Trust in God… but Keep Your Powder Dry!

But we prayed to our God and guarded the city day and night to protect ourselves. 

(Nehemiah 4:9 NLT).

According to legend, before leading his troops into battle, Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658), on one occasion, told his men to “trust in God… but keep your powder dry.” If a soldier’s  gunpowder was damp, his musket wouldn’t fire, thus making him useless in combat. Cromwell, a man of deep faith, believed that God would surely give the victory. But he also knew that if his soldiers didn’t do their part, all would be lost. This leaves me scratching my head. I want to ask: “So, General Cromwell, which is it? Does the outcome of the battle depend on God or the men who are fighting? You can’t have it both ways.”  

Cromwell’s advice to his soldiers introduces us to one of the most difficult theological conundrums in all of life. How does divine sovereignty interact with human responsibility? If God is in control and has foreordained human history, and if nothing happens unless it is first filtered through his permissive will, then how can human freedom truly exist? But if humans are genuinely able to choose, and if they are going to be held fully accountable for their actions, then the future is determined by their choices, not God’s. In other words, if God is sovereign, then I’m not truly free. But if I am free, then God is not truly sovereign. Right?

When we turn to the Bible for help, far from resolving the problem, it only deepens the mystery! On the one hand, the Scriptures insist that God is sovereign. He created everything, including all the contingencies that make up the created order. He knows the end as well as the beginning. Nothing is too difficult for him. He knows our thoughts even before we think them. Not a sparrow falls to the ground unless it is in accord with his predestined purposes. He has mapped out a plan for human history and assures us that it will be accomplished. (See Job 42:2; Isa. 46:9-11; Matt. 10:29; Eph. 1:11; etc.).

On the other hand, the Bible asserts that humans are free moral agents who are going to be held fully responsible for their choices. The stories recorded in Scripture describe men and women who know God’s will, but then do the opposite, seemingly frustrating his original plan. And the sermons recorded in the Bible clearly assume that the listeners are fully able to choose whether they will align their lives with God’s will, or not. The very purpose of prayer, according to Scripture, is to give humans the chance to change the outcome of events. As Pascal expressed it: God instituted prayer “to impart to his creatures the dignity of causality” (Pensées, #930). And the Bible tells us that at the final judgment, each of us will be held accountable for the choices we have made. On that day, no one will be able to say that their destiny was predetermined by some cosmic fate so that they should not be held responsible for their actions.  (See Deut. 30:19; Matt. 23:37; II Cor. 5:10; Rev. 3:20; etc.).

God is sovereign. Humans are responsible. This feels like a logical contradiction. How can both realities be true? Those who try to give a rational explanation typically end up emphasizing one truth to the exclusion of the other. This response is simplistic and almost inevitably leads to heresy! A better approach is to ask God for the courage to live in the tension. Stop trying to solve the problem and begin to embrace the mystery.  

In his book Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton notes that whenever we find something odd in Christian theology, we discover that there is something odd in the truth. By this, he means that Christianity has a special talent for combining truths that seem to be mutually contradictory. He uses the term “paradox” to describe what he means (see chapter VI, “The Paradoxes of Christianity”). A situation is paradoxical when it seems to be logically impossible, self-contradictory, or even absurd. Yet, upon closer examination, it points to a deeper truth or reality. Chesterton loved Christian theology precisely because it had an amazing capacity to combine two almost insane positions in a way that produced sanity! To choose one side or the other, or to mix them together so that neither is what it was before, is to fall into error. Chesterton believed that the genius of Christianity is that it gets over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious.

God is sovereign. I am responsible. Living in the tension of this reality is what Christian discipleship is all about! Whether we are talking about Abraham and Sarah’s tragic decision to use Hagar to accomplish God’s will, giving birth to Ishmael and the Arab/Israeli conflict, or Nehemiah’s commitment to trust in God for protection but to post an armed guard as the workers build up the walls of Jerusalem, we see many examples in Scripture, both good and bad, of how God’s sovereignty and human responsibility work together. Each story is unique and reminds us of the complexities involved when humans and God are walking side by side.  

Paul’s shipwreck offers a vivid picture of how divine sovereignty and human responsibility work together (see Acts 27). After days of being battered by the storm, everyone on board the ship had abandoned hope of survival. Then suddenly, an angel appeared to Paul and assured him that no lives would be lost. It is hard to imagine a clearer statement of God’s sovereign will than this: “there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship” (v. 22). Yet Paul did not retreat to his quarters and wait passively for God’s promise to unfold. Though still a prisoner, he stepped into leadership and gave instructions for reaching land safely. When some sailors tried to escape in a lifeboat, Paul warned everyone, “Unless these men stay in the ship, you cannot be saved” (v. 31). What would have happened if Paul’s warning had been ignored? Would the story have ended differently? God had made a sovereign promise. And yet everyone on board had to choose how they would respond. The account invites us to embrace the paradoxical truth and live in the tension. In the end, all 276 people on board the ship reached land safely, expressing beautifully both God’s sovereignty and each person’s full responsibility.  

Conclusion

I wish we could sit face to face and discuss the implications of this blog for your life and mine as we face the day before us. How good it would be to pray specifically together about what it means for God to be sovereign and what it means for you and me to be fully responsible for our choices and actions. I have no formula to offer, nor can I fully explain the divine truth I’m seeking to convey. All I know is that I want to encourage you, dear brother and sister, as you face your day today, to trust in God… but keep your powder dry!  

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