God Allows Vs God Orchestrates

 

Today I want to go through and explain the differences between what God allows and what God orchestrates. It was during a discussion with a close friend that I realized very few people know or even care about the difference between the 2 circumstances. I will tell you straight up, that the difference is huge and it matters. 

If you’re dating someone, you want to marry them and you go to God and say ‘Lord, I want to marry this person. Please bless our union’… then a few months later, you marry that person. God has allowed it.

If you looking for a life partner and you go to God and say ‘Lord, I want to get married, and I’m leaving my love life in your hands, please send me the right man/woman’… then a few weeks/months later, you happen to meet Mr/Mrs Right in a meeting or a shop; it would be safe to say God has orchestrated it.

Because God loves us and has given us free will, there are a lot of things in our lives that He will allow, even if those things were not His first choice for us. He will allow you to quit your job and start a business, even if He knew you were going to get promoted soon. He will allow you to marry the man/woman of your choice, even if He had someone better in mind for you. This is usually the case when we don’t consult God before we make decisions. It is generally in our nature to want full control of every area of our lives, so we make decisions and ask God to bless our choices. This is the life of a person who is yet to come to a place of total surrender to God.

When you have grown spiritually and you can sincerely say ‘God, let you will be done and not mine’, then you have surrendered. It is at this point that God can begin to orchestrate things in your life. He can begin to line things up so you find your purpose, He can begin to move things around so you meet the man/woman He wants you to be with. 

God is not obligated to sustain anything that He did not orchestrate. See, when God has orchestrated it, and you are certain, you can literally trace His hand in your situation and know that God did it, you can expect Him to sustain it, and you can actually hold Him accountable for it. After all, it was His doing.

Let me give you some Bible examples to further illustrate my point.

When it was time for Isaac, Abraham's' promised son, to find a wife, Abraham sent one of his servants to go back to his country and find a wife for the young man. 

The servant was on a mission to find a wife, and when he got there, he said a quick prayer. He said ‘O Lord God of my master Abraham, please give me success this day, and show kindness to my master Abraham. Behold, here I stand by the well of water, and the daughters of the men of the city are coming out to draw water. Now let it be that the young woman to whom I say ‘Please let down your pitcher that I may drink’ and she says ‘ Drink and I will also give your camels a drink’- let her be the one You have appointed for Your servant Isaac’ .

This story can be found in Genesis chapter 24.

See, this servant put the whole situation in Gods’ hands from the get-go. He allowed God to make the choice and show him what to do.  He allowed God to orchestrate the whole thing.

What happens next?

Before he had finished speaking, Rebekah who was one of Abrahams’ relatives came out with her pitcher on her shoulders. The Bible says she was very beautiful to behold and the servant ran to meet her and asked her if he could have a drink of water from her pitcher, and she says

‘Drink, my lord’ and when he finished drinking, she says ‘I will draw water for your camels also until they have finished drinking’

Imagine that. This beautiful young lady came over and said the exact words the servant had prayed for. I would say it was a coincidence but I know better.

This is what happens when God orchestrates. He is in every part of it. He works behind the scenes to make sure it will happen, even if the odds of it happening are slim. 

In Genesis 26, there was a famine in the land that Isaac was living in and in those days, whenever there was a famine, people would go to Egypt and settle there until the famine was over. In verse2, God appeared to Isaac and said ‘do not go down to Egypt; live in the land of which I shall tell you. Dwell in this land and I will be with you and bless you…’

Isaac stayed where God told him to stay, sowed in that land and he reaped in the same year a hundred fold. Isaac was guaranteed success because God had initiated and orchestrated his stay in that land.

God either orchestrates something to happen or allows it to happen. It is either one of those two things.

What God initiates, He orchestrates and He sustains.  We are always a lot safer in situations that God has orchestrated; always safer in within Gods will. A.W Tozer said ‘Outside the will of God, there is nothing I want; inside the will of God, there is nothing I fear’.