While I fully believe that God is in control, I've often made assumptions as to how that has to appear. Every time I've thought I had an understanding of His control figured out it has inevitably fallen flat in front of me ... or should I say, from under me. As you are now considering, perhaps the real issues we argue about really do have more to do with our own belief systems than with the truth we often seem to be discussing.

Yes, I understand that sense of being shown to be right, and yet in the process I've realized that the real truth of my being made right in Christ has no bearing on what I was trying to communicate. If I also wanted to speak of freedom in Christ to the person I was debating with it seemed I had to create a bridge from what I had been saying up to that point. For me anymore, if the good news of Christ is not directly related to what I discuss in my God-related topics then I'm not sure they're worth discussing. The subject of God's Control is one of those topics that most of the time have nothing to do with my true life as being joined together with the God who is in control of everything. It's what I see as a doctrinal divide, that is, truth without life. We have far too much of that, and I don't want to add to it.

Regarding control, I might convince myself of the truth that God has control even over bad decisions, but then if I end up using my wonderful intellect and therefore reason that I have no real choices, rather than finding comfort in the reality that I have been made truly free by the determination of God in Christ. The doctrine of Free Will is not about the only free will in the universe, it is about the attempt to prove that we can strive against the odds and make ourselves free. The irony here is that while we're trying to prove that our belief system is right we might be still trying to win that same old battle about how we are the ones have chosen the "right" way. But we've been made right in Christ ... and that's not referring to our belief systems.

We can make our decisions according to our belief that God is in control ... but then what if it's better than that? What if we make our decisions IN the God who is in control? The difference is found in Christ. And that is where we are.