The king’s heart is like channels of water in the hand of the LORD;
He turns it wherever He wishes.

Proverbs 21:1

You’ve heard of classic mysteries, detective mysteries, police mysteries, and cozy mysteries. But, did you know that there are God-Mysteries? A lot of them, actually. After all, He is God…Yahweh…the I AM. We are flawed and finite mortals. Personally, I think that most of God is a mystery to us; even though He wrote an entire anthem, the Bible, to try and put into human terms as much about Himself that He wanted us to know…that He knew we could begin to understand or fathom. 

This verse is a glimpse into one of those great mysteries of God! God is sovereign, all-knowing and in complete control of all that happens in heaven and on Earth just as our key verse states. Yet, at the same time we as the humans who have lived, are now living and will be living on this Earth are given a free will to choose as we please. Free will to determine our own worldview, our own lifestyle choices, our own careers and free to choose our own eternal destiny. But how can that be? How can these diametrically opposed eternal truths exist together?

I have no idea! And neither does anyone else. If someone claims to know, they are either delusional, a charlatan or just a common liar!

And I praise God that I don’t know! I love God more for not knowing everything there is to know about Him! Why would I want to love and trust and serve a God that I can know all that there is to know about Him? Wouldn’t I then be a god just like Him? Why would I need Him? Why would I ask Him to help me? Why would I even bother with Him? 

The atheist and agnostic believe there is no big “G” God because they can’t manage the God of the Bible. They can’t make Him more palatable…more accepting of sin as they define sin; if they even believe there is any sin at all. And they can’t make the God of the Bible fit inside their finite minds of what is acceptable god-like behavior. They cannot explain within their own science and reasoning the mysteries of God and they don’t want to worship anything their human-ness cannot explain. And therefore, there is no big “G” God or, for that matter, there are no little ‘g’ gods. 

Religions also cannot believe the God of the Bible and they also cannot in their human-ness explain the mysteries of God. They just handle it differently than the ‘there is no God or gods’ camp. So, they add to the Bible their human ideas about Him or toss the Bible out and make up their own myriad (often thousands) of small ‘g’ gods to either try and eliminate any kind of mystery within their religion. If one god can’t do something, another god can pick up the slack or another or another…and they keep making up more gods. And because all this will invariably fail; they can blame their human followers for just not doing enough human effort, enough works, enough penance, etc.. for any of their little ‘g’ gods to do anything constructive to solve the human plight of just being human.

And before we piously shout out the names of the non-Christian religions; I contend that ALL manmade religions, including Catholic and Protestant, practice the above system to make the God of the Bible fit into their human boxes of what they want the I AM to be. They have manmade boxes that their god (notice the little ‘g’) must fit into. No mysteries about him or her. No difficult attributes to try and explain away. No challenging personality traits to try and hide from potential converts. The God of the Bible is just not savvy enough or hip enough for modern mankind. 

This is nothing new. Ever since Adam and Eve tried to hide from the I AM and Cain brought a different offering than what God required and the people tried to build the Tower of Babel, and the Hebrews built a golden calf, we humans really struggle with God being God! 

I struggle too, especially when I want my own way or life is just too dang hard! But then my deepest heart remembers…The king’s heart [my heart] is like channels of water in the hand of the LORD; He turns it wherever He wishes…and then I praise Him because there is SO MUCH MORE TO HIM than I can ever comprehend and I am so glad!