As Inauguration Day marks the beginning of a new presidency and the end of another, it is important to remember that some things never change. One thing that has not changed over the course of the past several administrations is that God is still reigning on his throne — as Christopher Ash reminds us in this article. So encourage yourself today with these four truths:
1. God is in control of the President
Does God control human beings? This is a very big question, because we human beings have our own wills and make our own decisions. And yet the Bible says God does control us and our decisions.
The book of Proverbs says:
"In the Lord’s hand the king’s heart is a stream of water that he channels…" (Proverbs 21 v 1)
In a similar way, in the middle of Old Testament history, we read that God changed the heart of the king of Assyria, and later of the Persian King Cyrus (Ezra 6 v 22, and Isaiah 44 v 28 and 45 v 1). Neither king knew or cared about the God of the Bible; and yet each freely decided to do what the God of the Bible had decided he would decide to do! These kings—indeed any king, or any human being for that matter—make decisions. And they are real decisions. The king is probably not conscious of God and may not care for God; he is not a puppet; and yet the decisions the king makes are precisely the decisions that God has decided that the king will decide! The same is true for Presidents and heads of governments, whether we like and support them or dislike and oppose them.
We need to try to get hold of what it means for God to be God: that he decides at the highest level, above our human level, and decrees what we then freely decide! The reason we find this hard to stomach is that our default is to think of God as just a bigger, stronger version of us. But the God the Bible reveals is utterly different from us, and his decrees happen at a higher level than our decisions.
2. God is in control of America
Does God control nations? Yes, the Bible says he does. “He makes nations great, and destroys them; he enlarges nations, and disperses them” (Job 12 v 23, and see Psalm 22 v 28).
"[God] … made all the nations … and he marked out … the boundaries of their lands." (Acts 17 v 26)
God shapes the paths of nations, in every detail, including whether he chooses to make America great (again) or not!
The God who shapes each human heart fashions the ups and downs of groups of human hearts, whether they be nations, or ethnic groups, or cultures. I love old maps and looking for the changes over the years. In my lifetime the map of the world has changed radically, with the end of the British Empire and the break-up of the Soviet Union. The Bible says God shapes the paths of nations, in every detail, including America today, whether he chooses to make America great (again) or not!
3. God is in control of the future
Does God control the future? Yes, the Bible says he does. The Bible repeatedly speaks of God as dwelling beyond and outside time, being entirely in control of time past, present, and future. Just as God created all space, so he created all time. Time is—as we know from modern physics—merely one dimension of existence. Far from being carried along inside time, God stands beyond and above time. He “marked out” the “appointed times” of the nations (Acts 17 v 26). Jesus spoke of “the times or dates” which “the Father has set by his own authority” (Acts 1 v 7). When God speaks of himself by the strange name, “I am”, he means he is fully present at every time, just as he is fully present in every place. There is no such thing as the past or the future with God, but only the present. With him…
"a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day." (2 Peter 3 v 8)
So it is not that God is like us, but starting a lot earlier and going on a lot longer. No, God is not like us. He is not merely “everlasting” (going on a long time) but “eternal” (above and beyond time).
4. God is in control of everything
Putting all the Bible’s teaching together, we find that God controls each and every event, from the tiniest to the greatest, from the most predictable to the apparently random, visible and invisible, in every place, at all times, from the least complex to the most intricate, right up to human beings with all our wonderful capacity to think, to reason and to make decisions. From the growth of a single blade of grass in some prehistoric era to the firing of each neural pathway of a brilliant scientist pushing back the boundaries of physics, God’s control is complete, detailed and unfailing.
Far from being a distant God who either sets the universe in motion and leaves it or occasionally blows his referee’s whistle to interfere, God is intimately involved in the universe, atom by atom, nanosecond by nanosecond.
God is utterly unlike us, completely different to us, beyond us in every way, not just in measure but in quality.
And yet he does what he does in a way that does not destroy our ability to make real decisions. God is not the puppet-master, who just pulls the strings. He governs at a much higher and greater level than that. This is perhaps the most important thing to grasp: that God is not a bigger, stronger, cleverer version of us. His greatness is not comparative; it is not even superlative (the biggest, strongest, cleverest version of us). No, God is utterly unlike us; completely different to us; beyond us in every possible way, not just in measure but in quality.
It is so hard to grasp this, not just with our minds, but with our emotions. You may be confused by it, even angry. If things are tough for you just now, this may be especially hard to swallow. Perhaps you have arrived at the end of this article with many more questions than you started with! Some of those questions are, I hope, answered in my new book, Where Was God When That Happened?
It is one thing to agree—at least in theory—that these four things are true. It is another, and a deeper thing, really to feel that these things are true in times of sadness, pressure and perplexity. God’s complete sovereignty is not a truth I tick on a doctrinal checklist and then never doubt. Instead, we must pray that we will gradually believe this more gladly and deeply.
This is adapted from Christopher Ash’s new book, Where Was God When That Happened? And Other Questions About God's Goodness, Power and the Way He Works in the World, which is available to pre-order now.
Christopher Ash has been a pastor, and is now an author and writer-in-residence at Tyndale House, Cambridge. He was Director of the Proclamation Trust’s Cornhill Training Course from 2004-2015. He is married to Carolyn and they have four children and ten grandchildren.
