When God created the world, he drew up a Game Plan. He created each of us with a purpose, His purpose in mind. Long before we were even a thought to anything earthly we lived in His heart. It is His plan that, once here, we recognize Him for who He is and live our lives like we're grateful for it.
One of the beautiful parts about God, in my opinion, is that although He is worthy of our praise on a second by second basis; He decided to not force us to love Him. God gives you the ultimate choice, life with Him or death in the world.
Free will.
Any person in relationship with God -- notice I said relationship and not religion. Religion is insubstantial without relationship -- knows the riches and Glory of a life with God in Christ, but ... they're not who I'm here for, they already understand why we have it.
A lot of people don't understand free will so they asks questions of religion that only relationship can answer. "Why would God allow people to do bad things, to live bad lives, hurt, kill, steal? If there's a God, why do bad things happen period." The bottom line, most honest answer that exists is; it's not really for us to ask why, God does as He pleases because it's His WILL - but I understand -- that's not really good enough when you have a nagging doubt.
Let's look at this way, who wants to be loved because they've made it so the persons doing the loving has no choice what so ever. There would be no point. Appreciation, recognition, and true desire to love because of who we are is what makes having people love us feel so good. Now, that's just human emotion so surely God, being a far better lover than any human, feels that chosen love on a level we can't even fathom.
Thus, the decision of free will. It's all apart of the plan, His plan for the world.
Before God Created man, He created the heavens and all its host (angels). They were there with Him "In the beginning". Angels understood that they were just tiny pieces of God, through His will they exist. Because of this understanding, they recognize His Holy power and worship Him magnificently. According to His will, the plan, He creates an angel that is gorgeous, the Bible gives him a description in Revelations, but to me, he MUST have been as hot and I imagine Vin Diesel is if he's chocolate brown with locks! He's hot and he knows it and one day, he decides he should be worshipped because God isn't the best thing around. He gets a few angels to agree that he's awesome and takes it to God.
Because I wasn't there for the conversation, this is my interpretation of how the bible says it went.
This angel knows he the bomb, but He's forgotten why he's the bomb. He's got angels admiring his beauty all the time. Because of this admiration, the angel's head gets BIG! He starts feeling himself, hard. So he gets a couple angels who are blinded by his beauty and he corals them into forgetting who God is. He gets enough of them that he feels like He is no longer just a creation of God. He's got enough followers, he should be God's equal, he's just as good at getting a following. So one day he goes to God with his crew of wayward angels and makes a bold statement. "I've decided that I'm just as good as you are, and I bet you I can get more of them to do as I want than you can." God, being the One He is, said o.k. He cast that angel out and the plan for mankind was set into motion. That fallen angel, now cast out, immediately set to work.
According to the plan, God turned the angel loose on creation. Eve ate the apple of knowledge which opened all of our eyes to the disgraced angel's work on the flesh.
Every thing that angel does is to get us to see how beautiful he is, how much better our lives are without God's sovereign love. We all fall for that angel at some point, he's good at what he does. God doesn't stop us, instead he left us a map - The Bible.
We're supposed to pick up that map, read it, seek Him for the understanding of it, love it as we love Him, and finally - live with and by it. Following that map leads us away from the choice of death into live with Him. The Word of God is our solitude and salvation. It's the only counter action that God has taken in response to free will.
We can choose life within Him, His Word and all the blessings and tests that come with that; or we can choose death in the world of that fallen angel.
Free will is a blessing once you learn the Gifts of God, but - it is also the ultimate test of faith.
It all comes down to this ... He gave you life, with a plan, and he intends for you to choose Him.
Will you?
