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

by Robert Bernecker

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...