Psalm 139:16 –
You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.
This is an interesting verse when you look at it closely. Think about the tense of all the comments, it’s all past tense meaning God knows the future. I believe there is a bunch of truth to this but at the same time there is questions on my idea of the future. Where I believe God did see us before we were born and He had a good idea we would exist before conception, I don’t think He controls it to that detail. If He did then free will would be really nonexistent.
In my little brain I cannot imagine a world that is “predestined” to be the way it is or will be at any given moment. I am not saying God could not be running this odd puppet show. I think we surprise Him often with the fact we have free will. Maybe God nudges us through this random life to the path which is best for us? Although overall it’s our choices that determine the outcome.
Now one could say God can see the future and not necessarily control it. That could be the case, but again I think God tries to influence our direction more than knowing the outcome. I think the world is more random by design and unfortunately that sometimes pushes people away from belief in God. Think about the question “if God loves us then why did that Tsunami just wipe out millions? I don’t think God planned that event, no it just happened and the souls lost we in the wrong place at the wrong time. I think the key is I tries to orchestrate the future into where He wants it to go, but there is still a level of randomness that is partially in our control, partially in His and partially by design.