He is Almighty God. He is our Creator. He is Everything. But He chose to give man free will and He chose not to control our choices. He wanted us to freely love Him and live with Him, and as in Genesis 3:8 God wants to walk with us like He walked with Adam.
Genesis 2:17 “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” God gave Adam a command. Adam and Eve chose not to obey God’s commands. God saw them! He isn’t blind. Proverbs 15:3 “The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.” He is omniscient, which means all-knowing, all-seeing.
Because of the choice of Adam and Eve, mankind lives in a broken world. Of course, we know the devil had a hand in it, but the devil did not make them disobey God. He did what he still continues to do today, he suggests, he wants to put thoughts in our head, he wants to deceive us and destroy us. Once we agree to his thoughts or temptations, we open a door that gives him entrance into our life.
In Genesis 4:3-4, it said in the process of time, Cain and Abel brought an offering to God. God accepted Abel’s, but not Cain’s. Cain was wroth, meaning irate, infuriated, incensed, very angry. God confronted Cain in Genesis 4:6-7, “6 And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? 7 If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.”
God saw and knew Cain’s reaction. God gave Cain a choice. He told him what would happen if he did well, and the consequences of what would happen if he did not do well. We know that Cain chose to kill his brother. God saw it. God knew what Cain was going to do, but he did not stop him. Before we go getting religious about this and blaming God for not stopping it, we need to stop and think of all the choices we have made. We’ve made good choices and we’ve made bad choices. We’ve made choices that encouraged and helped others, but we’ve also made choices that hurt others, sometimes ignorantly, but sometimes deliberately.
God saw. God knew. But He did not stop us from making those choices. He might have tried to lead us in a different direction. He might have outright warned us, but in the end, we made the choice to do what we did. God is the same, whether in the Old Testament or the New Testament. John 14:28 “I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father.” Jesus is God, and He gave us the freewill to make our own choices. The Bible calls satan the god (little “g”) of this world. This is his domain. 2 Corinthians 4:4 “In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.”
Even though man has had free will to make his own choices, and messed up badly, God sent Jesus into this world to redeem us. He made a way for us to come back to the Father. But He still did not take away our free will! If you are living a lifestyle that does not give God control of your life, then you are living for the devil. I was that way for many years. I even went to church and read my Bible and memorized Scripture. But I would have ended up in hell for eternity.
The only time God will be in control of our lives, is when we use our free will to live for Him. John 15:16 “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.” This sounds like a contradiction of what I just said. But it isn’t. He did choose us. John 6:44 “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.” He does draw us to Him, but He still has not taken away our free will.
Cain was given a choice. Because of the hardness of his heart, because he chose to listen to the devil whispering in his ear, Cain used his free will to choose evil. God gets blamed for bad things that happen in our life. I blamed him for the abuse in my life. The abuse happened because people chose to do what they did. It doesn’t seem fair, but that doesn’t make it God’s fault.
The “god” of this world hates God because pride made him want to be worshipped instead of God. When God created man, satan was already in the garden, watching, plotting, looking for a way to get revenge on God. Genesis 5:1-2, “1 This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; 2 Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.” God’s creation. God blessed them. And not satan. The devil thought this was the perfect way to get even. He wasn’t expecting Jesus’s death to become his (satan’s) downfall.
1 John 3:8 “He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.” For this purpose, Jesus came that he might destroy the works of satan. Man has continued to blame God for unimaginable horrors that have happened to us. Surely God could have stopped it!!! But He gave man free will to choose whether to praise Him and live for Him or turn from Him and do our own thing. He wants to walk with us just like He did with Adam and Eve.
Understanding this can change our lives. God is of great power. His power is far above all. And even when we or others make choices that line up with that of the devil, God made a way for us to come back to Him, through His Son, Jesus. Stop blaming God for our own choices, and even for the choices of others. We want God to stop the choices others have made, especially if it has caused us great pain and suffering, but what about when we’ve caused others pain and hurt.
Psalms 147:5 “Great is our Lord, and of great power: his understanding is infinite.” Hebrews 4:15-16, “15 For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.”
The Bible is a roadmap to help us on our way, but many people choose not to read it or live by it. Many are so full of head knowledge that the Bible doesn’t change their lives. The devil doesn’t want us to know the truth. He wants us to doubt God’s Word, to not believe it, to blame God. If you’ve ever been in an abusive situation, where you no longer allow the abusive person to hurt you, but you have children and they choose to go after your children and hurt them, knowing they are hurting you by doing this, then you can have a clear understanding of how the devil works.
It is not God’s choice that this happens. He has warned us in His Word the consequences of not living according to His commandments. He has shown us the way we should go. If we are living for Him, He can affect our choices…if we let Him. Choose life by choosing to live for Jesus. Deuteronomy 30:19 “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:”
God is not in Control
