God’s Dreams and God’s Sovereignty

           The Sovereignty of God, God’s All-Power, may seem at first glance to run against the notion of God’s Dreams. Dreams are what we hope for, what we consider might be, what we look toward-whether we believe they are achievable or not. We dream against the backdrop of the potential of failure. Such is the sinful condition of humanity. How does that track back to our God? 

          When we speak of God’s dreams, are we speaking of a God who is fallible, who could fail like we do?

          In the more traditional language of the power of God, we speak of predestination, God predestined all that happens. It is all at God’s pleasure, whatever God chooses is what will happen. I accept the Biblical testimony to that truth, but what is God's pleasure? What can we understand? Such is the sovereignty of God, something above our cosmic ‘pay grade’.

          Here is how I believe we experience it. God has predestined humanity to have choice, to have freedom to choose. The God who predestines creation is not simply the God of Love, but God is Love. And God’s plan is not hinged on any one in creation. It is a hard truth that the work of God will continue even if it does not find fruit in one particular community of faith.

          But God has created us with hope. In hope, there are possibilities. In dreams, there are possibilities. God has predestined God’s creatures into the dreams of these possibilities, and to their achievements, according to God’s own will.

          The danger of predestination from the human point of view is that there is one path, God-set, that none can ever stray from. The problem inherent in that view is its binding God to our perception of reality, of creation. The joy of predestination, when we consider God’s point of view, is that we are guided in love, is that our possibilities are God’s possibilities for us, are that our dreams are God’s dreams. We may not know where things will end up, but God does.

          And our God so loved the world that God gave God’s only begotten Son, that whosoever should believe in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. I would suggest that is a pretty awesome sovereignty that God wields on our behalf.

Worship Service August 28, 2022

Worship Service August 14, 2022

What Does God Want? For Us? For God's Church?

 The health of a church depends on a clear vision. That is some more advice from the Center for Healthy Churches. I found our church vision from 2000. It is a highly detailed plan of what possibilities exist for the future of the church. I leave it to those reading to consider what the results have been in these last twenty odd years.

What does God want? That seems the obvious question to begin any search for a vision for a person or a group of people in Christ. What do we know? We know God loves us. We know Christ died for us, to open the way of salvation for us all. We know the Holy Spirit exists among us as Jesus with us (according to John).

So what does God want? Most definitely something to do with love. That’s the legal mandate, loving God and neighbor. That is a pretty broad mandate. We know also that God knows us by name, responds to our prayers as individuals, invites us into the throne room of grace by prayer. So there is a step to get at the specifics of what God wants.

Dreaming about the future is a way of listening to how God responds to our prayers. All the possibilities are open. Where do we see things moving? What do we see God seeing in us? How do we spiritually decorate our neighborhood in the Kingdom of God?

That is the first piece of the vision. Reaching out to the Lord, dreaming in the Lord, discerning in the Lord, tackling the question of ‘so what does God want’ by opening communication with our God. We shall go then from there.

Why Dreaming With Our God?

There is a book of essays from the Center for Healthy Churches that detail the methods, the opportunities, the points of focus for churches that are seeking to be healthy. It is called, straightforwardly enough “Just What Is A Healthy Church?”

One of the essays that touched my heart is one that liberated my heart from the mandatory thoughts of obedience. To God. We are called to Obey. In fact, we sang the hymn “Trust and Obey” a couple Sundays ago, for there is, and I agree, no other way. What is it that we obey? We obey the law, God’s law as given in the Bible. And we put ourselves under the authority of the Bible.

But just what is the law? The Torah, the five books of Moses, is the benchmark in the time of Jesus. But then Jesus reset that benchmark. It was like he was asked to recite the law and he said, “No, it will take too long, I will sum up.” Love God and love Neighbor. It is not just an action but an attitude.

Do for others out of love for them. It is not enough to ‘obey’ because God said so. In God’s love, all things are possible. The future of our church, our lives, our nation, all in God’s hands, in God’s love. We can dream about the possibilities of the future.

And that is what we are planning to do, in Jesus.

Worship, August 7, 2022