Who's Your Father?: Returning to the Love of the Biblical God

by Robert Bernecker

There is little confidence or faith that we can place in a God who is totally sovereign and infinitely powerful but who does not love or value us, a God who is not our own Father. Likewise, there is little confidence or faith we can place in a heavenly Father who either does not have the power and sovereignty to back up his love or who is not consistently willing to use his power and sovereignty on behalf of those he is said to love and value. Jesus, however, showed us that our God gives to us the perfect combination of unlimited love and unbounded sovereignty. We can, therefore, have a real and living faith, only because we can know that our loving Father exercises his sovereign purpose (his will) over all of the details in our lives!

It is an absolutely magnificent thing to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God, my loving Father, is involved and in control of these minute details of life here on the earth! Our God is not a mere observer-god, but rather the sovereign, all-seeing, all-powerful, holy ruler of the earth who “subjects all things to himself” (Philippians 3:21).

When we realize that the God of the universe chooses us just as he chose David (Ephesians 1:4-5) and promises to fulfill his purpose for us as well (Psalm 57:2; Philippians 1:6), we should follow in this same pattern of humble awe, earnest worship, and a confident walk. All three of these responses are rooted firmly in the glorious realization that our loving Father controls all of the details of his creation.

We make a great mistake when we attribute what we call miracles to God but deny his involvement in everything else in our lives. Our God is the author of both the miraculous and the mundane, and this is a realization that will revolutionize our walk with our Father. In fact, as far as it concerns God, there is little difference between the simple and the spectacular since he is in equal control of one as well as the other, both are integral parts of his purpose, and neither taxes his infinite abilities any more than the other. We rob ourselves of the security of our Father’s love when go through life waiting and hoping for God to intervene with the supernatural yet fail to appreciate his hand in the details of our daily existence. It is common for people of our day to label an unusual event that they perceive to be a good thing as “a God thing.” Doubtless there are indeed many “God things” in our lives. Our error is to attempt to compartmentalize those things that we will choose to allow to be “God things” while refusing to acknowledge God’s involvement in those things we perceive as less than spectacular.

How then have we ever come to characterize God’s interference with human free will as unloving and disrespectful—something a gentleman supposedly would not do? Some may respond to this reasoning by saying that while God may “woo,” he never compels, and the difference is that the right and ability to say no to this wooing always remains with the human will. However appealing this may initially seem, this is also a specious argument. Closer

examination reveals that if this supposition is true, it allows for the unbiblical possibility that God could fail at anything he sets out to do, and it puts the one engaged in intercessory prayer in a very peculiar position. The prayer would necessarily go something like this: “Oh, Lord, please woo Sam to yourself, but don’t make it so effective and convincing that it will overcome his free will. Please don’t woo him enough that he will turn to you as a result of your wooing, only just woo him enough that he will turn to you as a result of his free will.” This bizarre prayer borders on absurdity. We are actually praying that God will work ineffectually! If God were to work effectually, it would violate Sam’s free will, and that just would not do. This is like saying, “Oh, God, may Sam make the right decision on his own, without you doing anything to interfere with his free will; may he just suddenly somehow decide to choose you for some unknown reason—any reason at all other than the unacceptable reason of you making him want to choose you.” No rational person would pray this way, of course, so we must therefore realize that in actuality it is God’s sovereignty over the human will upon which we rely when we intercede in prayer. The prolific author Jerry Bridges summed up this concept quite nicely: “Prayer assumes the sovereignty of God. If God is not sovereign, we have no assurance that he is able to answer our prayers. God’s sovereignty, along with his wisdom and love, i...

sand, in effect saying to God, “You may come this far, but you will not encroach further on our freedom.” This sophistic line is drawn at the whim of human arrogance rather than on the authority of Holy Scripture. “Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps.” This verse, Psalm 135:6, was considered at length in the first chapter. However, this verse is extraordinary in that while it is exceedingly unambiguous in its meaning (along with Psalm 115:3), a remarkable number of Christian...

cannot) do what he pleases. It has become quite acceptable, it seems, to portray our God as sadly settling for many things that would turn out completely different if he could only do as he pleased—a disappointed, frustrated God. As a single example, it is suggested that it would please God to save many people, or even all people, but he cannot manage to do so because of their free will or, worse, because he is unable to round up enough human help for this endeavor. This viewpoint turns these two verses inside out and suggests the rather fantastic notion that God has turned his throne over to humans, whereby it is humans who do as they please in heaven and on earth while God is subservient to those “free” actions. Instead of falling victim to the whimsical conception of a disappointed, heartbroken God whose wishes and desires are being constantly stymied by the uncontrollable free will of humans, we must instead realize that human will is no match for divine purpose. God steers even the most powerful of human hearts as he pleases (Proverbs 21:1). Shocking as it may seem to some, an atheist can only remain an atheist because, for whatever perfect reason God wills, it does not ple...

In other words, because the human will cannot resist the Holy Spirit unless it is God’s will to allow it to do so, this fact means that the whole matter actually always unfolds exactly as God plans and wishes.

Horatius Bonar was a Scottish clergyman noted for being a prolific author, hymn writer, and poet, and he strongly criticized the notion that God is unable to save any sinner whom God desires to save.

Bonar rightly pointed out that such an assertion is tantamount to saying, “Because the Spirit has attempted a work beyond His power, He fails in His efforts. The sinner has overpowered Him and proved stronger than He. The sinner is able to overcome the Spirit, but the Spirit is not able to overcome the sinner.

The Spirit has done H...

and has failed.”3 Bonar pointed out that unless one is willing to assert that the creature is mightier than the Creator and is thereby able to resist and even overcome divine omnipotence (an assertion he correctly labeled a “profanity”), then one must concede ...

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This brilliant teaching by Wesley presents virtually no difficulty to most Christians until it actually applies to their own lives or situations. Indeed, we seem to have little problem with God’s sovereignty over either the big (the universals) or the small (the particulars). However, when we begin to realize that the same God who controls the big and the small also controls the middle ground of the everyday circumstances of our lives, we abruptly begin to characterize God with the Deists as an uninvolved God who is “hands-off,” as a “gentleman” who will not interfere with our choices and the outcomes of those choices. We have no problem with the concept of God calling the stars by name, but we cannot seem to accept that he calls his chosen by name. We are quite willing to acquiesce to the reality of God feeding the sparrows, clothing the flowers, commanding the eagles, and even placing each individual drop of dew in our yard each morning, but when it comes to our own circumstances, we unaccountably choose to believe that our fancied free will effectively fences God out from being directly involved in our situation, our surroundings, our thoughts, our feelings, and even our choices. We are not willing to give up the feeling of dignity and pride that comes from supposedly being in charge of our own destiny. We will not admit to believing like the Deists, yet we will not embrace the scriptural teachings that God is sovereign over the big, the small, and everything in between...

and that everything in our lives comes from his hand (1 Chronicles 29:10–14). Rather than adopting this scriptural view, we seem to desire instead to view God’s influence as limited. We read in Romans 11:36 that all things are from him, all things are through him, and all things are to him, and then inexplicably we immediately begin to build a list of some things that we will choose to exclude from the all things that we will allow as being included in the scope of this all-inclusive description of our God’s sovereignty. This impertinence is either the peak of human arrogance before our Creator or the pinnacle of human folly—perhaps even both.

Our view of the extent of God’s sovereignty is the underlying and governing factor in how we view the Father and how we perceive his love for us.

Many individuals believe that God is good and that God is powerful, but he is not completely sovereign. As a result of this flawed concept, they can have no true confidence that God will see that his will is done in their lives, and they go about their lives worried that they must strive to convince God to get involved, help them out, and “bless their efforts.” This is misplaced anxiety; God wants our trust, not our striving. Only when we fully accept that God’s purpose will always be done and that our God is sovereign over all (including ourselves, our neighbors, Satan, our circumstances—everything) can we come to the blessed point of truly being still and knowing that he is God.

As humans, we have a natural desire to control and to understand our own way, but we run headlong into Proverbs 20:24, a Scripture that confronts us with this clear statement: “A man’s steps are directed by the Lord. How then can anyone understand his own way?” Can we actually accept these scriptural teachings that our choices and our plans, both big and small, are directed by the Lord at a level beyond human understanding? This passage is in no way specific to godly people making godly choices, nor is it limited to humans who are Jews or Christians; rather, it is speaking of God’s absolute sovereignty over human choices. There are no scriptural grounds to suggest that God waives his sovereignty and just “puts up with” and “deals with” evil men that happen to just appear on the earth as the result of biological processes in which God is uninvolved and who are somehow outside of God’s original, eternal purpose—that sort of thinking, when broken down, borders on outright blasphemy. In fact, some have gone so far as to suggest that God in some manner waives his sovereignty and will not interfere with our free will because if he were to impose himself on human will, then God could not possibly be glorified by such a thing. The speciousness of this position should be quickly revealed by even a cursory reading of the account of Paul’s Damascus road experience in either Acts 9 or Acts 22, in which Paul’s free will is trampled underfoot to God’s everlasting glory. In fact, we are ...

Many are offended by the fact that their destiny is from the Lord rather than being afforded the fancied opportunity to “make their own” destiny. While it is quite understandable that humans initially desire to feel as if they are making their own destiny, I have come to understand that it is far preferable to know that we are living our own destiny, a destiny which was authored by God, our Father. This fact can only fill us with joy when we come to realize that he loves us more perfectly than we could ever imagine, has completely unlimited resources and power at his disposal to accomplish his plan, and tells us imperatively that his plan for us is for our good, not evil. Stated simply, it only makes sense that God can do a better job of making our destiny than we can, so why should we prefer the inferior above the superior?

God does not demand that we must somehow find the path that he declares we do not know. Instead, God says that we are the blind who are not capable of finding a path or a way that we do not know, but he, our loving Father, will lead us along the unknown way, turning our darkness into light and our rough places into level ground. Furthermore, his leading is not in doubt; he says plainly that this is what he will do and that he will not forsake us. In Isaiah 49:10 (NIV), we are given this wonderful affirmation: “He who has compassion on them will guide them and lead them.” One more time, our loving Father promises to lead us; he does not threaten to give us his second best if we fail to find the correct path because we did not seek to discover his will quite earnestly enough—that would hardly be the mercy and compassion that is promised in this passage. In the face of these comforting passages, it would be preposterous to suggest that God may not fulfill his purpose for us if we do not spend quite enough time begging him to reveal his will to us. This same message is found in the much-loved twenty-third Psalm. The Lord is our shepherd, and we are his sheep. Sheep do not worry and fret about finding the shepherd’s will! Instead, they follow where their good shepherd leads them, trusting him to lead them to the pasture that is best for them. Rather than despair over “finding God’s will,” we should trust that our loving Father is leading us and understand that where he leads us...

We read in Psalm 138:8 that “The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever.” What a fantastic statement! Yet again, we see the Father’s steadfast love tied to the certainty of the fulfillment of his purpose. This should be an incredible source of strength and encouragement for our lives. Instead, in a remarkable exhibition of human presumption, we seem to be quite happy to turn this verse upside down. The verse, if stated to match what is taught, preached, and believed by many today, would read more like this: “I must seek to fulfill the Lord’s purpose for me; your love endures as long as I am steadfast enough and earnest enough in seeking after fulfilling this purpose.” However, this is an inexplicable transposition because that is not what the verse says! The verse could not be clearer; it is the Lord that does the fulfilling of his purpose, not us. He will complete the good work that he initiated (Philippians 1:6) with his steadfast love.

Because it is God who gives us the victory, we can be steadfast and immovable and know our labor is never in vain, as Paul told us in 1 Corinthians 15:57–58. We should note that he did not in any way suggest the opposite by saying that God’s victory is dependent on our steadfastness and labor!

thing! In 1 Peter 5:10, we are given the glorious promise that “the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you.” Once again, God is telling us that he himself will establish us and perfect us—this to his eternal glory! It is God who will sustain us to the end (1 Corinthians 1:8, see also Romans 8:28–30, 37–39). Why would we not want to embrace this fact and live enthusiastically and joyfully with wonderful confidence in the affectionate purpose of the true God of the Bible, a sovereign God who is our own loving Father? Our Father’s complete preeminence over his entire creation and his promises to establish us and perfect us should be our source of constant delight. As we see in the first verse of Psalm 97: “The Lord reigns, let the earth rejoice!”

Why do we resist the concept so? I have come to believe that the reasons we resist are the human propensity to want to be in complete control of our lives, the predilection to be a prideful donor rather than a humble receiver, and the nearly irresistible self-enthroning aversion to feeling and believing that our destiny is not in our own hands. And yet, if we really understood the true nature of our Father and his unconditional love for us, a great love that is backed up by his infinite power, unlimited understanding, and unbounded sovereignty, then I believe we would come to cherish the wondrous promise that it is our perfect God who determines our destiny rather than our own feeble striving. Having done that, we can finally be still and know that he is our Father.