I had open heart surgery almost forty years ago now, the Lord decided to replace my heart of stone with one of flesh. Problem is, He has yet to close up my chest and complete the work.
Little pieces of stone removed occasionally, not all at once, and I believe, at least in part, that it’s my fault, because I do not keep every appointment with Him.
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9)
It is the deceitfulness that He is removing, and if any who have been born again are willing to speak the truth about themselves, there are things in our heart that we will not willingly give up, for there is still a sense of self within us, a part that does not want to be in complete subjection to the will of our Father in heaven.
Those remaining pieces of stone my friends are called pride, and in a way we also do not care to admit to ourselves, we echo Satan’s words.
“I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.” (Isaiah 14:14)
And in fact, to a small degree, we are.
“I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.” (Psalm 82:6)
And so, we do not keep every appointment with Him, gods do not always think they need God.
We hide, as it were, our faces, our desire to die fully to self, for if we do, we fear there will be nothing left of us, our last vestige of free will will disappear. We will not be able to make decisions for ourselves any longer, everything we say, do or think will be controlled by God.
Now I ask you this question, is that what heaven is like? Is that what the angels are like now? Will we never again be able to do anything that we want to do, or will everything we do be done only because it is the only available choice? If our free will is removed and we only do the will of our Father in heaven, do we still, in any form, retain any free will whatsoever?
“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)
Can you envision a time where everything that you want to do you only want to do because it is the will of God for you to do it? Can free will be bound?
“For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.” (John 6:38)
By definition, in the finite mind of mankind, to do only the will of someone else means that your free will, your ability to choose for yourself the paths you will walk, the decisions you will make, has been removed from you.
We are not forced by the Living God to do anything in this life, we are as gods, we have free will. How can we say that we retain free will if we only do the will of the Living God?
The real question is this, since He is the Creator and we are His creation, since He alone is Sovereign and we are servants, how do we remove those last pieces of stone and make our will His will?
We have to choose to.
The surgery will not be completed until you are glorified, then all these questions that cannot be answered here, in this life, will be clear to us. Pride will die. Here we will say with our Savior, “If there be any other way,” and at the same time say, “I will drink this cup.”
Only your free will can do that.
There will be choices to make in heaven, of this I have no doubt, but as to the choice to sin, I can only offer you this, those angels who remained do not sin today, if we knew how that was possible, we could answer all these questions posed here. But we do not know.
And so, we must trust Him to continue removing those stoney pieces, believing and trusting in the promises, remaining faithful to His will.
