Because you have made the LORD your dwelling place — the Most High, who is my refuge — no harm will come to you, no plague come near your tent. (Psalm 91:9-10)
To receive God’s protection, make the Lord your dwelling place. It is a choice to confess that God is your refuge and security. The Bible says that those who choose to make God their refuge will experience his protection, but even such a simple exhortation has been complicated by controversies over divine sovereignty and lordship.
There are people who favor certain doctrines in Scripture and forcibly make them contradict other doctrines in Scripture, and even deny that these other doctrines are taught by Scripture at all. They imagine themselves theologically astute and orthodox, but they lack the ability to grasp biblical doctrines in a coherent fashion. The result is not that they at least remain faithful to several doctrines, since they misconstrue even those doctrines that they adore, but they outright reject the biblical doctrines that they hate, so that they become enemies of the Christian faith.
So, there are those who love their formulation of the sovereignty of God and predestination, and enforce the false implication that it is wrong to speak of “making Jesus the Lord of your life.” Among other invalid reasons, they are opposed to this language because to them it seems to imply that Christ’s lordship depends on human decision. According to them, any suggestion that we could “make” Jesus Lord denies God’s sovereignty. They insist that Christ is Lord irrespective of human acknowledgment, that his lordship is an immutable fact our actions cannot alter. For them, the notion of making Jesus Lord appears to be an affront to God’s sovereign authority.
This is a case of people having transformed biblical doctrines into their human traditions, and becoming so obsessed with these traditions that the biblical doctrines are no longer interpreted on their own terms and contexts, but instead are made to contradict other biblical doctrines. The result is that these people pretend to be experts and pretend to be precise, but end up becoming the worst theologians in the room.
The language of someone “making” Jesus the Lord of his life is merely the language of acknowledgment. It expresses personal faith and submission, not the idea that Jesus lacked authority beforehand. It is perfectly acceptable, even excellent, for someone to make Jesus his “personal Lord and Savior.” The Bible records people who were saved with far less precise and far less formal language. We should not tolerate preachers who claim to preach salvation in Jesus while behaving like the Pharisees who murdered him.
The psalm says that those who make the Lord their dwelling place receive supernatural protection, emphasizing that trusting in God directly leads to experiencing it. This is one thing that those who oppose such language cannot do. They lack the faith to do something like this, and so they criticize the people who have faith to make God their protection from all kinds of troubles. This choice to trust in God is at the heart of the promise, and it highlights that making God our refuge is the key to receiving his care. It is a conscious affirmation of the power and faithfulness of God, and this is something that honors him.
Of course God is sovereign, and this means that when someone makes Jesus his personal Lord and Savior, God has already chosen this person and has been working in his heart. But the person still chooses Jesus and makes him Lord. When God causes a person to stand, the person is indeed standing, and you can say that he is standing. When God causes a person to walk, the person is indeed walking, and you can say that this person is walking. When God causes a person to make Jesus Lord, the person indeed does it, and the word “make” means a personal faith and acknowledgment.
To make Jesus the Lord of your life simply means you acknowledge and confess his lordship. It is not a statement about the power of the human will to enthrone Christ, but a recognition of what is already true, that Jesus is indeed Lord, and that we, by his grace, align ourselves under his authority. The Bible says, “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Jesus is Lord over the reprobates as well, and since they do not “make” Jesus their Lord, they will burn in hell.
Why then, do we use the language of “making” him Lord? Because the Bible does it! The real issue is, if you refuse to do it or refuse to let others do it, will you be saved? Religious people might not like this language regardless, and this is why we must keep using it. Do it again and again, especially if they are listening, as a testimony against them. It is honorable and pleasant to enrage them. Throw in all the words that trigger them. Preach to everyone, “Make Jesus Christ the Lord of your life! Make the decision. Confess him as your Lord, and you will be saved.”
The language of making Jesus Lord, choosing Jesus, or asking him to come into our hearts is deeply embedded in the fabric of Christian thought and practice. It is language that Scripture endorses. To deny this language in the name of defending divine sovereignty or theological precision, or for any other reason, is to reject Scripture. God does not see a conflict between his sovereign grace and the human response he demands. The very act of making Jesus Lord, choosing him, and abiding in him is itself a work of God in the human heart. It is a response that God causes people to give him, but religious people want to snatch this away from God. But let us “make” God everything that he wants us to make him.
Psalm 91 speaks to the blessings of making God our refuge. Those who make God their dwelling place are shielded from harm. This is not only talking about spiritual and psychological protection, because the psalm refers to deaths and diseases. It is a promise of tangible and physical protection. To abide in God is to experience his care and to be confident in his defense. As Jesus said, “Abide in me, and I in you.” This is a command to make him our dwelling place.
To make Jesus our Lord and refuge is not something that originates in us, but it is the result of God’s prior work. As Jesus said, “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” Therefore, we choose him because he has chosen us. We make him Lord of our lives because he has made us his own. We abide in him because he abides in us. It is all of grace, but the making and the choosing still happen. You make him Lord because he had made you his child. You choose him as Savior because he has chosen you to be saved. Our actions are the manifestation of God’s sovereign grace at work within us.
This is basic Christianity, and it reflects the kind of language that the Bible uses. To insist that believers should not speak of making Jesus Lord is to allow the eccentricities of a religious conception of a biblical doctrine to eclipse the testimony of Scripture. When people emphasize a doctrine in a way that it makes the language of Scripture appear incorrect, then their conception and application of it must be wrong. It is time they “make” themselves shut up. Never allow the eccentricities of human philosophy, even when they masquerade as doctrinal precision, to lead you away from the truth of Scripture.
The doctrine of divine sovereignty is not an excuse to reject biblical language or to deny the call to respond to God’s grace. The Bible’s exhortation to make God our dwelling place, to choose the Most High as our refuge, far from undermining God’s sovereignty, is an appeal to his sovereign work in our hearts. God, in his sovereignty, has ordained that we make the decision to come to him, that we trust in him, and that we confess Jesus as Lord and to make him our personal Savior. To refuse this language is not a defense of God’s sovereignty, but a denial of how God himself has chosen to work in and through his people. It is to make what started as a biblical doctrine into a personal ideology, and then turn around and use this ideology to attack God himself. This was how the Pharisees ended up killing the Son of God. Now Christians repeat it daily.