Divine Plagiarism

One of my friends was telling me a story the other day about this girl he felt a burden for, a girl God was telling him to wait for. She ended up running, hurt him, but he still did not feel released from what God was telling him. He prayed and waited. At some point, she ended up marrying a guy who was not very godly. My friend said that he felt she acted against God’s will. When she did marry, though, he felt released from that burden. He did not have to will his desires to change. They were simply taken from him with a surprisingly low amount of emotional effort. He felt as if it was God’s plan that he and she were supposed to be together, but once she was married, that plan changed. I started thinking about ‘how things were supposed to go,’ with the fall, with many things. There are obvious parallels between his story and mine, but this post is in the ‘thoughts’ category, not the ‘faith’ category. That is intentional. I will explain later.

God is omnipotent. He does whatever He wants. Yet, it seems that sometimes things don’t go exactly the way He would have wanted. Jesus desires to gather Israel to Him when they will not be gathered. The story ends up just as beautiful, for God works all things to the good of those who serve Him, but it seems as if He wishes it could have gone differently.

We were once in the garden. Once, all things were in harmony. We lived in unhindered intimacy with God and each other. There was no reason this could not have continued. God never whispered to us, ‘I want you to sin so that I can write the story I want to write.’ God’s desire was to know us intimately and to be known by us. We choose to fall. And there is regret in His voice as He sends us from His presence. How can an omnipotent being feel regret? It seems that things did not go the way He wanted them to go. Yet how can this be possible? Nonetheless, we had done things that could never be taken back. He would not pretend that we had not done these things. We were sent away, but even as we were being sent, He promised us that He would come for us to bring us back to Him. So a new story is written. The God who walked with them in the garden now walks up the hill of Calvary.

From the seed of Abraham, God raised up a great nation. They were to be His light to the nations, His promise manifest on this Earth. So there was a covenant. In the writings of Isaiah, God sets the stage for the climax of the story of His chosen people. They are to bring the good news of salvation to the world. They are to be His people, and He is to be their God. Just as they were to be the keepers of the Law of Moses, they are to be the messengers of the Law of Love. In Isaiah, we see God’s hands setting all the pieces in place whereby Israel will be in a position to complete His purpose for them. Where they will discover the magnitude of His dreams for them. Christ came to the chosen people first. His desire was for them. He was rejected by His own people, and sent up to a tree to die. Things were done that could never be undone. The wedding guests did not come, so their seats were given to those who would. The gospel went to the Gentiles. A people who were not looking for God found Him. A new story was written.

To love someone is to allow yourself to be affected by them. There are ways you wish things would go. Ways things would go if the other loves you back. But you cannot force them to love you back. If they choose to return hatred for your love, then you will be hurt. There is nothing we can do to hurt God. That is, nothing we can do unless He chooses to make Himself vulnerable to us. Yet, in order to love us, He makes Himself vulnerable. We can do nothing to add to or subtract from Him. We cannot lessen Him in any way through our attacks, nor do we add anything to Him by loving Him. He is who He is. We can, however, add to and subtract from ourselves. We add to ourselves by loving Him and allowing Him to love us. We destroy ourselves when we cut ourselves off from Him by sinning. When we hurt ourselves, we hurt Him, for we hurt someone who He loves. (This is why we are the adversary’s primary target. Satan knows he can do nothing to hurt God directly. The only way for our enemy to hurt God is by hurting those whom He loves.) His precious blood is thick enough to cover all sin, but the consequences may remain. These consequences may cause us to be cut off from blessings He wanted to give us. Sometimes we do things we cannot take back. God respects us too much to pretend that we did not do them. He loves us so much that He makes allowances for our actions.

Theologians speak of the difference between God’s perfect will and His sovereign will. He knows the plans He has for us, plans to prosper us, to give us hope and a future. He desires that we would follow these paths He has set out for us, that we would find Him more and more deeply, and in the process find ourselves. We also have will. In our free will, we can decide to follow Him in these paths, or we can turn away from Him. When we turn off of His path and try to find our own way through the minefields of this world, we depart from His perfect will. We find ourselves in His sovereign will, where He waits for us to come home. Here He waits to redeem the consequences of the choices, to turn our mourning into dancing. If we refuse to heed His call to return home, He will still work out His sovereign will. If we set our will against His, we will be undone.

We cannot thwart God’s will. Yet he makes allowances for our choices. So what happens if we make choices we can never take back? What if there are consequences that cannot be undone? In these consequences, we may render ourselves unable to walk paths He had set out for us. I believe that these paths will then be given to another to walk, and God will provide them the strength they will need along it. They will be given the blessings that were meant for us. God’s will is going to be done. Our rebellion cannot stop His will, it only stops us from finding the joy that He had for us in that will. He will take from us the story He had meant for us. He will write a new story, one just as beautiful. He will then give that story to someone willing to live it.

We have all made choices we cannot take back. We all live with the consequences of those choices. There is still hope. Our God redeems, and He can redeem any consequences. One of my friends will become the father of a five-year-old on the day the same day he becomes a husband. I know survivors of abortion who are better able to counsel other women to avoid that pain because of their own. Even terribly broken things can be healed. Paul tells us in Romans that the chosen people who rejected their Messiah will find their way home before the story comes to an end. We are all prodigal. As the prodigal son returns home, his father knows that there are certain things that son will never be able to do because of his choices, certain scars he will bear for the rest of his life. The father is no less happy to have him home.

This post, as previously mentioned, has many parallels in my story with C. I am consciously choosing not to see that story in this light. I am not afraid of conclusions. I am afraid of my temptation to control. I know what I would see. I would subconsciously create a decision tree for my prayers, where she would choose the short way home, the long way home, or Plan B, where God would take that destiny from her and give it to another. I would then assess probabilities and determine outcomes. I would do all this to make myself safe. Control promises that I would be safer to rely on my mind than on my faith. But the safety that control promises is empty, a place safe from faith, hope or love. So I reject the temptation of control, I reject the safety of the assessment of outcomes. I will not run the numbers, but will instead run to Jesus. I will trust in God alone, in His faithfulness. He will change my heart, or He will change hers. Where He leads I will follow. I ask for the strength to do so.