Is "Just Leaving It Up to God" The Last Decision He Wants From Us ?

Common Sense Commentary:

When Mrs Blair and I had our sixth child, her body and her doctor warned ... "NO MORE", we decided "Just leaving it up to God", whether we had another child or not, may not be the decision He wanted us to make. He put most of the decision making for our lives into our own hands. If she and I had decided to "just leave it up to God", who created us with a natural bodily function of having babies, and other certain bodily functions that happen automatically, as well, decision or no decision, on our part, we would not only have had more babies, but she may have died in childbirth, with or without our decision.  To have continued to have babies until they stopped on their own or she died having one, would have been rather like the high steel worker who walked the narrow, I-beam girders, building sky-scrapers.  When he became a Christian, he decided he would cancel his expensive high-risk insurance and un-hitch the bothersome, safety tether and ... just trust God to keep him from falling.  God never failed him, and God's automatic, never failing, equal opportunity gravity didn't either.  It pulled him right off the steel beam into the presence of the Lord and left his wife to raise his fatherless children.  Many a mother has died in childbirth and left several children without a mother, but with a Daddy who had no choice but to go out and make a living for his family. Every time a woman gives birth to a baby, she does so "in the Valley Of The Shadow Of Death".  So, what are you men going to do after you have nineteen children .... with no mother?  And you mothers... what other woman is going to want to raise all of your children or do as good a job of it as you would? But, worse still, what if your desperate husband picked the wrong woman this time and brought home a beautiful, intelligent witch? It has happened many times .... even to Christian men.  Of course, you can rationalize that the dearly departed mother "is in a better place", or, "It wouldn't have happened if it weren't the will of God", or "All things work together for good to those who love God", and if the baby died too, "It was God's will and at least it won't grow up to be a serial killer and spend eternity in hell" .... all of which is true, but isn't it possible God simply expected you to use your God given brain and the common sense He put there to make better decisions? Are you just going to leave all of your decisions "In God's hands", with never another decision by you, and whatever "just happens" will be God's will for good? Then why did He give us a brain if He didn't expect us to use it? If it was God's will for us to just coast along and leave all of our decisions up to Him,  there would be no day of judgement or giving account for the things we have said and done, or neglected to do, because we would not be responsible for the outcome, He would, if He made all of our decisions for us. 

Yes, God is the King of kings with all the power, knowledge and presence, but we are the King's kids... His princes and princesses. He spends a lot of time, as our Father, teaching and training us to exercise our gifts and talents, do our God called jobs and ministries, and make our decisions. Why does He do that if He is going to do all those things for us. He commissioned us to "Go". That is an action word, a verb which puts personal responsibility upon us to decide to hear Him, obey Him, move our muscles and "Go" do His work, or not to go. He commissioned us, taught us, sent us, and holds us responsible. And as we "Go", we are to speak and do His will and know that we, as individuals, are responsible to Him and will answer for the things we do or neglect to do as He commanded. It is not enough to say, "If I don't go and witness for Christ, He will witness to them" or "If I don't train up my children, God will train them for me, or have mercy and straighten it all out for me", or "God will do it if He wants it done, whether I do it or not".  There are many Christians who are too scared, uncertain, confused or lazy to make a decision so they just let it ride, and say, "let God decide", and when that unmade decision results in calamity they wonder "Why did God do that to me" .... He didn't; they did it to themselves, by default. Letting your every decision be decided by default is not what God had in mind when He told Adam, "THOU SHALT NOT".

We are His heirs, the Kings children, members of the Royal, Holy Family. He has taught and trained and empowered and commissioned us to think, use our own brains, speak accordingly, take action ... according to our holy training and our Father's will as revealed to us by His Holy word. Yes, we should pray and talk to Him about it all, but then we are to use our own born-again minds and do what makes sense and aligns with our Father's training and His word. The moment you finish your prayer, and turn to the decision and the problem at hand, you are stepping out on to Holy ground as an emissary, ambassador, spokesman for your Heavenly Father, the King. He has given you that authority, that power, that job ... for YOU to do, not Him. He will go before you and with you, but he will not do what He called YOU to do.... for you. Decisions are not a toss of the dice, a shot in the dark, or a "let God decide the decisions" which He gave you to make. He will give you guidance and "peace" about the right decision but He will not make it for you. That is YOUR responsibility.  If a thing is totally impossible to do, but you still think He wants you to do it, you had better double check His word and pray again. He does all the impossible things and makes the impossible decisions. 

One of my favorite verses is Col. 3:15, "And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called ....". The root meaning of that word "rule" is, "To act as judge, president or umpire".  In other words, "Let the peace of God umpire your decisions." That doesn't mean He will make the decision for you but will call it a hit or a strike, right or wrong and give you "peace" about what is right.  It is still your decision to make. But we can take comfort in the fact that Jesus promised that, "....When he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide  YOU into all truth...." Jn. 16:13. He is always with us to guide us, convict us, and umpire our decisions, but He will not do your part .... making decisions and doing your calling. God is our Father; we are His children. Do you want your own children to still be coming to you, constantly in indecision and confusion, for you to make all their decisions for them .... after they are grown up? Or do you want them to make their own decisions,   based on the training you gave them and searching God's word and God's will for themselves ... as mature, spiritual adults? Calling you for advice is fine, but then, it is their decision to make. Don't you think our heavenly Father wants us to grow up spiritually and act upon what He has taught us without being constantly uncertain or just "leaving every decision up to fate?"  Could you sail a ship that way? Could you make a cake that way?  Your ship would just drift with the wind and currents to who knows where. What level of decision making is our responsibility? What shirt to wear, what to have for lunch, when to bathe, whether we pray, study His word, attend His church. Are you really trusting God if you buy fire, auto, health insurance, or should we leave it up to Him to see that those bad things don't happen to us and therefore not carry any insurance at all? It won't work. God is not going to put your socks on for you. Isn't buying insurance simply using your good sense ...which He gave you? Yes, pray about it, but then "Let the peace of God rule..." and make the decision.

Please tell me why the Apostle Paul needed Doctor Luke, the "beloved physician", when he already had the "Great Physician", Jesus Christ, to heal him?  Because that was Luke's ministry before God. How many times have you heard on the news of a religious mom and dad who, in their overextended effort to just trust God for the child's healing, refused to take a sick child to a doctor, and the child died. It happens a lot.  Do you just "trust God" to protect your children against all danger and evil, or do you, as a responsible parent, do your calling and help God in protecting them? Do you turn a 15 year old loose with the car, in the Walmart parking lot, while you shop an hour and just let God keep him safe and protect him from dope dealers, or do you fulfill your God given responsibility to make good decisions ... AS HIS PARENT?  Do you just leave disciplining your children up to God or do you kind of help God out a bit?  Do you, with what you call faith, give 100% of your total income to Christ's church and expect God to provide food three times a day and have an unknown benefactor pay all your many bills? Why not, if you are totally trusting God to provide and make your decisions for you. Do you completely trust God to keep you healthy and never see a doctor, including a dentist, optometrist or pharmacist? Why not, if you leave all of that up to God. Do you expect God to keep you physically and spiritually clean or are those decisions and choices your responsibility.  This kind of so called "faith" in God, to do for you what He wants you to do for yourself, is a false faith. It may fit into this rather unusual verse in Ecc.7:16-17...."Be not righteous over much; neither make thyself over wise: why shouldest thou destroy thyself?  Be not over much wicked, neither be thou foolish: why shouldest thou die before thy time?"  "Overmuch righteous" sounds like you can try too hard, in the flesh, to be the kind of Christian you think God wants you to be and over-extend yourself beyond true righteousness into self-righteousness which becomes "overmuch wicked" and "foolish", and tends to destroy yourself even unto death. That kind of "righteousness" is more likely an effort to appear righteous to others but leads to spiritual and physical damage.  It has always been amusing to me that those people who profess to have the power to raise the dead and heal the infirm, also wear contacts, have cavities, caps and implants, wear toupees, get sick and die just like everybody else. If God is anything, He is reasonable, balanced, fair, real, unpretentious, pure, true, merciful, forgiving, loving, patient, and does not expect us to do anything we cannot do. Live up to your fullest potential, be all you can be for God, Learn His Holy word, soak it up constantly, live as a child of God should live and be His ambassador in this foreign land, speaking for Him with full knowledge of what your Heavenly Father stands for and would say, Himself, if He chose to... but He left that up to you ... as His ambassador.  "Faith without works is dead." Jm.2:20. RB