Thursday, May 9, 2013

What's Up with Free Will?


I never really thought too hard about the concept of free will. I could repeat back to you the standard reasons most Christians would say if asked "why did God choose to give us free will?" It would probably sound something like, "well, because He wanted us to choose to love Him, because that's true love." or the ever famous "God didn't create us to be robots." "God wants a relationship, and what kind of relationship is forced?"

These are the answers that I knew and could recite, but then I got pregnant.

Suddenly those answers were not good enough, because suddenly I was growing a child who I would have to raise and I really, really needed to assure myself that she would be a lover of God. Can I get an "amen"??

What the heck? How do you do that? How do you make sure that your child will want to be in relationship with Jesus? If someone has the answer PLEASE let me know.

This is what happened when I asked God. I sat down and I asked Him plainly "How do I make sure that this child you've given us will always love you?"

This is what I believe that He said.

 "Seek me. Love your daughter. Teach her what is best, then let her go." (gulp) <---- that was me, not God. " There's no way to assure that she will love Me- that's the consequence I faced when giving you free will."

Double gulp.

The concept of free will had never hit me so hard.

God made some BIG sacrifices in order to *maybe* have the relationship that He wanted to have with us. If I were God and could make sure that my children could know me and always have whats best whether they liked it or not, heck yes I would make sure of that! What's up G???!

Recently this has come up again. My husband and I have been talking a lot of about this sacrifice. A couple of months ago, well into my second pregnancy, hubster really struggled with the idea of why God would create us in the first place and then on top of that, why God would give us free will. We discussed back and forth about the idea of companionship, about the idea of God wanting friends and also created us to be people who would love to serve Him and worship Him.

The hub was really questioning why such a good God would bring people into the world when He knew that they would have free will, He knew that they may not choose Him, and He knew that because of the brokenness of the earth, bad things were bound to happen... even to good people, even to lovers of God.

I kept telling him that God knows what our lives will be like once the Kingdom and the earth fully collide. We have to trust that the goodness that we will experience will far outweigh the horror that we see on the earth. We have to trust that any person, no matter what they have gone through, will say "I would do it all over again to bask in the glory of God."

That answer didn't seem like enough. God still seemed so selfish. Then I thought for a moment.
I asked him, "We know how f'd up this world can get. We know that horrible things happen here, yet we are choosing to bring another life into this world. Explain that one to me, and then maybe you will catch a glimpse of the Father's heart."

And it all comes down to LOVE. A crazy love that I can't wait to experience in it's fullest.

Why did you choose to bring children into this world? Please share! I want to know more about the Father!!!

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