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

by Robert Bernecker

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 ...