What does God know, what's God like & what can he do?

These are, of course, pretty fundamental questions.
For many years, I didn't believe that God had one fixed plan for the world and my life. Rather, he had a final goal in mind, and could use events and decisions so that, eventually, by one route or another, he would get me and all creation to that goal. During that journey, I thought, I could (and certainly would) make many bad and wrong decisions, but everything would be alright in the end.
For many years, I didn't like the idea of predestination, preferring to imagine that it was entirely my choice whether or not I became a Christian.
And I had a rather naive & sentimental view of God's love - that he simply wanted me to be happy and comfortable.

These kinds of views, which are held by many (most?) Christians have, in recent years, been pulled together into a theological framework called, 'Open Theism', and on Saturday three of us went to hear Mike Ovey, Principal of Oak Hill Theological College) explain why this thinking is unbiblical and nonsensical. (Many thanks to Mike from whose lectures much of my ramblings spring, though don't blame him for any confusion on my part!).

As I matured as a Christian and began to experience more of the world as it really is, I began to see that these views simply don't make sense either of the Bible or of life.
You see, if God doesn't plan every detail of everything, then there are an infinite number of ways in which his plans can be thwarted by the plans of millions of people (or even the weather, since if God has no foreknowledge, then he doesn't know how the weather will alter events and decisions!). If God is unable even to foreknow, let alone determine, what I do tonight, how will he ever so order world events and arrive at the fulfilment of his plans?
More importantly, what are we to make Isaiah 46, where God says,

I am God, and there is none like me,
declaring the end from the beginning
and from ancient times things not yet done,
saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,
and I will accomplish all my purpose,’
calling a bird of prey from the east,
the man of my counsel from a far country.
I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass;
I have purposed, and I will do it.  (Isa 46:10-11 ESV)

Of course the objection to God's determining of the future is that it takes away our free will. But that's not so. As Genesis 50:20 points out:

'As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.' 

God allows people to make free decisions and it is their free decisions which fulfil his purposes. This is called 'compatibilism', and it's evident in Acts 2:23,

'...this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.'

But we must remember that we are never entirely free to choose: we cannot choose to do what is contrary to our desires or our nature (i.e. we only do what we want to do, we can't do what we can't want to do. So the non-Christian cannot, of his own volition, become a Christian. He can't want to want to become a Christian because he is enslaved by sin (John 8:34; Romans 6:17) - indeed, he is dead in his sin and therefore utterly unable to do anything about his plight (Eph 2:1)).
The positive side of this is put by Paul in Ephesians 2:8,

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.

Even our faith is the gift of God, without him, we cannot believe in him.

Of course it's natural to rebel against this idea - I am, after all, a sinner, and one of the fundamentals of sin is that I don't want God to be God. I want to be God - I want to have control.

And what of God's love? John says 'God is love' (1 John 4:8). But does God's love control all his other characteristics; his justice, holiness, righteousness etc.? Surely not. While God is perfectly and completely loving he is also perfectly and completely holy, and righteous, and just, and...
So it's not that God's love controls his other characteristics, but that each is constantly held in completeness and perfection. He is lovingly just and justly loving.

As a youngster, I (along with many others then and now) had a simplistic and sentimental view of God's love - that he just wanted me to be happy. If that meant I did things that dishonoured him, well... his love would overrule his anger at my disobedience, because love didn't demand obedience, it only sought my freely given love.

But then I began to understand the relationship of perfect love between the Father and the Son, and saw that God sends and commands the Son whom he loves perfectly and completely to do something which will cause him unimaginable suffering (see the account of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, and John 5). At the same time, the Son's perfect and complete love for his Father results in willing obedience. So love and commanding; love and obedience are not opposed to each other. God commands our love - he doesn't just desire it (what's 'the first and most improtant commandment'?). And he can command love because he is righteous, always doing what is right, and it's morally right that we should love God - he is more worthy of our love than anything or anyone else. In love, God commands love.

So we must be very careful not to begin to create in our minds the God that we would like. If, in a human relationship, we imagine our spouse to be someone other than they are, it is not only insulting to them but will result in disappointment and breakdown of the relationship. How much more is this true of God? If we have a sentimental view of God's love, then how will we cope when he asks us to suffer (cf Job)? If we don't think God is in control of the future, what hope do we have? Worse than all of this, if we imagine God to be something other than he really is, we've created a mental golden calf and committed idolatry.

If the Bible says things about God that we don't like, the answer is not to try to re-create God, but prayerfully to ask God to recreate our thinking and believing.