Free Will

As I sat with a client who was beginning to see the fruit of his choice to trust his own way, which was not bringing peace to his family.  For some reason in the midst of this the Lord began to show me the amazing reality of free will, many of us wish we didn't have a choice because we seem to mess it up.  Yet without the amazing gift of free will, we would not be able to choose love.  God so valued our free will that He put two trees in the Garden of Eden, boy did we "in Adam" make a mess of this choice.  God could have put the Tree of Life as the only important tree in the Garden, yet He so valued us and we are created in His image that we needed to have a free will.  Since I grew up in a home where I learned how to play the victim role, you often feel powerless and helpless.  This is much different than what the Word says, "I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants..." (Deuteronomy 30:19).  God gives us the choice of life and death in the Garden of Eden we chose death (in Adam), Jesus chose earthly death to produce eternal life (for us) in the Garden of Gethsemane and now we again can have the choice of the tree of life, Jesus.  I am continually amazed at how much we want our free will but when someone doesn't do what meets our needs we put pressure on them to be who we want them to be.  It is a rare principal to honor people's free will even to the point you know you can get hurt, I am sad to say that much of our desire to have people change is so we won't be hurt.  It is a marvelous and overwhelming reality that I have a free will, that "in Christ" I do have a free will because I am dead to sin so it does have the power to control me any longer.  Free will is so powerful that out of reverence for how God set us free, we begin to have the desire to rely on and trust Him with our new free will because we know the damage of trusting the flesh to run life.  I pray that today you would see that you truly have been set free to make so many different choices but through seeing God's goodness have a desire to entrust your will into the Spirit's capable hands.

Free "in Christ",
Bret