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Who is God? How would someone describe Him? Can God even be described? The late S.M Lockridge once gave a sermon describing who God is and then concluded that God is simply indescribable. In Psalm 71:19, we read "... O God, who is like you?" And yet we also know from further study of the Psalms that one way we draw closer to God is to reflect and acknowledge who He reveals Himself to be and what He has done and is doing. In the coming months, Lily7 hopes to give you a small glimpse into who God is by focusing on a few of His attributes. By no way an exhaustive description of who God is, understanding these attributes has a profound effect on our life and how we view the world. They also serve to remind us of why we worship God, to reflect on who God is and how, like Reverand Lockridge concluded, He truly is indescribable. God is Sovereign Ruler by Nikki Rutz God is the one and only Sovereign Ruler. A student once asked me what it meant to be "sovereign." I found myself using other adjectives to try and describe the sovereignty of God: all-knowing, all-powerful, ruler of everything that exists, ultimate-authority, omniscient (a word she also asked me about), etc. Pretty much, I sounded like a contestant on that 1980’s Pyramid game show where I was trying to describe something and get someone else to shout out the answer - "You’re talking about God!" Maybe, God is so sovereign and so above us and everything that exists that it is hard for us to understand what His sovereignty looks like. We know that He is the ultimate authority over all rulers and governing bodies (2 Chronicles 20:6) and we also know that He has ordained our moments here on earth (Psalm 139 and Acts 17:26, for example). But I think if we are honest--really honest with ourselves--we struggle with this concept of God being the Sovereign Ruler. We struggle with the idea of a Ruler over us because we do not understand how God created us, how He loves us, and how He redeems us through Jesus Christ (I refer to earlier articles written describing such attributes). We struggle with the idea of God as Sovereign when we encounter pain and suffering...and we all encounter it. The root of this struggle is in our disbelief and lack of trust in God. For those of us (I count myself at the top of the list) who are "control freaks," we especially struggle with this concept of God because we like to be able to force certain outcomes and feel like we are in control. The fact that we can’t make things happen by our efforts is extremely frustrating to us. And, to be honest, our American culture generally does not have a great deal of respect for authority so it is not something that we are comfortable acknowledging. We readily criticize governing leaders and those in authoritative positions over us, so it is not hard to see why the concept of a "King" is hard for us to grasp. But, whether we can fully understand it or not, God is Sovereign. As we come to know Him, we are better able to understand what this concept entails and a funny thing happens: our knowledge of Him helps us grow to trust Him. We begin to understand that He is, indeed, working in every situation in our lives for our good (Romans 8:28) even though we often do not understand what "good" really means. As we seek to know God and His thoughts (via the Bible) we come to develop His worldview. Suddenly, we realize that there is security in knowing that He knows us better than we know ourselves and can see what we do not see. Throughout the sufferings of Job, God reminded Job that he could not see what God was doing. God asks Job, "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?" (Job 28:4). And even though Job could not see what God was doing, he eventually did see, in part, when God restored all of his fortunes -- giving him twice what he had before (Job 42:10). If we understood the sovereignty of God, if we really got this, I think that we would want God to be Sovereign in our lives. We would be joyful and delighted and leaning into His authority! We would be in awe of His power and His amazing work that we cannot always see. When we grasp who God is, we find ourselves wanting to give Him our attention when we are in formal music/worship times, when we take communion to remember what Christ has done for us by way of redeeming us, and when we pray. How flippant are we, usually, during these times? My brother and I used to make "snoring" noises when my dad’s prayer before the dinner meal got too long simply to remind him that we were ready to eat and he needed to end the prayer. How dishonoring to the Sovereign God in that moment when we were supposed to be embracing the privilege of having His attention. I don’t think that I did a very good job of describing God’s sovereignty to the student who was asking me about it. Perhaps by now she has studied on her own to better understand who God is and how He is Lord of all. If she did, maybe she ran across a letter written by Paul to Timothy, in which he did a much better job of describing God than I could ever do: "...He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings, and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see..." (I Timothy 6:15).