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.