Is my life predestined or is my life the result of my freely chosen decisions?

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is my life the result of my freely chosen decisions?

Monday, July 21, 2014

 "Those whom God had already chosen he also predestined to become like his Son”
Romans 8:29 (TEV)  

“For God so loved  (favorites?) the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him  should not perish but have eternal life.  For God did not send his
Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be
saved through him."
 John 3:16-17 (ESV)

 

Yesterday I addressed your questions regarding miracles and I also spent a lot of time answering questions about how to read the Bible.  Do we read it literalistically, literally, literarily, metaphorically, or what.   You can find the message document and also an audio of the sermon at www.clcfamily.net .    

I also addressed the question above. Some interpreters think that Romans 8-11 makes the argument that  our lives are predestined, in particular that some of us are “picked” by God for eternal life and some of us are picked by God for eternal damnation.   Presenting a pretty clear case for that God died for all, not just the elect, are Jesus’s words in John 3:16-17.   How can both predestination and free will both be true?  The former perspective is often called Calvinism (although there is debate whether Calvin actually believed this) and the latter is sometimes referred to by the name of one of Calvin’s Students, Arminianism (James Arminius)  

Since I’m not too smart, I have decided that we are both predestined and have free will.   Both are true all at the same time.   In fact I think we’ll discover one day that they’re both the same thing, just like a light wave is both a string of disconnected particles and also a seamless wave.  Both “can’t be true”, but they are.   

When I look back at my life, I find that God directed and carried out the whole thing in spite of my mess ups.   He planned it and did it.  When I meet God at death, were he to ask me how I got there, that’s the easiest question in the world to answer.  I’ll just point to Jesus and say “it’s all him”.  When I look to my future I see nothing fated at all, I simply see a future where I am commanded to trust and obey.   When I look at others I see people predestined by God for eternal life, many of whom, however, are living lives that opt out of that for which they’ve been chosen, and therefore need me to point them to Jesus.  

“Lord you are so much BIGGER than our small minds make you out to be.   Forgive us for dividing and bickering over points of doctrine when your heart as revealed in Jesus still breaks for the lost.  Help us, Lord, to see others as “picked by You” but for whatever reason don’t know it yet.   May you use each of us to have a the experience of pointing another to You, through Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.  Amen”

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