When we acknowledge God’s sovereignty we are moved to praise and adore Him for reigning over everything, including (and especially) us. We don’t resist it or resent it; rather, we feel safe and secure and love for God to reign over us. It’s equivalent to a small child being held in the arms of a strong, protective, loving parent. That little child feels safe and secure because he or she knows mommy or daddy knows what is best and will take care of them.

We’re not motivated to submit to God’s sovereignty by instability and insecurity but rather by wisdom because we know our heavenly Father knows what is best for us. That wisdom prompts us to see that God is always on His thrown and His will is going to be done whether we are in submission to His blessings and grace or in resistance to His justice that results in judgment.

Spiritually speaking, problems come along a little later in life when we grow up and want independence and demand to do our own will. Hopefully, we come to our senses in faith and realize God’s will is so much better than doing things our self-destructive way. We submit to His will as we follow Jesus and life gets better now and gets really great when we die. Jesus, the ultimate Son of God, submitted to do the will of the Father. In John 6:35-40 Jesus said, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen Me, and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.”

God is not a tyrant who rams His will in our face and forces us to submit to Him; rather, He is a God of love who woos us through the cross of His Son to choose to do His will over ours. C.S. Lewis wrote, “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” Let’s be the ones who bow to the sovereignty of God and seek to do His will from here to heaven.

Read Isaiah 46:8-13 and listen to God You Reign by Lincoln Brewster. Then submit your life to the sovereign God who reigns over the world from beginning until the end.