Free will

I’ve found myself in several deep conversations lately as a result of an ongoing discussion with a friend. My husband and I speak often of deep subjects but this conversation with my friend has spawned not only many discussions with my husband but it has also been the cause of a discussion with my sister in law and the cause of much research and Bible reading.

During the course of this conversation with my friend the topic of free will came up. I don’t know who was more surprised…my friend when I said I don’t believe in free will, or me that she was surprised I don’t believe in free will. My surprise came because this friend is second only to my husband in how much she knows about me.

I’ve talked to this friend about so much, let her be privilege to so much of who I am and what I think and feel. And so it was something of a surprise to realize that she didn’t know I don’t believe in free will.

Instead I believe in a God that’s sovereign, a God that controls everything.

I watched a video not long ago by a man that was refuting free will. In it he said something like the Lord is in control of everything that comes to pass. But what stuck with me so strongly, so profoundly, was what he said next…and what comes to pass? The wind blows, we blink, dogs run. That was so meaningful for me.

We blink.

And the Lord controls it.

Yet…this friend of mine, this friend that knows me so well, had no idea that I held that belief. And that surprised me. I’ve been careful what I say to family, careful what I say to most others, but this friend…she’s been privy to my innermost thoughts and beliefs. But more than that she’s one of the few people that actually knows I am the writer of my blog. And there in the posts are all my beliefs.

But apparently…somehow…not my belief on free will.

Years ago I told my mother that I wished I was like a pawn on a chessboard, that when I made a wrong move the Lord would reach down and move me back to the place I was supposed to be. My mother told me to be careful what I said because I wouldn’t really want life to be that way. My response then was the same as it would be today: Oh, yes I do!

Little did I know then that life is very much that way. We are completely within the Lord’s control.

And that is exactly where I want to be.

But somehow I have failed to convey that to the person that, after my husband, knows the most about my innermost thoughts and feelings. That has left me questioning how, exactly, this friend didn’t know that. Did I fail to tell her what I truly believe? If so that’s no longer the case. Did I somehow fail to convey those beliefs in the things I’ve said? Or did she not pick up on what I was meaning since I didn’t spell it out in so many words?

I don’t know how it happened but either way…she knows now.

And so much of what I believe can be summarized as the man in that video said…

We blink.

So simple, so profound. We blink. And the Lord controls all that comes to pass. We blink. Our eyes close for a second and open again. Our eyelashes flutter. Something so insignificant that we don’t pay it any attention. We blink.

I read somewhere that the urge to blink is triggered by the feel of tiny dust particles on our eyelashes. So we blink our eyes to dispel the dust before it gets into our eyes.

As we go about the course of our day, of our life, we blink…how many times? Hundreds? It’s something that holds no meaning, seems to serve no purpose. And yet it does. We blink. Blinking is apparently the result of our bodies clearing away a foreign object before it can invade one of the most sensitive parts of our bodies. It is our bodies way of keeping the eyes clean and moisturized.

There is a purpose to it.

We blink.

Not because it’s insignificant but because it clears away foreign objects so small we can’t even feel them…but the tiny hairs on our eyelids can…and protects our bodies from who knows what. And we see blinking as just something we do.

But it has a greater meaning. It’s part of a bigger plan. It has a purpose, a point. It doesn’t just happen. It’s a response, a reason.

We blink.

We don’t freely choose to blink. Sure, we can make our eyes blink. Sometimes we do so to entertain a child, or even ourselves, but most of the time we blink without thought.

Much like breathing. Have you ever noticed how hard it gets to breathe when you try and make yourself do it? Breathing is so effortless that it happens while we sleep, while we walk and talk, while we’re occupied with the hundreds and thousands of other things we do but that effortless action ceases to be effortless the minute we start trying to control it. I’m not talking about holding your breath. I’m talking about trying to consciously make yourself breathe.

If you’ve never tried it I highly recommend you do so.

All of a sudden what is a natural function goes from happening without any thought or action on your part and becomes something that takes your total attention. You must actively think about making yourself breathe. Your attention becomes focused on that single effort. You can’t make yourself breathe and do something else. The minute your mind goes to doing something else the effort it took to make yourself take a breath is gone…it goes back to being a natural function that requires no effort on your part.

You must battle your own body to make yourself breathe.

Or…you can simply relax, focus on other things, and let your body do what it was designed to do. When you do so the battle against your body ceases.

Why?

The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, ²⁵ nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. Acts 17:24-25

The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life. Job 33:4

Thus says God, the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it: Isaiah 42:5

I can’t help but see the profound sovereignty of my Lord in the above verses. What do they say about our Lord?

The God who made the world and everything in it… gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. What does that say? What does it mean? He gives not only life, not just breath but everything. Everything.

We have nothing without him.

What then of ‘free will’? We have nothing without the Lord…do we then have the freedom of choosing everything we do? Man would have us think we do. But if we do…then we become responsible for that everything. Scripture says it doesn’t work that way. Scripture says we have everything because God has given it to us.

We’re not only told that the Lord gives us breath but that it’s His breath that gives us life. In Genesis 2:7 we’re told…

Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

We didn’t choose life, we don’t just have what we have because…well, because we do…breath and everything is given by the Lord.

I’ve been told that my marriage is a result of a choice I made. This doesn’t take into consideration that Scripture tells us…what God has joined together. It only takes into consideration that I chose to marry my husband. It was a choice I made, something I entered into…apparently out of my own ‘free will’...even though Scripture tells us that in marriage it is God that joins the couple together.

I’ve been told that having babies was a choice I made. That I deliberately chose to have them and therefore they weren’t of the Lord’s will.

How can that be?

… he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

Everything. My husband is something that was given to me. My children were given to me. Scripture tells us that children are a blessing from the Lord. Take note of the last part…from the Lord. Anything from the Lord isn’t the result of our choosing. It isn’t a result of our will.

If God is sovereign how can our will make him give us something? How can we acquire a husband…which Scripture says is what God has joined together…out of our choice? If the breath of life is given to man from the Lord how could any choice I made bring my children into existence?

None of that…none of anything…comes about out of our ‘free will’ but out of the will of the Lord and the things He chooses to give us. He…gives…everything. And what is everything?

We blink.

Something so small, so ordinary, so every day, that we pay no attention to it. And yet it was designed to serve a greater purpose. It is an important part of the functioning of our body…so much so that it happens in response to the least stimuli.

We blink.

Think again of what happens when we make ourselves breathe. How hard does breathing become. Scripture explains that too.

If he should set his heart to it and gather to himself his spirit and his breath, all flesh would perish together, and man would return to dust.  Job 34:14-15

How long could we survive if we had to make ourselves breathe? How long would that breath of life stay in us if we had to control our breathing? What would happen to our breathing…something it takes all of our focus to make happen…when we eat? When we sleep? Sleeping wouldn’t even be a possibility. We would suffocate ourselves the minute we fell asleep. And there would go life. In fact life would never happen because there is no newborn baby that can ever make themselves breathe. They don’t have the ability to do so. It must be involuntary until they are old enough…have grown and developed enough…to not only control their thoughts but to control their bodies. They would die the minute they were born because they wouldn’t have the ability to breathe.

But that doesn’t happen. Why? Because the Lord breathes life into us, He gives us breath as well as life. And so we live. Not because we will it but because He does.

What person ever asked to be born before they were even conceived?

It’s not our will to have life but His. How then can we assume that the God that made the earth, the God that gave us life out of His will then sits around waiting for us to use our ‘free will’ before he can work in our lives?

The answer to these questions…and so many more…lie within the pages of the Bible. Acts 17:26 goes on to tell us…

And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place,

Look closely at that last part… having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place. In that verse we’re told that the Lord has determined…decided…chosen…the time period in which we will live and the location that we will live in. If that isn’t enough to tell us that we are but a product of the Lord’s will…

 “‘In him we live and move and have our being’ Acts 17:28

In him we live. In Him we move. In Him we have our being. In Him. Not out of our ‘free will’, not out of our choices but in Him. In Him we have…everything.

We blink.

²⁹ Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.

To say that man has the ‘free will’ to choose and to do disregards so much of Scripture. It takes away the Lord’s sovereignty and places control in the hands and minds of man. It makes God an image in the mind of man…an image that sits around ‘allowing’ us to mess up the life He gave us. It takes the sovereign God of the Bible and turns Him into some paltry being that must wait on man to do something before He can act. Paul so clearly covers that with only a few words that it is so profound in its simplicity.

But who are you, O man…Romans 9:20

Who are you, O man? He is clearly calling the will of man into question. Who do you think you are you mere mortal? You’re questioning a holy God and you think you have the right. Who are you…O man?

Who are you, O man… Who are you, who am I, in reference to an all holy God? Look at a single grain of dirt. Can you make it? Can you make something so simple, so basic, as dirt? I can’t. God did. He made that and more. It’s all there before us. In his creation. He made the dirt and he placed it where He wanted it to be. And He made us and put us where he wants us to be. And yet people want to say that man has the free will to decide if they will believe in God.

 

We blink. Because He made us to do so. We breathe because He gave us life. The above paragraph was taken from the response I wrote to my friend. We can’t make dirt and we can’t make ourselves breathe long enough to sustain our lives for more than a short time. Can you make your heart beat? Can you make your brain function?

 

But people dare to believe that their will controls anything in life. We can’t even control our own ability to live.

 

Who are you, O man…

 

Who are you to question God? Who are you to answer back to God? Who are you…O man…he’s saying you’re nothing but man. God is sovereign, he’s holy, he’s so far beyond man that man is only…o man… and we have no place to question Him.

 

If God is sovereign man has no free will. If man has free will God is not sovereign. It’s either or. It can’t be both. That’s like saying the sky is the ground. Either its sky or its ground. It can’t be both. It’s one or the other. To say that God is sovereign but man has ‘free will’ is to say man and God are on equal levels. God is sovereign…he can do anything, can control anything, but man is powerful in the exercising of his own desires. That puts man on the same level as God. We have the total ability to control what we will believe. We have the total ability to choose…’free will’…to believe in Christ or not. And it disregards John 6:44…

 

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him…

 

This says it’s not man that chooses Christ. It’s God that draws man to Christ. It’s not man’s ‘free will’ to choose Christ but God’s will to call him to him.

 

Who are you, O man?

 

Who am I?

 

We can see the very nature of God in all of Scripture. We can see so much of Who the Lord is and who we are not.

 

Who am I that an all sovereign God would take the time to care anything about me? Who am I that a holy God would notice that I even exist? Who am I that he would pay any attention to me? Who am I that a perfect God would love me despite my sins?

 

We’re talking about a God that spoke the world into existence. A God that formed man from dust. A God that wiped out nations. A God that destroyed everything in the world.

 

Who am I?

 

We’re told… What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. (James 4:14). And still there are so many that speak of ‘free will’.

 

It hurts my heart to even think of ‘free will’. I ache when I read…who are you, O man. My soul cries out as I say…who am I.

Who am I?

I’m nothing. Just a mere person. My life is but a moment in time for a purpose not of my doing but of my Lord’s. I’m here to take my place in his plan. So much of my life feels as if it’s about me but in reality it’s but a marker in the entire plan of a sovereign God that is working out His will for all of mankind.

Who am I in that?

We blink…

And I’m told that ‘free will’ is the very core of being a Christian. My friend, in her questioning, told me to look to the scriptures. What can I do but cry out…I have. I have looked at the Scriptures. I have studied them. And I’m left asking…who am I, O man?

I see the verses that speak of choosing and I admit I don’t fully understand how all that fits in with the so many verses that show, and prove, that the Lord is working His will in mans life. But when I look to Scripture all I see is the Lord’s will. I can’t find man’s ‘free will’ anywhere.

My friend pointed me to Revelation and the verse that says “'Whosoever will, take freely of…”

I looked that verse up. It’s Revelation 22: 17 and it says…

And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.

Look at it. Think about it. Remove the idea of ‘free will’ from your mind and look again. It does say… whosoever will…but…think of that in light of Scripture. Use Scripture to interpret it. How many places in Scripture do we see that man’s hearts are hardened? We can go in depth and look at the why, and the Who, does the hardening of those hearts. Yes, Scripture says whosoever will but it isn’t the ‘free will’ of man. It isn’t God sitting by idly twiddling His thumbs while He waits for man to…Please, please, please…come to Him.

It’s whosoever will according to Scripture…according to the will of God.

And so…look to the Scriptures. I have. And I see God. All God…no man. It’s His creation to do with as He pleases and do with it He does.

We blink.

Who am I…