Is God ever surprised?
On one hand, God is omniscient. He knows everything about the past, the present, and the future so how could anything surprise Him? To be surprised, He would have to be unaware of something until it happened.
On the other hand, God gave me freedom to choose, to decide my own fate, to do stupid things or to obey His wisdom. So, shouldn’t my choices surprise Him from time to time? If not, do I actually have a choice, if God has everything all planned out?
To me these things don’t really seem problematic or contradictory, but I have spoken with some people who are really perplexed by both things being true: God being omniscient and my having freedom.
The answer is just that time is different to God. It isn’t linear to Him the way it is for me. To God, a thousand years is like a day (Psalm 90:4, 2 Peter 3:8). He knows it all as if it were now. It’s beyond my ability to fathom, of course, but it’s a simple thing to God. He is the Great I AM (always present tense).
So, I do have a choice. It’s just that God knows what I have chosen because He is beyond time. He has already taken my bad choices and woven them together with my good choices into a beautiful thread that is my life. And He has woven my thread along with your thread into His plans making the beautiful tapestry of His will.
My choices are real. But there is no way I can screw up His wonderful plans. He has already incorporated my mistakes, sins, and stupidity, weaving my them together with His forgiveness, ending up with the most beautiful piece of art. He sees it all and has worked (and will continue to work) it all out for good. Like today’s verse says, His wondrous plans formed long ago are accomplished with amazing faithfulness.
Dear God,
I am amazed by who you are and dumbfounded by your ability to always be the same. Thank you for giving me the freedom to make choices in my life, but thank you even more for redeeming those choices with your forgiveness when I humbly seek your will. I look forward one day to seeing the way you turned my life into your beautiful piece of art, despite my faults and failures.
CamDevo 