| Home | Our Hope | |
| Bible Study |
|
November 1, 2025 |
| Pushing God Around | ||
If you ask Christians if they push God around, if they bully him, if they manipulate him, they would answer with a horrified, "No," and continue with something like, "I would never think of doing such a thing." But sometimes Christians do this unknowingly, and they do it because they are not thinking about what they are doing.
I bring this up because a former pastor of mine, and good friend, has put out a book in which he does this. Overall the message in the book is a good one, and I would prefer that he not see these comments about his book. This error makes such a good point about how we have to be careful about who we are in our relationship with God.
Charismatics push God around all the time. They are always commanding one thing or another to happen. If you ask them if they push God around by doing this, they would answer by saying, "God has authorized us to do this." Even if that was true, which it isn't, they would have the authority but not the power. God has the power, and he has to agree to do what they want. That seems pushy to me.
Liberals push God around by changing his words to mean other things. Other groups do similar things, but what they have in common is that they don't think about what they are doing.
The Israelites in the wilderness did this all the time by complaining to get God to do what they wanted. Instead of trusting him, they were trying to manipulate him.
Those are very egregious examples that anyone with their eyes open should be able to see. In this study, we'll look at how we can push God around in more subtle ways.
The book is about the spiritual and moral decay that has been going on in the US and how the nation can be saved. It says the Bible shows us that God will not tolerate this forever. It says we need a revival like the great revivals of the past.
So far, all of that is good stuff. But then it says, essentially, "here's how we make a revival happen."
To understand this fully, we need to understand what a revival is. The book refers to the Great Awakening Revivals, so I will too. When the first preacher preached the first message that began the revival, he was not trying to start a revival. It was just another Sunday message. It wasn't how he preached the message or where he preached it.
The difference was that the Holy Spirit started convicting the listeners. Their consciences were awakened, and they became aware of the unholy lives they had been living. The Bible has a similar example.
And when they heard these things. They were stricken in their hearts, and they said to Shimeon and to the rest of the Apostles, "What should we do, brothers?" (Acts 2:37)
It wasn't Peter's words that caused it. He was speaking by the Holy Spirit and likely speaking the words the Holy Spirit gave him, but words aren't magical or mystical. It was the Holy Spirit convicting them in their hearts (consciences).
The Great Awakening began there but spread to other churches. The people in those churches were convicted by the Holy Spirit as their pastors spoke. Was it the words used by all of these pastors that accomplished it? No. It was an "outpouring" of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit convicts people all the time. When Christians fail, he convicts them. When unbelievers fail, he convicts them. Each person who responds to the Spirit is revived or renewed.
A "revival" is only different because the Holy Spirit has decided to convict a large group of people at, more or less, the same time. What we see as a revival spreading through the churches is the Holy Spirit convicting progressively more people and them responding.
A revival is the consequence of an action taken by the Holy Spirit, done according to God's plan. An effort to force a revival is an effort to force God to do what you want him to do.
The author of the book looks back to the Old Testament for support for a grassroots start to a revival.
To support the idea of "Unit[ing] the church in repentance", he pulls a few words from 2 Chronicles 7:14, but that is badly out of context. That verse isn't even the complete sentence God is speaking.
The sentence comes from God's response to Solomon's prayer of dedication for the temple he has built. God speaks about possible futures for Israel and Solomon if they do good or evil. But both Israel and Solomon will choose the "if you do this evil" path. Here's the entire sentence that the book refers to.
When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, 14 if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land. (2 Chronicles 7:13-14)
He is saying that there are two preconditions: Israel has turned away from God, and God has begun to injure their land as a result, for a sign. So, first, they have turned away, and second, God has begun to call them back through various signs. Usually these signs were accompanied by prophets who would warn the people that God was unhappy with them. So God is not talking about a grassroots movement. God is the one calling them back.
God says he will forgive those who turn back to him. That's a true statement, whether it's an individual or a revival.
God also says he will heal their land. This isn't widely understood. God has built the universe such that, when people turn away from him, they make bad decisions and progressively worse decisions. The consequences of these decisions are hate and chaos throughout the land where these people live. The same is true of an individual. His bad and worsening decisions bring hate and chaos into his life. When the people or the person turn back to God, they begin to make good decisions and the hate and chaos disappear.
The situation was a little different under the Old Covenant. After the golden calf incident, God amended the covenant to authorize him to strike the people when they turned away. For them, in addition to the usual chaos, God added "drought, locusts, plagues", and other such things up to angels slaying the people.
God called his people back to him in different ways in the Old Covenant. In the New Covenant, God is more likely to prick the conscience.
The author quotes part of a verse from Psalm 127 many times. Here is the entire verse.
Unless Yahweh builds the house, they labor in vain who build it; unless Yahweh watches the city, the watchman keeps awake in vain. (Psalm 127:1)
The author understands the verse to refer to building families. It is more general than that. It means that anything you do will only be successful if God is doing it. This would include revivals.
If God is calling the church to revival now, there is no sign of it - the church is not responding. It could be that the call is going out, but no one is hearing it. I think it is more likely that the call has not gone out.
Even so, the Spirit is still calling for God's people, as individuals, to return to him where they have wandered off.
There are many ways to push God around. This way was worth mentioning because it is so easy to miss. A person with good intentions can get wrapped up in what he is doing and say, "Of course God would want this." Then he never asks the question: How does God see this?
That is the question we must ask ourselves with everything we do. Is it something we are doing, or is God building the house?