God has a vision for human society and though He has clearly articulated it, human eyes are held blind to it because of the darkness that covers them. Only when we have a revelation of Christ are we able to truly understand God's ultimate vision for human society and be instruments of God to restore order to the social institutions of our world.

God created the universe ex nihilo, a theological term that means He created the universe out of nothing. This is something that takes faith to understand. By faith we understand that the world was framed by the Word ofGod(Heb. 11:3).

God created the universe out of nothing and He Himself transcends the universe that He created. In other words, God existed before this physical material universe was created. He exists outside of this universe, but at the same time, because this universe flows from Him, there is no particle within this universe that is divorced from Him.

One of the foundational truths we must grasp is that God created an open universe. The term "open universe" has much to do with free will. God did something remarkable by giving created beings in His universe freedom—the power of choice. He did that because God is love.

Love is centered in the will, not the emotions. Emotions may accompany the exercising- of our will to love, but love is centered in the will because love is primarily a choice. If love were an emotion only, then God could not command us to love. He could only ask us whether we feel it. And the fact is some days we feel it, while some days we do not!

Yet, since love is centered in the will, God can command us, "Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. Husbands, love your wives."

We love because we choose to love. Therefore the expression "I fell out of love" is invalid. You don't fall in and you don't fall out of love. When someone' says, "I fell out of love," he is simply using it as an excuse because he does not want to say, "I no longer choose to love you." We love because we choose to love, and once we have made that decision (which is centered in our will) then we should make a commitment to that decision.

God is love; naturally He wants a love relationship with human society. Hence, He gives us the power of choice-—'free will to love. However, freedom comes with its own set of risks. Someone once asked me, "If God knew that Adam was going to sin and mess it all up, why did He put that tree in the garden?" God did what He did because Adam could not be considered truly free until he had the power to choose and decide for himself.

You cannot truly love without the freedom of choice. If someone loves you because they were programmed to love you, that is not love. In order for true love to exist, it must come out of your freedom to choose. If we were programmed to love, then we are robots, and God certainly did not create us to be robots. Hence, He took the risk of giving us the choice to accept Him ... or to reject Him. The presence of choice means that the universe is open!

GOD CREATED A UNIVERSE OF ORDER

Now that we understand this is an open universe, let's understand it is also a universe of order.

If the universe was not ordered, then our choices would have no effect upon the universe. Then Lucifer's decision to compete with the authority of God would have had no impact on the spirit world. But Lucifer's choice affected the spirit world and re-ordered the original order that God established in the spirit realm. What was true for Lucifer is true for humans too. Due to Adam's choice to disobey God, mankind was propelled into a condition of sin. Adam's choice re-ordered the order that was originally established by God. Our choices can either reinforce or interrupt the order set by God.

At this point, you may ask, "If Man has the power to re-order what God placed in order, how then is God sovereign?"

To answer this question, we must first understand that God is Alpha and Omega; He is the Beginning and He is the End (Rev. 22:13). Therefore, whatever that goes on in between these two points, God already knows before it happens. For example, as a result of His foreknowledge of the disobedience of Adam, God prepared a response that maintains His sovereignty over the earth. This is why when John the apostle sees the Lamb, he says, "It was slain from the foundation of the world" (Rev. 13:8). This means the whole experience of Jesus on the cross already happened in the mind of God even before Adam was created, in preparation for the choice that Adam would make!

In a nutshell, although God gives us the power of choice, because of His foreknowledge, He prepares responses to our choices even before we make them, thus effectively ensuring that He does not allow the order he has set over His universe to be disrupted.

RESTORING DIVINE ORDER

In John 1:1-3, it is written, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made."

I like the word "all," which means everything. Absolutely nothing escapes that all.

So since it says, "all tilings were made through Him," then we can safely say that even those tilings in decline are originally made by God, regardless of its present condition. Hence, to say that there is a separation between the church and the state is to say there is a separation between God and His creation. We just cannot separate the two. In reality, they are an integrated system that cannot be parted, even though we can try to think in our minds that it can be.

Then John 1:10 says, "He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him." The word "world" over here is kosmos—the social order.

In John 1, we understand that the world was made by God, but the world did not know Him.

In other words, the mind of God takes on a human body, and God Himself steps into the social order. The One who created the original order stepped into the social order as it was when He entered it, yet it did not recognize Him. And this is because it has become so far removed from the way He originally ordered it.

Let me give you an illustration.

You have a beautiful house that you built. You painted it, designed it, picked out the carpeting, put in the furniture and arranged it exactly the way you love. You had all the money in the world to do it and the house turns out to be beautifully done up with impeccable taste. Then, you invite a few friends to stay at your house while you take a trip out of town. When you come back, you walk through the door of your house and find the living room in the kitchen, the kitchen in the bedroom, the bedroom in the dining room, and the dining room in the basement. The original arrangement which you ordered so perfectly has been changed totally. Your friends have messed it all up and its present state is completely foreign to you. What would be your course of action? You would begin to re-order that house to bring it back to the original order that you established.

Guess what? Jesus came to do just that.

Anything outside of the order of God is chaos. So when Jesus came, He came to bring order to the chaos of the world because He knows how things function best. He knows the order that works best for the role and function of every piece of creation.

Jesus came as the light into a world where darkness was prevalent. He knows what man's life should be like. He knows the right order that your life should be in. But sin, which has influenced your choices, has re-ordered your life. And your life is now far from the original order God Himself established.

When Jesus comes into your heart, light comes into the darkness, order comes into the chaos, and He begins to re-organize your life according to His original order.

The first thing he does is re-organize your thinking. Then He begins to re-order your finances. He begins to re-order your relationships. He begins to re-order your lifestyle and everything else to bring your life back into the original order in the mind of God. The image of God must be restored to your life so that you can function at the highest level of productivity and re-capture the original mandate to be fruitful, to increase, to multiply and to overcome—to restore the divine order that God created you with.

I have a calendar book. That calendar book maintains my freedom because by writing things in that book, I do not have to worry or remember what I have to do a month from now. As such, I am free to think about other things.

Effectiveness in life demands order and order demands a clear plan of action.

Divine order leads to- freedom. True freedom is based on order. Your life becomes free, when you organize that life.

Let's take a look at what Jesus does when He has 5,000 hungry people to feed, and all they have is a little boy's lunch. Notice what Jesus tells His disciples. He says, "Divide them into groups of fifty, and have them seated accordingly." He takes up the massive challenge and brings order to it by addressing the issue.

One woman asked me, "Pastor, does this apply to finances?" I said, "Yes! Get all of your bills together. They are the 5,000 you must now feed. Organize them into groups of creditors and balances, and then let's come up with a plan to 'feed' them." Within three years, she was out of debt!

But understand that trusting God is pro-active. Faith is a verb. There was another woman who did not ask for my help until she was about to be evicted from her house. I asked, "What happened?" She replied, "My finances are overwhelming. There are just too many problems. Everything is out of order." So I said, "What did you do? What was your plan?" She said, "I trusted God." I said, "What did you do while you were trusting God?" She said, "I just trusted God. So when the bills came in, I threw them into the garbage. I was trusting God!" I said, "You deserve to be bit!"