You are NOT God, and That Sets You Free

We are not designed to be sovereign but to be dependent on the one who is.

I love this quote from Alan Noble:

“One of my concerns about contemporary society is that it suffers from a lack of agency…Alain Ehrenberg notes in his book THE WEARINESS OF THE SLEF, that inhibition is one of the symptoms of contemporary depression. He ties it to the burden of being a sovereign self, an overwhelming experience for most people that often leaves them frozen and feeling unable to move in the world.”

The belief that you are completely sovereign over your own life can be a paralytic.

• What if I take the wrong path in life?
• What if I never fulfill my potential?
• What if I just live an ordinary life and never do anything great?
• What if I fail?
• What if I look foolish trying to do something?
• What if my life doesn’t go EXACTLY like I want it to?

The belief that a good, loving, and kind God is sovereign over all things liberates us from the paralysis of self-sovereignty. It sets us free to risk and to advance and to try. And yes, to fail too. Because failure is a part of living. A BIG part of it.

If God is sovereign, then I am free to live without fear.

If God is sovereign, then I am free to take risks.

If God is sovereign, then I do not have to be afraid of whatever trials may come or what their eventual outcome may be.

When we don’t keep God’s sovereignty in mind, we put far too much pressure on ourselves to achieve certain outcomes and it can paralyze us into doing nothing.

A lack of faith in God’s sovereignty can also cause us to procrastinate on things we know we should be doing.

It is arrogant to believe I will always have the time to do what I know I should be doing right now. I don’t control the length of my life. My days are quite literally numbered (Psalm 139:16) and only God knows when they are up.

That fact should create a sense of urgency but without fear.

I am absolutely immortal until my days are done because they are in God’s book and I cannot add even one hour to their length (Luke 12:25-26).

So why worry?

Urgency without fear. We must do what we can. And leave the results with God.

Christians should be some of the boldest risk takers and doers and leaders and creators on the planet. We can risk and do and lead and create without fear, because we know we are not sovereign and that God is.