It was a nice church service today and the little church was filled. I go to a Charismatic church when I can. After all the years of being in ministry it is hard sometimes to sit through a church service.

The music goes from fellowship to praise to worship. The presence of the Holy Spirit begins to take over and then, as in almost all church services, the worship service is stopped. I now is time for an offering or two and the announcements. The anointing lifts and then comes the sermon. Ministers must have a great sermon each week or folks will wonder if  they are earning their keep. My heart goes out to the Pastor, he must start on dry ground to try to bring the fellowship back into the anointing and do the work of the Holy Spirit.  Most of the time it just does not happen. But such is the results of a normal church liturgy.

Today the message included the observation that God is in ultimate and total control. It reminded me of many contracts that I have signed for construction projects which had the clause: “Acts of God.”  In other words, some believe that God is ultimately responsible for every positive or negative outcome of life. It’s no wonder that most folks don’t trust God.  But the church just keeps pumping out this doctrine that God is in control and responsible and we will see through the vale by and by and know as we are known. The pastor did a little time today in Job. God dumped His wealth, killed His kids and gave him boils just to make sure he was true to the cause. I don’t believe it. Job was not in sin but he may have been ignorant of the law of fear ( Job 3:25). Fear is faith going backwards. Fear is the glue that holds the kingdom of darkness together. The more God blessed Job, the more Job allowed His fears to grow even to the point of offering sacrifices for His children in the event that they might have sinned. It seems obvious that Job was fearful of losing His wealth, health and the lives of His children. It is interesting to note here that he apparently had no fear concerning His wife and she remained untouched by Lucifer. God allowed Job to experience the fruits of His fear as Job allowed God no other way in which to set him free.  Job’s troubles were due to Job’s negative faith level. Job was not in sin but he was certainly immature. God  is only in control of what we submit to Him in loving faith. In fear, rebellion, lust, pride and etc. we cause our own painful experiences with the power of our own tongues in what we say and believe in our hearts. We are saved through faith. The whole Kingdom works in the same manner. Does God win in the end? YES. Do we win? Yes, but only if found of God in Christ Jesus with His laws in our heart. Our words can be life or death (Proverbs 18:21).

We sometimes forget that God gave Adam the world to replenish and subdue and made him the king of this world. Adam and Eve were corrupted by their own fear and in free will gave the world to Lucifer. Jesus calls Lucifer as the prince of this world, the prince of the power of the air that now works in the children of disobedience. He is removed from heaven in Rev. 12 and comes to earth having great wrath. Three and a half years later he is sent to hell and in another thousand years he is consigned to the Lake of Fire forever.

A son says, “Dad, can I borrow the car?”  If you lend him the car, you realize the possibilities of loss of life and the cost of repairs along with his lack of funds. Your are responsible for the car even though he will have the full exercise of His free will in His use of your car. You must decide if he will operate the car according to your wishes or his. If he crashes the car, you will need to pick up the pieces of the learning experience. But he is still driving your car. This is called stewardship in the Bible. We are stewards of God’s creation. That concept includes our physical bodies and all that God has created around us. The big question for eternity is will we drive His car the way He wants us to or will we take His car and drive it in a manner that is against His wishes. If we are obedient with His car then He will invite us to drive everything that is in His garage. If not, then He will exclude us from driving at all.

The right of Lucifer to claim the world by default was broken at the cross by the second Adam, Jesus. Lucifer had no legal rights to kill a perfect man so he could not hold him.  But more than that, in killing Jesus he allowed those who would join with Jesus and become a part of Jesus to escape sin’s control and judgement as well. As in Adam all died so also in Christ shall all be made alive. Thus God provides salvation. So God knowing full well in His foreknowledge that we would crash the car, trash the world and destroy ourselves still gave us the use of the car (us and the world), even though in His foreknowledge of our perverted free will He knew that we would wreck it. But then He also knew that Jesus would come and prevail that we might find our way into His marvelous light and be  loved, covered, forgiven, redeemed, restored and made to be kings and priests unto His Holy name. For the sake of true and honest love, God has placed everything He has made on the line.

God is then fully responsible and in control as the creator of all things. Lucifer is totally responsible for the rebellion and for His own pride in trying to build His own kingdom. We then are responsible in Adam for the divorce and high treason of giving the world to Lucifer. But we say, “We did nothing of the kind, what did we do?”  It then really becomes a matter of choice as to the side you have selected to be on in the experience of life. Lucifer has a team that uses self centered ego, fear, manipulation, rejection, hate, greed, lust, jive and pot to mention a few. Jesus has a team of love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, kindness, faith, meekness and temperance.  You are in the great and eternal reality of life and have joined one team or the other.  Of course, if you have read the book, King Jesus wins the victory with the cross and the love of God. He is to be crowned the King of Kings in all of creation. He extends loving forgiveness to all on His team on that final day of the judgment of all things. The negative options are very painful (Jude 10-16)

The Mystery . The Creator, in order to build a Kingdom in which all could  experience  freedom  has allow the clear and full use of free will, almost like an auto destruction derby if you will. All must find their way in free will to gain access into His Kingdom. God will not use force, manipulation, threat or bribe and  has refused to make us only robots saying “Jesus is Lord” or “God I Love You.” He has allowed a time and place where hearts may grow and be tested and a place where Godly love and trust can be  experienced. There was no other way for the creator to build His forever family after the rebellion. He can only build with those who trust Him and freely submit their will to love and trust  Him.  In truth we must learn to submit to His right to rule and to be careful to share His Kingdom laws of love with the rest of the creation. He has allowed the world to remain fallen that the children of light in Jesus might gain a thirst for righteousness. The world has become an excellent gymnasium with plenty of weights for the Saints to experience a much needed strong spiritual growth. Unfortunately, the weights must be used properly in order to receive the benefits. And the very same weights in the gymnasium for growth can be a killer if misused.

Our father Adam, in rebellion, chose to fall into a ditch bigger than the Grand Canyon called sin. We were born in the same canyon of sin. We tend to think there is nothing else.    Jesus came and threw us a rope down the canyon wall and into our darkness. The  questions now is, will we use the rope to climb out or do we die in the our darkness because we feel it is just more comfortable. We tend to believe that there cannot possible be anything better than our dark canyon and the light is really just too bright up there.