Does God have Limits?

Setting boundaries is a good practice for life. In sports, there are rules. There's an "out of bounds", and play doesn't happen "out of bounds." Boundaries for life allows you to limit yourself in a healthy way so you're not taking over responsibility for things you're not and don't need to be responsible for. It gives you a system for saying no to things so you're not overwhelmed and able to operate at your peak performance. The best book about this stuff is by Cloud & Townsend and it's simply titled: Boundaries.

It got me thinking about the character of God. There's lots of verses in the Bible about God having no limits:
"all things are possible with God",
"nothing can separate us from the love of God".
And I'm sure many others that talk of God's sovereignty. But, in practice, it seems like there are things that happen that God would rather not see happen. We call these evil and injustice and suffering and oppression...you get the idea. The word to sum all this up is Sin. Sin is stuff that goes against what God wants. But if God is sovereign, how is that possible???? Some try to explain this by saying God designs stuff to work that way for a reason. I think, a better way is to realize that God is self-limiting God's sovereignty.

What is that limit?

Your free will.

God's love is not dependent upon your free will. However our experience of God's love is limited by our participation with it. The nature of love is that we consent and desire to love. If we don't want to love, or we don't consent to love, then it ceases to be love. God's greatest commandment, the commandment that Jesus gives his disciples, is LOVE ONE ANOTHER. You don't have to. But it is what God wants. And God desires to bring each of us to a place where we want that too.

In fact, that's why he sent Jesus Christ, not to condemn the world, but so that we'd know and become Love like Jesus Christ. Life becomes a journey of refinement in Love, where you are shaped to freely choose Love first and foremost.