Electricity and Predestination

"An electric field is created by a charged body in the space that surrounds it, and results in a force exerted on any other charges placed within the field. The electric field acts between two charges in a similar manner to the way that the gravitational field acts between two masses, and like it, extends towards infinity..." (Wikipedia).

God gave us life, and He gave us free-will. With our free-will we made choices of good (love, forgiveness, giving, etc.), but we also made choices of evil (hate, envy, selfishness, etc.). Our ungodly choices caused sin to enter the world, and God's perfect creation was corrupted. But along with free-will, God gave us Jesus Christ, thereby redeeming what He knew we would mess up. Free-will is our Keys to the Kingdom; we can use these Keys to add more corruption or more redemption to God's creation (Matthew 16.19).

The flow of the Holy Spirit is dependent on our movements. God has a purpose for our lives and He promises to be with us every inch of the way, but because of free-will, we have to make the first move. We take leaps of faith into God's divine plan, and the Holy Spirit guides our every step. The Holy Spirit cannot force God's children into submission, and that is why obedience to inspired promptings and trust in God's will are vital to living out God's best.

I believe God has His best in mind for all His children. I do not believe that God predestined a rare few to be called to His best. That concept goes directly against free-will and our ability to choose. If there wasn't free-will, there wouldn't be sin in this world and the negative aspects that come along with it (pain, sorrow and death). I do believe, though, that God is timeless and eternal. He is past, present and future; and He is not limited to our understanding of time and space. He knows everything, but even with this knowledge, He still has given us the Keys.

"For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified" (Romans 8.29-30 NIV).

I imagine that when God created life, His anointing went out like a Charged Body and extended into our world, the Electric Field, stopping at anyone who would receive it. He sent out a call for His children choose to be conformed to the image of His Son, Jesus Christ, God in the flesh. Automatically when God sent out this call, He could see the end result of those who accepted the call because He is not limited to time. Those people were the Charges, allowing themselves to be filled with the electricity of the Holy Spirit.

Because God "foreknew" who would accept His call, He was able to "predestine" them, but that doesn't change the fact that all of us still have the opportunity to accept the anointing. God wants all His children to conform to the image of Christ. The fact that He knows the end result, doesn't negate the free-will we have to respond. In the Bible God gave His children many chances through the prophets to repent and accept His amazing plan, even when He knew they would repeatedly reject those invitations.

God's anointing is like electricity, flowing throughout this world. He is all around us, and His call to be "predestined" for His greatness is every where. He wants the best for US ALL, but we need to use our free-will to accept His call. If we accept it, we will be like Chargers, lighting the darkness with His presence and glory -- predestined for His greatness.

"For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him" (2 Chronicles 16.9a NIV).

Free-Will in Source Code

As I've stated before, I like sci-fi movies. They make me think. The sci-fi film, Source Code, directed by Duncan Jones, a professed atheists (his film, Moon, has an atheistic angle) and son of David Bowie; resonated one universal truth deep into my spirit : FREE-WILL. I find it interesting that even people who deny their creator cannot rid themselves of His mark. I see God's fingerprint encrypted even in the creations running from the Maker.

I've been wrestling a lot lately with free-will. I know God created a perfect world with perfect people, but because He gave us free-will to choose a place with Him or without Him, sin entered the world and corrupted His perfect design. We consumed from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. We had already tasted Good (God), but now we tasted Evil (the force which expresses the absence of God). Everything in existence has its absence, and we became aware of both.

God knew that we would make choices that were without Good, so He incorporated the Answer into His creation. Jesus Christ was there in the beginning (Tree of Life), and He is the world's remedy to free-will. Jesus is the simplest of all solutions. We ask by faith for His righteousness to cover us, and we can be transported instantly into the presence of God. God is 100% perfect, and only those covered in perfection can commune with Him. Free-will corrupted us, but Jesus redeems us. So awesome, yet so easy.

(The following will spoil the movie). Colter Stevens is pretty much dead. Some of his brain is still functional, so the military scientists use that portion to transport Colter back into the subconscious of another man who died on the train earlier that morning. Colter gets to go back several times for eight minutes to try and discover who bombed the train. Colter literally has nothing left but his free-will, and he desperately tries to figure out a way to keep it.

After leaving that movie, I felt an overwhelming gratitude for the free-will that God has given me. Yes, I know the world is corrupted by free-will; however, free-will is an amazing gift that can also produce much good. Without free-will, we would all be lifeless. I finally realized that the corruption caused by free-will was totally worth the life we've been given.

And we are all in Colter Stevens's shoes. We all have one foot in the grave with only a vapor of free-will left to know our Creator and to change the world for His good. Instead of saving people from a train wreck, we are saving people from living an eternity in the absence of God (aka. hell). I don't care how you describe hell -- eternity away from a God who is all perfect, all love and all good sounds horrible. But no matter how good we think we are, we can never fulfill His perfect law, and that is why we need a Savior.

I don't want to spend my short eight minutes on earth worrying about the trivialities that seek to distract me. There is a bomb (inevitable death) about to go off, and there is only one Man who knows how to defeat it. And this Man didn't defeat death for Himself; He defeated it for all of us. We are in Christ by faith, so we defeated death along with Him. We are new creations with the power of free-will in our hands. The question is, How will we use it?

"Being created with a free will, man is expectd to exercise his will for union with God's will in opposing the will of Satan [the force which expresses the absense of God]. This is the purpose of creation as well as the purpose of redemption. The entire life of the Lord Jesus demonstrates this principle." - Watchman Nee