Do you agree?

"“Do two walk together, unless they have agreed to meet?"

Amos 3:3

The Bible presents God as someone, who values our choices. In Revelation 22:11 Jesus says " Let the unrighteous and filthy go on being unrighteous and filthy and let the righteous go on doing righteousness and the holy go on being holy".

Does God encourage sin and evil? No, certainly not. He is merely saying that He endows and respects freedom in His creation and even bad choices would be respected, but dealt justly with nonetheless. Freedom is linked up unbreakably with responsibility. God wants the wicked to turn away from his ways and do God's will (Isaiah 55:7), but He is in no way forcing it. If we extrapolate a bit more on the question of freedom, we can note that eternal punishment is not ruling out evil as a choice to be, but merely curbing its impact without taking away one's inherent preference for it. 

Therefore God would never inherently (that means who we want to be in our hearts) take away from us what is wrong unless we want that to happen. He would not fulfil His best will for us unless we desire it from the heart. "Can two people walk together unless they agree?" God expects our agreement to walk on with Him. Your and my will bear a great responsibility for our destiny. That seems tantalising.  Deciding your own ultimate fate is only possible because God exists. The right decision might be and is being encouraged by Him, but it is taken by us. If we really want to walk with God then we need to do something first. Like Adam in the garden of Eden, we need to get to meet with God.  How do we do that? Do we have the access to God, that Adam had?

God is everywhere so the geographical place is irrelevant. Jesus' died for our sins and rose to make us righteous so what we have done in the past is irrelevant too. What matters is whether we want to go along with God's grace now. The small things we do can make a big difference. 

 Our quiet time reading the Bible, for example, or time praying or contemplation is not just about learning more, getting spiritual strength and relaxing. These are some of the benefits of course, but the primary thing that is going on is that we want to meet with God.  When doing these things we should have the conscious desire to meet with our Father. If we would want to go further and agree to walk on the path He wants us to walk onto,  this would be, incidentally, the best decision we could ever make and would find our true selves. 

Prayer:

Dear Father,

I know that you are so loving and patient that you do not foist on anybody what is your will. It is the best for us all, but you created is in such a way that we can choose to accept it or refuse it.

Thank you for this great gesture of trust in us. I pray now, please open my spiritual eyes widely enough that they can see your loving and gentle nudging that leads through the narrow, but blessed door of life aboundant. Let none of us miss your will for their lives!

In Jesus' Name! Amen!