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Key Bible Verse: How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who … say to Zion, "Your God reigns!" Isaiah 52:7 NIV). Bonus Reading: Exodus 19:3-6

Every Christian believes that God—the all-powerful Creator of Genesis 1—used to be in charge of this world. And all agree that God will be in charge at the end. On that fateful day our eternal destiny will rest in the hands of our Judge. But what about the interim? Is God in charge here and now, or has he momentarily lost his grip? Has our continent spun off into a renegade orbit he's unaware of or powerless to correct? I don't believe that, and neither do you.

So why do we act that way? In thousands of churches every week, Christians stand and sing the chorus "Our God Reigns." They may raise their hands, swaying back and forth to words based on [today's Key Bible Verse]. But they go right on worrying and "stressing" about what the local school board did the previous week or what the latest tax reform bill failed to include.

I call this the" New Evangelical Deism", after the eighteenth-century philosophy that said that God perhaps created the universe in the beginning but then wound it up like a clock and left it to run on its own. It's time once again to hear the thunderous voice from Sinai: "All the earth belongs to me" (Exodus 19:5).

—Dean Merrill in Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Church

My Response: To bring my actions into line with my beliefs about God's control, I need to …

Thought to Apply: God's calling the shots. He's running the show. Either he's in full control or he's off his throne.—Charles Swindoll (pastor, educator, & author)

Adapted from Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Church (Zondervan, 1997) by permission.

Copyright © 2008 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine. Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.

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Prayer for the Week

Deliver me, sovereign Lord, from attempting to manage You. Help me to honor You by trusting and submitting to Your control.

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