Expert: Dr Eddy Cheong - 9/15/2006

Question
has GOD got our lives mapped out for us, my pal says GOD already has your life planned if you are to become a christian or not? i say the LORD gives you the choice to live your life as a christian or not..

Answer
Calvinists and Arminists have locked horns over the contentious issue of God’s Sovereignty vs Man’s Free Will. Or is it really that contentious after all?

GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY
Psalm:115:3
3 Our God is in heaven;
he does whatever pleases him.
Daniel 4:35
35 All the peoples of the earth
are regarded as nothing.
He does as he pleases
with the powers of heaven
and the peoples of the earth.
No one can hold back his hand
or say to him: "What have you done?"

MAN’S FREE WILL

Joshua 24:15
But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD."
(Joshua says ‘to choose’ hence the people do have a choice)


The fact of the matter is the Bible teaches both and the Scripture below illustrates this fact..

13"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

God sovereignly provides the narrow gate and narrow road as well as the wide gate and broad road. Man chooses which path he wants to take. Just as in the beginning God sovereignly created Adam, put him in the Garden of Eden but gave Adam the choice whether to obey (by not taking the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil) or to disobey by taking the fruit which he did. As we all know sad consequences follow if we choose to disobey God’s Will.

Nevertherless, Man’s free will is never absolute. I cannot will to become the President of the United States (not that I want to be one and compromise with the world). Somehow God has made it impossible for me. But he has placed me in an environment where I can serve Him best. In reality it does not matter where we are born or how materially blessed we are when we came into this world. God has only one message for the world (unbelievers)….

Romans 10:9
9That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
2 Peter 3:9
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

For the Christian, he or she should seek God’s Will for his or her life and endeavor (with the help of the Holy Spirit) to follow it all of his or her life (please seen article on knowing God’ will in the book Biblical christian living at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Troy/9519).