God is In Charge

The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it.  You may be familiar with this idea; you may even believe it.

But do you really believe it?

We live in a world that thinks that faith is a private matter, a personal choice, and that there's no such thing as a God unless you believe in Him. So this idea that we, as Christians, hold that God is orchestrating the world...it doesn't gel with a world that says, "I don't believe." How can your God be influencing me if He's not even a thought that crosses my mind? It seems ludicrous.

Much like the world we live in today, ancient Israel was living in a world where every peoples had their own god. Israel had the Lord, whom they believed in wholeheartedly, but there were many other gods around - Asherah, Molech, Dagon. The list is as extensive as the population of the earth, it seems.

And what would have been true was that each people group believed wholeheartedly in their own god, but ascribed very little power or authority to any other god, except in the case in which they might be traveling through that god's territory for some reason. Moab would not have expected the Lord to influence their actions. Ammon would not have, either. Babylon would not have. Assyria would not have. 

When these nations went to battle, when they sought to either attack or defend, whatever the outcome was, they attributed that outcome to their god. 

The same way our world attributes its outcomes to whatever it believes in - science, self, human ingenuity, whatever. 

But Israel, the people of the Lord, attributed everything that happened in the world to their God, knowing that He was the God of the whole world. 

And He proved it. Over and over and over again. 

One of these proofs came in a story recorded for us in 2 Kings. It tells us plainly that in a moment of judgment exercised in His authority, "God summoned the armies" of several non-Israelite people groups. He called them into battle. He convinced them, probably using their own language and the urgings of their own hearts, to go to war. He probably even let them think it was their gods who were doing it. (Undoubtedly, they would have believed this.) 

But the Bible tells us it was God's doing, nonetheless. 

And see, that's the difference between our God and the gods of the peoples, whatever they may be - our God truly controls everything, even what seems like the godless. Even when those who don't believe in Him don't know they're doing His Will, He's still the one pulling the strings and making it happen. 

So when the world says, how can your God be influencing me if He's not even a thought that crosses my mind? the answer is simple: my God is the God of all Creation, and He does what He wishes...whether you believe in Him or not. 

My God is a God who controls even the godless.