Free Will

The whole thing of free will can be a hard concept to understand. It's easy to blame God for things that happen. It's easy to say that because God has power to change things but instead allows horrible things to happen to you that He is at fault. There has been periods of my life overtime that I was mad at God and telling myself those things.

Now I've moved on with my life and am serving God, but there are others that I have met lately that are going through that stage. It's hard to know what to tell people when they are hurt and wounded, but I started thinking about it today and kind of fit together everything I have learned from the bible and going to church and I understand what it means by "free will".

God doesn't make things bad occur to us, he doesn't stop it from happening at times, but it's not Him who created the issue -it's the sin of man that creates our problems, which is backed up by Satan as well. It's because we have the choice and freedom to live our lives as we please that we run into problems.

 It's when we don't want to own up to mistakes that we have made, or when we are not willing to forgive others of the wrong that they have done to us that we then point the finger to God. You can have the same scenario happen to two different people and yet have different results based on the victims ability to forgive or blame. A story I heard on the radio was about a woman whose daughter was killed by a drunk driver. Now you can either a) Forgive the man for his wrongs and continue to praise God through the storm, or b) blame the man for doing wrong and blame God. You see, you can't continue to have a good relationship with God if you have a grudge against someone. So even if you think that your not having any anger towards God but torwards a person, it really does not matter because that is hindering you from growing closer to him.

So to sum it up, because of free will people make mistakes and sin, and because of sin we have hardships. With those hardships we can choose to forgive or to blame, and what we choose will depend on how depressing or joyful our life is.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that the next time someone tells you their story, and shares with you how they are mad at God, you can explain to them how it's not God that causes there woes and do your best to encourage them to forgive either themselves or others for the hardships.

Maybe you already knew that. For me it wasn't that I didn't know that God isn't responsible for life problems, because we are taught that all throughout church, but it was more of the actual understanding that I was struggling with. There is a difference between knowing and understanding, and I am happy to have finally pieced it all together :)

Anyways, that's just been on my mind lately...
Blessings,
Adriana