sovereign AND good!

I remember beginning to learn a few years back about the sovereignty of God.  I mean, I guess since a child I've always known that God is all-powerful and always in control.  I guess I just began to wrestle with some of the implications of those attributes and what that really looks like and means in real life. I began to ask myself hard questions.  I had others asking me hard questions--sometimes to challenge my thinking and other times in search of their own answers about God and His character.  Entering into the world of healthcare and interacting daily with the world of disease, death, sickness, and brokenness causes you to think through some of these things, and honestly at times to question if God really is in control of this crazy, fallen world.  Turn on the news or glance at a newspaper and see the pain in the world.  I remember wrestling through how to reconcile God's power with the destruction of tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, and wars.  I thought isn't God powerful enough to stop these things.  Of course He is.  So, my next conclusion was that He was powerful enough to stop them, but He sometimes allows them.  Then I began to wrestle with why He would allow those things, which led me to an even more disturbing revelation.  The True God, the God of Scripture, (not necessarily the God of popular American thought and opinion) not only allows those things, but sometimes causes them.  This disturbed me greatly (and sometimes still does) at the time, but I just don't think it can be denied.  It is clearly written in Scripture. 
"See now that I myself am He!  There is no god besides me.  I put to death and I bring to life, I have wounded and I will heal"  Deuteronomy 32:39
"For he wounds, but he also binds up; he injures, but his hands also heal."  Job 5:18
"I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things."  Isaiah 45:7
Regarding "The" flood the LORD said "Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made."  Genesis 7:4
What about wars?  For example, we think about Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego being carried off to Babylon by terrible Nebuchadnezzar.  But if we look closely at Scripture we see "And the Lord delivered Jehoiakinm king of Judah into his hand" Daniel 1:2
And ultimately with Christ on the cross--God didn't just allow it to happen. It was His plan from the beginning. "For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.  In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will"  Ephesians 1:4-5
In these verses God didn't just allow death, wounds, disaster, destruction, and  war.  He brought it. 
Just because I don't really like the way this sounds doesn't mean it's any less true.  After all, isn't that part of the meaning of God's Sovereignty.  He is who He Is(the great I AM), not who I think He is.  He has supreme authority and can do as He pleases regardless of whether or not I agree with that authority.

So, back to the journey that God has taken me on the past few years.  I think I began to wrestle with and come to accept some of the implications of God's sovereignty in my life, but too much of a focus on sovereignty neglecting His goodness can make Him seem harsh and unloving.  Lately, God has been reminding me of His goodness.  He is perfectly sovereign and perfectly good all of the time.  He also reminds me that "good" by my definition is not necessarily the same as "good" by His definition.  In those times, my definition is the one that needs to change, not His.  I see the world too many times from my perspective and not from His.  I think of "goodness" in terms of how it will benefit me and my little world---my happiness, my comfort, my future, my kingdom.  His view of goodness is how things will advance His Kingdom and my holiness.  While I am focused on my temporal comfort and happiness, He is focused on how He can make me more like His Son.  God is good to me when I deserve the opposite, faithful to me when I'm unfaithful, and committed to me when I could care less.  God, in His goodness, takes great delight in me, quiets me with His love, and rejoices over me with singing (Zephaniah 3:17).  How amazing that the God of the entire universe calls me by name and calls me His own and tells me that I am to no longer call Him "master" but "husband" (Isaiah 43:1 & Hosea 2:16).  God is a God of love. 

So, now I'm learning to see God's sovereignty and goodness together.  A god who is sovereign, but not good would be very scary, a dictator to be feared---having the power and authority to carry out anything and everything, but with no goodness from which he acts.  A god who is good, but not sovereign would be completely useless---having good intentions and full of love, but with no power or authority to actually bring those intentions about.  Thankfully, God is both sovereign AND good!!!