God's sovereignty is often used as an excuse not to receive healing from him. Worse, it often becomes a pathetic catchall for everything bad that happens. I don't know if you've seen things like the following, but I've seen enough along these lines that it almost makes me sick! (If it did make me sick, of course, I would believe God for my healing rather than "trusting in his sovereign will in the matter.")


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OUR GREAT SOVEREIGN GOD By Kay Lastima


Oh, how I love God and his will for me, even when I don't understand it. I just trust in his sovereignty, because he knows what is best for me. Even sickness, which seems to be of no value, is part of his sovereign plan. I know this because of my favorite verse, Romans 8:28. God heals those whom he chooses to heal in his sovereignty. If he chooses to have me suffer, I will gladly submit to his loving sovereign will. I know that Psalm 115:3 says that God has done whatever he has pleased; therefore, sickness must please him when he permits it. I know that when Jesus opens and shuts doors, man is powerless to do anything about it because Revelation 3:7 says so; therefore no one can resist God's will. I know that God works everything after the counsel of his own will because Ephesians 1:11 says so. After all, Lamentations 3:37-38 says, "Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commandeth it not? Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil and good?" Therefore, I gladly receive evil from my sovereign Father. I love our great sovereign God and will never fuss with him over the circumstances that he sovereignly permits to befall me. My aunt lost her baby in his sovereign will. My brother-in-law died a painful death from pancreatic cancer in his sovereign will. My brother went bankrupt and lost his business, and his wife ran off with the guy who rides the back of the trash truck. God had a sovereign reason for all this. He controls everything, so I will never question his will or attempt to boss my sovereign God around.



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If you think this is exaggerated, you should read some of the things people say about God's sovereignty. (Well, actually, you shouldn't read them.) They write whole books that are an elaboration of the paragraph above.

If God is really that sovereign, why pray? Why did Jesus spend so much time teaching on faith and prayer if we are just to accept everything as God's sovereign will anyway? It would be a waste of time to bring any petition before a God who just does what he wants anyway. But watch the news tonight and you'll see that the will of God does not automatically get done in the lives of sinners or saints.

If you believe that the will of God just automatically gets done, consider that 2 Peter 3:9 and 1 Tim 2:3-4 (among other places) say that God wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. Not all men get saved or come to a knowledge of the truth, so the will of God is not done in their lives. Therefore, the will of God does not automatically get done. God is willing to heal all diseases, too, but that will is not automatically done. The ones who get saved are the ones who believe for it. The ones who are healed supernaturally are the ones who believe for it. The principle is the same.


The argument in the paragraph above is so airtight that the only way the objectors can argue with it is to say that Jesus had a "limited atonement," i.e., that he died for only the sins of "the elect" and not everyone. Then it could still be true that God's will always gets done, because he only was willing to save some people and not all. That is actually their response when you bring this up! They will tell you that 2 Peter 3:9 "in context" was written to people who were saved, who must be in "the elect," and that God is not in fact willing to save all men because Jesus did not die for all men. This concept, known as predestination or Calvinism, does not agree with John the Baptists's declaration that the Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). It certainly does not agree with John's statement in 1 John 2:2: "And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." The idea that Jesus did not die for all men is not even held by a majority of those who do not believe in divine healing, for what should be obvious reasons. It would make God a respector of persons, which he declares multiple times that he is not, and it would make all the precious promises addressed to "whosoever" (John 3:16, for example!) meaningless. It leads to the inevitable logical conclusion that free will does not really exist in regard to salvation, since no one can resist God's will. (Because this is the logical extension, most who teach "predestination" do teach that no one can resist God's will.) So much for choosing life or death yourself. This also paints God in a bad light, since it means that he damns many who have no chance to ever be saved; they are in effect damned from the womb.


If you think you are sick because that is God's predestined good will for your life, you might want to ask yourself how all of the sick people in Jesus' day (as well as all the sick people on the streets of Jerusalem and the island of Melita) managed to get out of God's predestined good will for their lives -- with help from Jesus and the apostles! Otherwise, you must believe that it was God's good will to heal everyone who came for it back then, but that it is not God's will to do so today. Now you are saying that God has changed and his healing mercies are no longer new every morning. You are saying that he was moved with compassion back then, but that God no longer extends this compassion to the sick today. This opens up a number of unanswerable problems, such as the fact that God does not change, and that Jesus said it was expedient that he go away so that he could send the Holy Spirit to enable us to do his works in his name, and the fact that he is our merciful High Priest today. Surely his mercy has not decreased. You also would have to defend the position that we are somehow in a different dispensation even though it is the same Church Age. (This is covered elsewhere in more detail.)


God does indeed do as he pleases (Psalm 115:3), but the devil does things that do NOT please God, and the Son of God was manifest to destroy the devil's works (1 John 3:8). This verse proves that things happen that are the will of Satan and not the will of God. For example, billions of people will end up in hell. That isn't God's will. The idea that just because something happens, it's God's will, is ludicrous. Just wait until you get sick next time and see if you really think it's God's will.

The context of Ephesians 1:11 is that God predestinated us to have an inheritance in Christ. This general statement does not apply to all the minor incidents of life. Not all incidents are God's will, because the sicknesses in the people Jesus healed were obviously not God's will -- the healing Jesus gave them was God's will.


Yes, there are verses such as the one about opening and shutting doors. In the grand scheme of things, God's will cannot be thwarted. There will be judgment upon the earth, Jesus will come back, there will be a new heaven and new earth, and the devil and his angels will burn in the lake of fire. Nothing can stop that. However, these verses cannot apply to a sick person! I have heard people quote this and other verses as proof that God just does what he wants on the earth. If you think the will of God is always done on the earth, pick up today's newspaper and consider how much the will of Satan is getting done instead.

The use of the Lamentations passage is lamentable, since the context of God sending evil is clear from the very next verse (3:39): "Wherefore doth a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins?" God is talking about sending evil to the sinner, not the righteous man! It has nothing to do with a righteous man receiving evil from the Lord!


Thank God, Jesus did not have this hyper-religious attitude. If he had, when the storm arose and the boat started filling with water and the disciples woke up Jesus, he would have said, "Let's just trust God's sovereign will in the matter. If we sink and drown, that's his will. I will not speak to circumstances or boss my sovereign God around."

Can you picture his response to the father of the demonized boy? Instead of exhorting him to believe, he would have said, "Just leave the matter up to our sovereign God. It might be his sovereign will for your boy to remain demon-possessed."

Thank God, James did not have this hyper-religious attitude. If he had, he would have said, "Is any among you sick? Let him sing praises to his supersovereign God and leave the matter in his hands."


The Bible is full of people who prayed and changed things. Israel would have been destroyed if Moses had not stood in the gap. Thank God, Moses did not just say, "Okay, Sovereign I AM, you said that you would destroy them in an instant, so let your sovereign will be done." God extended Hezekiah's life 15 years after a prophet of God prophesied his immediate death -- because of Hezekiah's prayer!

You cannot read the Bible much without seeing numerous instances of prayer changing not only things but also changing how God was going to deal with a group of people. God would have spared Sodom for the sake of 10 righteous people just because of Abraham's prayer! This is totally contrary to the whole idea of a "sovereign God" who is little more than the Greek mythological Fates sitting up there determining who gets lucky and who gets the shaft today.


God is not actually sovereign in the sense that he can do everything. There are things God himself cannot do! He cannot change. He cannot lie. He cannot alter the word that has gone forth from his lips. He has exalted his word above his name. God is literally bound by his promises. For God to refuse to keep just one promise to one person who has met its conditions would give Satan the right to order God to leave his throne.

God has bound himself to honor "by whose stripes you were healed." He has bound himself to honor "I am the Lord your Physician." He has bound himself to "forgive all your sins and heal all your diseases." God is no longer "sovereign" in such matters because he cannot break his promises. This is the main point that the "sovereignty" crowd misses.


"The heaven, even the heavens, are the LORD's: but the earth hath he given to the children of men." -- Psalm 115:16. (That is in the same Psalm whose third verse is part of this objection!) Man has authority here. That is why God needs us to pray, to authorize him to move in the earth. This idea bothers people because it's easier not to pray and just think that God will run everything the way he wants. I have even had barrages of Scripture quoted at me that supposedly indicate that God can do, and does do, whatever he wants in the earth. While his ultimate will (the judgments of Revelation, the renewal of the earth, the Millennium, etc.) will be done regardless of men's wishes, many aspects of this present life have been left to man. This is why God does not stop the abortions and other murders, wars, corruption in government, and so on. If God truly does his will in the minutest details on earth, he is sadistic, allowing women to be battered, children to be abandoned, and men to become slaves of lust and chemicals. No, God gives man free will to choose good or evil. You cannot blame your cold on God's sovereign will. Besides, if you think it's God's will, quit taking that medicine to get out of his will, and just suffer your sovereignly sent sickness.