulfill. Even desires that we believe are attributable to our genetic makeup. Take, well, some might say as an extreme example, but a report in Time magazine that says infidelity may be in our genes.

So does that mean that a married man who has a desire for a woman who is not his wife, must fulfill that desire in order to be happy or to be fully himself? No way. The mere presence of a desire does not excuse or promote unfaithfulness in marriage. That’s a desire I have does not equate to that’s what I should do. So the point is, we all have hearts that are prone to sexual confusion and question, the deviation from God’s good design for us, temptation to go against God.

This is why we could never say God would not allow someone to be born with a bent toward sexual confusion or deviation or rebellion. Because the reality is we are all born that way. We’re all born with an inclination away from God and his good design for our lives. Now, as we’ve said, our inclinations, our questions, our temptations are different part of the mystery.

God’s Sovereignty

This fallen world is why certain people have certain desires while other people have other desires. We don’t always choose our temptations, but we do choose our reactions to those temptations, which is why this issue is so important in not just our lives. We think about our children’s lives when children and teenagers are going through puberty, experiencing the height of sexual confusion and questions, all kinds of questions that every one of us as a teenager inevitably has had, and potential deviations and temptations to go against God’s design.

So in our culture, to actively say to children and teenagers, give yourselves over to whatever those desires and thoughts are, and it’s viewed as offensive or even on the wrong side of history to say no, trust God, believe God, that his design for you is beautiful, and his word towards you is good. Oh, that is not the wrong side of history. This is what God has been saying throughout history. You can trust me.