What exactly is a free will decision?

That's just you being God again Wes.

john.

 

That's just you being God again Wes.

john. </font>[/QUOTE]Jealous?

 

No but He is.

john.

 

He has nothing to fear from me. It is I who fears Him.

I have not usurped the throne of God! so stop falsely accusing me of doing so.

 

No I know you have not.

1 John 4:18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

john.

 

Stand firm in the fear and admonition of the Lord!

I do!

I do not fear God as in fright, I fear God as in AWE of His very presence. I am prostrate before him, trembling not from fright but from being in his presence. Who am I that he should love me and be merciful to me?

 

If a believer looks forward with trepidation to the judgment seat of Christ, it is because God's love has not yet reached completeness in Him. The matured experience of God's love is incompatible with fear and expels fear from the heart. Such fear prohibits a completed love - one who fears is not made perfect in love.

A believer who loves other believers also loves God, and in facing his Judge he is simply facing One whom he loves. There is no fear in such an experience; yet he recognizes that his love for God originated in God's love for him.

God loved the elect before we loved him making it possible for us to love Him and our brothers. Those who do not receive God's love remain hateful of God.

 

Perhaps I was not clear about the kind of FEAR that I have regarding God. It is similar to the fear that a commoner has in the presence of Royalty. Not life and death fear, but the kind of fear a common one has in the presence of absolute unique greatness, Power, Purity and Holiness.

 

Hello Wes.

A commoner Wes? A Child of Christ is not a commoner Wes boy we are a chosen nation a Royal Priesthood.

JOB 31:35 ("Oh, that I had someone to hear me! I sign now my defense--let the Almighty answer me; let my accuser put his indictment in writing. 36 Surely I would wear it on my shoulder, I would put it on like a crown. 37 I would give him an account of my every step; like a prince I would approach him.)--

Boldly I enter His court and proudly I wear my sin and my sin is my crown.

1 John 4:18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. Be told.


john.

 

In looking back to the OP. This sounds like you are asking if there is only one path within life that our walk with Christ ...or as some call it..the center of Gods will....is to be. In other words..God has one person in mind for me to marry....knows what car i need to buy...has the best tie for me to wear..

..or is there a larger realm of Gods will ...where if we stay with in this realm we are in Gods will....and we take bible truths and God shows us the right person to marry..as we meet many people..we see in some those that want to follow God...and so we pick them in truth of gods Word
...and God has a truth of using your money wisely..and we shop for a good deal when shopping for a car...and many cars would fall withint this realm...so we pick within this realm the one that is best for us....and so on.

I think you will see a clue to what God things about this in the Book of Ecclesiastes. In this book the preacher shows us life under the sun..or here on earth. there is a time and place for everything.

a time to be born..a time to die.
a time to cry...a time to be sad..

If i have a sore tooth before i was saved..the next day after i'm saved my tooth will still be sore. If cell phones cause cancer in the unsaved...they cause cancer in those they believe too.

We must carry with us in this walk in the world all the things that come with life. What we get from God at salvation not a worry free world were we walk above the clouds.
What salvation brings us...is peace to get though the rough times. We also get less heart ache in life. Sin brings heartache with it. The unsaved that follows sin will unjoy pleasurers for a while and then the heart ache comes. We too have the heart ache of loss....but we can lower our feeling of lose if we do as Ecclesiastes says. and this is it..all blessings come from God...enjoy them while you have them..tomorrow you may not have them..because they are Gods.

Ecclesiastes tries to teach us to look at nothing as ours. Look at all things as blessings from God..enjoy them while you have them...and thank God for them. If God takes them..that's ok..they were not ours anyway....but was not God good to let us use enjoy them for a while?

This is much harder to live then preach. A car that God gave us ...after a while we start thinking of this as OUR car. So when someone crashes it...it is a lost to US. The car was Gods...he let use use it for a while...bless His holy name. This can be said of Kids too...and this is really hard to apply for me and MY kids.

even our own life. ...we should do this.

God gave us life...this is a blessing enjoy life...Ecclesiastes..."eat drink and be marry"....while you have life. this is not saying to live wild...its saying enjoy what God has gave you. If cancer comes into your life..well...The Lord gives...the Lord takes..(job)...blessed be the name of the Lord.

right now i'm about to enjoy a real blessing from God...pizza


I'm Christ...James

 

A commoner Wes? A Child of Christ is not a commoner Wes boy we are a chosen nation a Royal Priesthood.

JOB 31:35 ("Oh, that I had someone to hear me! I sign now my defense--let the Almighty answer me; let my accuser put his indictment in writing. 36 Surely I would wear it on my shoulder, I would put it on like a crown. 37 I would give him an account of my every step; like a prince I would approach him.)--

Boldly I enter His court and proudly I wear my sin and my sin is my crown.

1 John 4:18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. Be told.


john. </font>[/QUOTE]Nevertheless, if you do not know the fear of which I speak, I would be hard pressed to believe that you know God.

Later on while we are enjoying eternal life, we have nothing to fear. But for now we should have a healthy fear of the Lord.

 

Let's not get carried away. Just because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom doesn't mean we have to stop getting further into wisdom. It's ok to completely trust God to the point of no fear even in this world!

 

Somehow I just know that I am not a mere collection of molecules, a pattern of atomic particles however dynamically complex. I have no comprehension how that is possible but I link it to the biblical revelation that God created me with His image and the fact that I am considered by God to be a living soul.

In addition, I link it to the phenomenon of quantum uncertainty. It is known that electrons can take alternate paths, in certain cases, in a manner that fundamentally remains a matter of probability rather than certainty.

It is convenient to picture my life as a path down which I travel, perhaps with a lot of forks that make for "choices". But there is a flaw in that picture. The flaw is, it uses time twice. Once in the dimension for the road extending past to present, and then again for traveling down that road, making the choices. Such a picture is therefore incorrect.

The static picture alone, however, is seemingly in conflict with my earlier assertion of being foundationally aware that I am more than a static pattern. For after all, a fork in the road is just as static as a line down the road . . . . .

But there is another possibility. What if the forks down the road are not finite? What if they are of infinite complexity?

Would the infinite complexity make for a change in the nature of the path to the extent of making the possiblity of my life becoming more than a static line, however jagged, or a line with one or two forks? I speculate that this is the case.


In any case, the mere fact that we exist, conscious beings contemplating God and directly experiencing the sensation of being free and independent ( however illusary the sensation ultimately turns out to be) leads me to feel it is not to bad a thought.

 

Hello David.

The proper use of the words love and hate is that love means to do good to the loved one and to hate means to do harm to the object of hate.
The Romans passage is concerning Esau and Jacob as individuals. That Jacob and Esau are the tribes as well is not the point being made in Romans. The root of Esau's problem was how God treated Esau.

It lies in the idea that God is Sovereign and that is the reason they were rejected. Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use? Romans 9:21.

So hate does not mean hate? If that is confessing ignorance to you it sounds like it is dismissing scripture to me. To go from a clear understanding of hate to one of believing the opposite of the scriptures is not clever.

The assault on the word hate does not work. Hate has the meaning of not love and there is no finessing that away.

john.

 

wow guys i am glad i found this place....learning a lot

thankyou and God Bless

 

Accuracy i gave two views above, but only pointed to one as the answer. The one i pointed to, deals with the mans will..as in the OP. But the truth is..i think both apply over all. One is from our point of view of man..as i have already shared...the other is from Gods point of view.

As we work within this arena of Gods will, looking for what God has for us....God is outside bringing to us the right choice. In other words...as we pray for the right person to marry...we can only apply Bible truths to our search and ask God to hear our request. What we do not see till later maybe...is God bringing our wife/hubby into our life.

This is when you hear the stories of..well...i just happen to go to the store...and this lady needed help with her bags...and well...6 months later..we got married. or...after years of praying...waiting on God...john was transferred to our town..looking for a good church he stop at ours. this is when we 1st met....and we fell in love..got married...and now have 8 kids.

But this comes from searching in Gods will. If we search outside of Gods will...like we go looking in a bar for the right one...then we may never meet the lady with the bags at the store that God has for us.


This is Gods will at work. Who is in control? Well God is in control. But we can not just sit down and wait for a voice from heaven. We need to work with what God gave us to work with. The Bible is our tool to use daily in every area of life. We have the truths of His Word and we can enter His throne as we pray. We must do our part of apply the truth in this arena of Gods will, and show we rely on Him to guide us as we pray.


I guess i'm saying..God has a bag lady for all of us.


In Christ...James

 

I believe that Man has the desire to choose WHATEVER HE WILL..... BUT...... his choices will always be determined by his sin nature... and whatever he chooses will in some way be self serving...

I had to choose what to have for desert after supper last night. I opened the refigerator door and saw frozen pizza, frozen hamburger meat, frozen pork chops, and ice cream. How much of a choice was that...

Can I choose to make sauerkraut taste good? I made a free will choice that I would no longer be offended by the taste, that I would relish the savor of this fine morsel... Yet when I place it even near my mouth, and my nose even begins to experience its aroma... my stomach turns.

I think that is the way it is with the Word of God. We can say we believe it, we can pretend we believe it, but when it comes right down to it we can't swallow it...... That is of course some influnce outside of ourselves changes our taste.

 

Hello yeshua4me2 nice to meet you.

john.