our god reigns

i was on my way to make a site visit this morning, and i was flipping through my pre-set radio stations. i got to 89.3 (HIS radio - gag me), and usually i roll my eyes and fly right past it, but today i stopped. chris tomlin was singing "our god reigns," and for the first time i really stopped to think about those words and what it would mean if i lived my life as though i truly believed that my god does in fact reign.

it's easy to say that "god is in control." sometimes i think i say it without meaning it or without thinking about what that actually means for me as a believer. it's kind of like a cop-out answer. things aren't going my way: god is in control. i'm worried about something: god is in control. i'm afraid of things i don't have answers to: god is in control. of course, it's absolutely true. god is in control. but i can throw that around so quickly and so haphazardly that i don't even realize what i'm saying. i know this because sometimes i find that i'm still living in fear and doubt and worry. if i truly let those words settle into the deepest corners of my heart, i would know that the truth in those words frees me from the bondage of fear.

god being in control means that i'm not, and i don't have to be. it means that he has already gone before me and knows the big picture - he knows for certain the answers to all of the questions that i am so uncertain about. nothing that happens in my life is a surprise to him. it doesn't just mean that he is all knowing, but it also means that he is controlling my life. he never stops moving and working in my life - even when it can feel like he has completely let the bottom fall out from under me - he is still in control. he's holding it all together (colossians 1:17). i love that in psalm 119 the lord is called "a light for my path." he promises to illuminate the things that i can't see and can't understand. he will illuminate the confusion and the scary and the unknown parts of my heart. he might not do it with a spotlight and megaphone but with candlelight. oh, that i would be drawn near enough to him to see all of the things he wants to show me! today i'm trying to wrap my head and heart around this truth: that god is in control. not just that he sees my life and the things and people in it, but that he is reigning over it all.

as i'm tossing these things around in my head, jesus is reminding me about abram (abraham). i started a character study on him this week (starting in genesis 12), and already i've learned so much that i can apply to my own life. abram was married to sarai who was barren. they moved to a new place with abram's father and nephew, lot. out of the blue, god up and tells abram to hit the road. he doesn't say why, he doesn't say where they're going, he doesn't say how they're going to get there. all god tells him is to go, and he promises to bless abram and his family with abundance and riches and fame and fruitfulness. scripture leaves out all of abram's emotions during this part of the narrative. god says, "go," and the very next thing you read is, "so abram left." i can only imagine that abram had to have been thinking why? where? how? why? how are you going to bless me if my wife is barren? why? i'm scared. i don't know where we're going. why? i find it really interesting that scripture doesn't reveal any of his thoughts or feelings or any of the dialogue that i believe he must have had with god about this command and these promises. i also find it interesting that my devotion from proverbs31 ministries this morning was about not depending on our emotions, but relying on truth. i also find it extremely interesting that something i'm struggling with right now is dealing with feelings/emotions and the fact that i want to act on them, when truth is telling me that i need to let it go and trust that this is what's best for me. you cannot tell me jesus is not alive.

anyway. i think the lesson in this part of abram's story is this: obedience disregards emotions. sure, abram probably had a lot of dueling feelings and questions about this move god asked him to make. but he seperated those from the truth, and the truth was that god asked him to go and promised to bless him. the only obvious choice was to go. and it's not wrong to have emotions and to work through them and try to figure out where they're coming from. but we have to trust god - fear, anger, worry, heartache aside - and choose to obey and believe that his promises are good and true.

i don't know where god is leading me. no idea. i don't know how he's going to get me there. abram didn't know either, but genesis 12:9 says, "so abram journeyed, going on still..." he kept trusting, and he kept putting one foot in front of the other, because he believed that "our god reigns" and he chose to act on that - not on his emotions. what relief we would find if we could learn this lesson once and for all!