There are so many blessings that the Lord gives those who have trusted in His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the first and foremost of these is of course Christ Himself, He is our greatest prize. We have the promise of pleasures forever more, (Psalm 16:11), the eternal city of New Jerusalem, our forever home, (Rev. 21:2) the Holy Spirit of God resides within us as we move upon this earth, waiting for the Lord to call us home, doing His will as we wait.
There is one blessing that we have that is not only a gift, but at times can be a difficult obligation, not an implication of anxiety, so to speak, but one that the longer that we are servants of Christ can become at times a trial of error. The free will that God has blessed every human being with is something that the lost, as much as impediments are placed on them, naturally expect, free will in their own decision making knows no hindrance, at least to the mind. This same free will is held in check by not only the laws of man placed upon them, but the moral constructs that they have set upon themselves. Since these moral laws vary in geographical locations, the substance of them can always, and have always, been questioned. The main subjective nature in themselves is the destination the soul will take when it departs from the body, and these are as varied as there are people.
For the believer, the matter of free will is one based in the Scriptures, what the Word of God says is correct is right, not what we think should be right, the problem seems to be in the interpretation of the Scriptures. I do not know how many different types of Bibles there are today, nor am I aware of the number of different religious organizations, but I do know that not all of them are correct, and very few of them seem to be saying aloud “Thus saith the Lord.” The gift of free will allows us the ability to choose for ourselves who God is, and how we are to serve Him, whether we are right or wrong is of course in the eyes of the beholder, and a matter of free will.
If you want to try to climb Mount Everest in your pajamas, you have the ability to try, you will die, but that right is still yours, If you have the desire to fly, jump off of a building, you have the free will to attempt to do anything of your choosing, but that does not mean that you will succeed. So it is with those who have determined that how they are interpreting the Scriptures is the correct way, the free will that God has blessed them with allows them to serve in error. There are those who say that there are other ways into the kingdom of God, that Christ alone was not enough, some good deed that we must perform is also required of us, even those who say that an indeterminate period of time must be served in a sort of “waiting place” before they can be prayed out, the list is virtually endless. And we have not even begun to discuss those who have chosen to serve what the Scriptures calls strange gods, those made by the hand of man.
Our free will allows us the possibility to distort the truth, and not just in the area of personal interest, but by those who have begun their own religious organization for their own personal desires. Many of these were begun long ago and are now known around the planet as foundational churches, though few of them rely on the Word of God for that foundation. Traditions have overrun them, the wants of those in charge, the decisions that they have made based on their own free will, have morphed these once Christ centered churches into what has become a travesty. It is of our own free will that we determine who God is and how He should be served, the Scriptures are of no value to these places. Inclusion of all is now the key word, no one must be turned away no matter their belief structure, God is love and happiness and that is the end goal.
I know this is not going to be accepted well by some, but it is the truth nonetheless, even you have the ability to say no to the Holy Spirit who dwells within you, you have the free will to do that. You can make up your own mind and base your decisions in this life on anything that you want, it does not matter what it is. There are of course the laws of physics, you can say the sky is a different color than blue, you can try to jump to the moon, but that will not happen, you can change your ideology of who God is, but I must warn you, what you will be doing is turning the truth into a lie. One of the greatest deceits that Satan has ever achieved was the mass production of false bibles, it has been going on for quite some time now, and the closer they are to the truth, the better. Only a few key words need to be changed to deceive the masses.
It would do no good for me to say that faith in Jesus Christ is the only way to the Father, for another translation can be found that will deny this, there are those that portray our Lord as only an allegory, a figment of man’s imagination, others say that He was a good man, but not the Christ. Our free will can be modified quite easily by our adversary, and in this area, he has succeeded quite well, as the old saying goes, if you can’t beat them, make them think that you have joined them. As for himself, he is no more than a red-tailed spirit whose main objective is to scare little children at Halloween, an imaginative old-wives tale meant to create a laugh, not to be dreaded by the lost. And the accounts in the Scriptures? Nothing but fables made up by men to make money, to govern people, you guessed it, according to the free will of those who manufactured the tales.
“Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?” (John 10:34) What makes a god? For one, the ability to create something from nothing, and this is exactly what our free will does, it allows us the ability to determine what is real and what is not, and the majority of the time this reality is what we choose it to be, whether it is truth or not is beside the point. Truth is relative to a god, what he says is what is, and this truth always starts in pride, ask the one that first found pride, and see what it did to him. “I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.” (Isa. 14:14) The first little god began upon the path of disobedience, took the first steps of free will, a will outside of that of God.
Free will, when sought after diligently, can manipulate the will of others, it can make them believe that it is correct in its assumptions of what is right, many have been led down the paths of death by those who claim to be above others, and these others have agreed with them completely. False righteousness has been the main factor in the organized religions since the dawn of time, Nimrod convinced many that a tower could be built to heaven, (Gen. 10 8) the Pharisees placed the burdens of tradition upon the children of Israel, and those who are easily deceived follow those of their own free will who are doing the deceiving. This is why there are so many different religious belief structures in the world, the free will to make up a god that should be served has not changed in its manufacturing, “And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.” (Exo. 32:4)
In the tribulation period, our Lord will send a strong delusion upon all who believed themselves to be Christians but were indeed deceiving themselves. “And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:” (2nd Thess. 2:11) By their own free will they chose to serve other gods, those that were given to them by deceivers, and those that they desired to serve. They will believe themselves to be following of their own free will, and so it will be no different than what they are now doing, willingly choosing that which is not God. For the faithful follower of Christ, our free will is freely given over to Christ, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” (Gal. 2:20) What a follower of Christ desires is what He desires for us, our free will becomes His will, and rightly so, for this is the proper place for a servant of God. To die to self is a decision of our free will, we can choose to do so or not, nearly everything in the life of the born-again believer is left up to us, serve or not serve, pray or not pray, just because we are commanded to do a thing does not mean that we must do that thing, this is the path of free will. This is what true love is my friends, doing something for someone because you want to, not because you must.
“And when he had called the people unto him with his disciples also, he said unto them, Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” (Mark 8:34) Whosoever will come, of your own free will, come.
