THE CHOICE IS CLEAR, THE CHOICE IS YOURS -- Devotional for March 18, from "Good Seeds"

Today I set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life! (Deuteronomy 30:19)

A dear friend wrote and told me today that their neighbor, grieving the loss of her husband, had just killed herself in her home. They heard the two gunshots from their living room. They had been sharing with her about life in Christ, but she chose death for herself instead. Then, seeming to change the subject, my friend asked, “Steve, we’re puzzled about predestination. If the Lord foreknew us before we were born, and knows who will follow Him, and who will not, are we wasting our time telling the Good News to those who are hopeless?” But we were on the same subject: “Was this poor soul a hopeless case? Was she doomed and damned, so she might as well pull the trigger now and avoid a lifetime of misery?” Although serious and sincere Bible scholars and God-lovers can be found on both sides of this issue, and Scripture is at times unclear, what will we do with the verse above, and with others which clearly call out, “Whosoever will may come”? The bottom line question remains: “Do we have free will or not?” If predestination means our eternal destiny is predetermined, that by God’s design certain ones will not desire Him, what does that do to our humanity? Does not our God-created nature as well as experience scream out that we have free will? Some would say we’re free to choose the evil, but not to choose the good. Did God predetermine that Adam and Eve had to sin in the Garden of Eden? Some say yes (which means they really had no choice at all). We must distinguish between predetermination and foreknowledge. God is omniscient, so He knew what Adam would do. But that's a world away from pre-programming him to do it. Yet the words elect, called, and predestination are in the Bible. What do we do with them? 1) God knows His own, before they are His own. That's foreknowledge. 2) God has predetermined that “whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13).That's predestination. Will He save them without their calling on Him? No. Do they call on Him because He has forced them to do so? No. Moses seemed to think a man could choose God. So do I, and that’s just what I have done. How about you? I love Him because He first loved me. And who does God NOT love like that?