Hi all,
Having established that we are sovereign beings and neither God nor the devil can make us do anything, we find that means we are 100% accountable for our actions. We are sovereign, yet we are created, not self-existent, which means we are first and foremost accountable to our Creator, then secondly to each other.
We are 100% accountable for our actions
We are responsible for what we think, what we feel, what we do. No matter if we live in a palace or a prison, we are responsible right now, today, where we live, for our thoughts, emotions, and actions. And there is provision to walk with Him in each of these areas, if only we will.
In the Christian marketplace are all sorts of ‘ministries’ that are built around the idea someone else is responsible for our current condition. The common theme of each is that someone else is keeping me from being all I can be in Christ. For some it may be a great-great grandmother 2 centuries ago who let some spirit into the family and now that generational spirit is keeping me from being all I can be in Christ.
It may be that something happened to me when I was a child and so damaged me emotionally I am doing thus and so in my life and therefore cannot feel, sense, or be close to God.
It may be God allowed some person in my life that did thus and so to me, making it hard now to trust the Lord.
It may be a man or woman of God I trusted fell from grace so that is why I stopped believing in God.
There are all sorts of reasons which are at their core, nothing but excuses for not being 100% responsible for where you are right now in your thoughts, your emotions, your actions. Of course others do things that effect us, but we are to be as Paul stated in Philippians 4: 12-13: “I know how to abound, I know how to be humbled, I know how to have abundance, I know how to have lack. I have entered a new dimension and can be independent of my circumstances, for I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
Don’t shout me down now just because I’m preaching real good
New Testament truth says all things start anew once our spirit man is recreated in Christ. Stop trying to find the 1 spiritual key that will unlock heaven’s vault of riches and provision for you. If we are ailing from an emotional or physical condition handed down through the family, the reason isn’t important because what IS important is ‘by His stripes you were healed’ – that statement of I Peter 2:24 does not come with an asterisk stating ‘except in cases of generational curses or involvement in the occult by family members in the past, or what someone did to you when you were a child.’
There are certainly more mysteries in life than there are answers, but I am not charged with finding out each mystery about past generations in my family, but rather charged with walking with the Father and the Lord Jesus today, right now, where I am in life. There are many things we won’t know this side of heaven. Rest in that and let it go.
Remember the Ephesians who burned their books on the occult in Acts 19? Where in his letter to the Ephesians do you see Paul talking to them of their past, or their family history that opened the door to the occult or what past ancestor caused them to be in this or that condition, or their childhood to explain their condition in body or mind?
There are none. He says simply to put on Christ and walk in Him – that is New Testament truth. Be responsible for you, and if there is a mystery as to why you aren’t healed, or why you have such emotional difficulties, then seek Him for the answers, draw close to the Father and Lord directly for they live in you, and don’t seek some formula or some ‘spiritual specialist’ to solve your issue. Consult others yes, but keep at the core your walk with Him.
When we stand before the Lord to give account, it is not a heaven or hell judgement, but an accounting of what we have done since knowing Him. Paul told the Corinthians in I Corinthians 3: 1-15 that some are mere babies in Christ eating the milk of spiritual things when they should be eating the meat of things. But because they refuse to grow out of envy, strife, divisions, and if they carry those things in them to death, they will be as wood, hay, and stubble burned away when they stand before Him. Paul urged them to lay those carnal things aside and grow up in character in Christ, forming spiritual gold, silver, and precious stones to adorn their lives.
No matter what has happened to you in life, right now, right at this day, lay that aside to worship the Lord and from this day forward take responsibility for your thoughts, your feelings, your actions. Come up to His higher ways and thoughts as we are told in Isaiah 55, forsaking your ways and thoughts.
In short, we walk with God because He is God, not for what He will do for us. Purify your motives, we are 100% accountable for ourselves.
Free will allows us to make mistakes
The fact we are allowed to make mistakes also means God is in the process. As I’ve said before; “Very often God isn’t in an event, He is in the response to an event.”
That means a person can meet Him on the path they took to avoid Him.
It means He enjoys the process. In a quantum physics way we could say God is a Spirit with a Spiritual body and heaven is more real than the physical for the unseen created the seen. But it also means He has no way to experience the physical world except through human beings. In Himself in that Spirit-realm He is not limited to time and space, but by recreating us in our spirit man and living in us, He gets to live in and experience the limitations of time and space.
He enjoys this process, this experience we call life. He isn’t just walking with us through life, He is living in us walking through this life, knowing and feeling in Himself our thoughts, feelings, every emotional high and low and physical frailty. Mistakes come with being a human being and He is not freaked out we sinned yet again, or think this or that weird or ungodly thought. When He looked through the corridors of time and decided to give us Jesus on the cross, He did so knowing full and well the mistakes we would make even after knowing Jesus.
“He gave us resurrection life and drew us to Himself by His holy calling on our lives. And it wasn’t because of any good we have done, but by His divine pleasure and marvelous grace that confirmed our union with the anointed Jesus, *even before time began.” II Timothy 1: 9, Passion Translation *Greek: ‘Before times eternal’.
You are allowed to be human
Free will coupled with this grace will do one of two things for a person: Either they will know the grace and step up to be empowered and all they can be in that grace, or they will abuse the grace, taking every advantage of freedom for personal gain. Christ has made us free not to sin, but some take that freedom as a license for sin, as Jude wrote in v4 when he urged us, ‘Do not to turn the grace of God into a license for sin.’
We are allowed to be human, for in giving us free will He then by that action, had to make provision for the mistakes that come with giving free will to such finite and ignorant beings. That provision is Christ, salvation, forgiveness. But we are allowed to be human.
I said that to a person in a store – they came rushing down the aisle pushing their cart (buggy, for those who speak the King’s English, or live in the US south) and nearly ran into me and apologized profusely. I said, “It’s OK, you’re allowed to be human.” They looked at me with a funny look of relief, saying, ‘Thank you for that’. As they slowly walked down the other aisle I realized they needed that grace and that realization that day, that it is okay to be human.
Free will means we are sovereign, but accountable to our Creator. It means there will be mistakes, but God can be found in the mistakes, in the process. It means when He gave free will to such imperfect beings, He also did provide for such frailty through Jesus on the cross and resurrection. He provided the solution in the sacrifice of the cross, and the power to live above natural human frailties in the power of the resurrection.
Free will allows us to have emotions, and we will never know what we have unless we learn to exercise our free will…and we’ll pick it up there next week. Until then, blessings,
John Fenn
