“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

And I remembered these words:

“For He chose us in Him BEFORE THE CREATION OF THE WORLD to be holy and blameless in his sight.”– Ephesians 1:4

“For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen BEFORE THE CREATION OF THE WORLD, but was revealed in these last times for your sake”. – 1Peter 1:19-20

“Then the King will say to those on His right hand, “Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you FROM THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD”. – Matthew 25:34

Before “in the beginning”, Jesus was chosen to be the perfect sacrifice, we were chosen to be made blameless by His blood, and our inheritance was prepared. Much went on before “in the beginning”! God was not deciding what to do as He did it, there was a great plan in motion long before Genesis 1:1. 

It is clear from Genesis 1 through Revelation 22 that God is in control of our world. Nothing surprises Him, nothing catches Him off guard. He knows the end from the beginning and every moment in between is His to own, and I believe it is one of the hardest things for us to handle. Most of us are either fighting to get control or we’re overwhelmed because we do not have control. Free-falling is not our comfort zone.

We come to Jesus with a death grip on our lives, and when He begins to pry our fingers back the pain can feel unbearable, so we tighten our grip. We are scrappy, I’ll give us that, but we’ve met our match with God. He will always out scrap us, because He is actually in control, while we live in the illusion of being in control. Sooner or later into everyone’s illusion must come the reality that we are not sovereign, even over our own lives.

My questions to myself, and to you if you are interested, are:

How have I been living as though God is not in control? Where has fear convinced me to tighten my grip? In fact, what is it that I am fearing that is causing the need to get some kind of control? Where is it hard for me to trust God’s sovereignty? What are the areas where I absolutely wish I had sovereignty? These questions take me into the places in my heart where I keep the door closed and remain blissfully unaware of the mess behind it. But when we determine to go deep diving into the Word of God, we find ourselves facing things we’ve ignored.

As thankful as I am that God is sovereign, I know that my flesh still has fancy ideas of being in charge, of deciding what’s best for me and how to get there, and I have to deal with that mess. But I am learning to rest in the free-fall, trusting that the One who is in control is good, always.