sov?er?eign sov-rin, sov-er-in, suhv-]
–noun
| 1. |
a monarch; a king, queen, or other supreme ruler. |
| 2. |
a person who has sovereign power or authority. |
| 3. |
a group or body of persons or a state having sovereign authority. |
| 4. |
a gold coin of the United Kingdom, equal to one pound sterling: went out of circulation after 1914. |
–adjective
| 5. |
belonging to or characteristic of a sovereign or sovereignty; royal. |
| 6. |
having supreme rank, power, or authority. |
| 7. |
supreme; preeminent; indisputable: a sovereign right. |
| 8. |
greatest in degree; utmost or extreme. |
| 9. |
being above all others in character, importance, excellence, etc. |
| 10. |
efficacious; potent: a sovereign remedy |
My God is sovereign, I believe that with the entirety of my being. I believe he is ultimately in control, the head of the body, the Creator of the universe. Does that disqualify humans from having free will? Have we been created as robots? Made to serve, love, make choices and decisions with no choice in them? Not at all. In fact, I see our free will as a major characteristic of God's sovereignty. He is so sovereign that he didn't NEED to create us without a choice of whether or not we are to love him and serve him. Of course the Lord is all knowing - omnipotent, omnipresent, omni.....everything! But he is also outside of time. We can't even begin to fathom these things, which makes my God sovereign. If I could fathom and understand these mysteries that invade my thoughts from time to time, I'm not sure he would be worth my life's devotion.
"She is right where God wants her to be." Is that a true statement when made about someone who is making choices that does not glorify God, but does the opposite by destroying the temple He has given her? If it came from a person who doesn't believe in free will, then I ask you "Does God desire for her to be living in sin, pushing him away? Is he making these choices for her? God is causing her to sin because she doesn't have free will?" Go back to Adam and Eve, if they did not have free will, God must have created them to sin which means sin was created by God, and that just cannot be.
CS Lewis is one of my favorite authors ever, Mere Christianity speaks on this subject and I found this excerpt from a review of the book:
"Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong; I cannot. If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata -- of creatures that worked like machines -- would hardly be worth creating."
Sovereign, yes.