<\/p>\n
Why, then, did God give them free will?\u00a0<\/span><\/i>Because free will, though it makes evil possible,\u00a0<\/span><\/i>is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. God is usually blamed for the evils that exist in the world because if He is God, He can remove any problem quite easily because He is big and powerful. But to rid the world of sin and its consequences would require something extremely dramatic\u2014removing all sinners. And apart from being born again, how many of us would be left? C. S. Lewis once made a statement that has helped me quite a bit throughout the years\u2014\u201conce the author steps on the stage, the play is over.\u201d He can fix it all in a moment. But when He does, time stops, eternity begins, and the final line has been drawn in the sand. His answer would be quite painful. His patience, which we see in full operation right now, is so that we can gather as many into the family as possible. His long-suffering is beyond all of our abilities to comprehend and comes at great personal cost.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Fixing this world\u2019s problems through a \u201cmilitary invasion of Heaven\u201d is not the answer we want. For then He enforces His will over mankind, destroying the greatest of all creations called the free will. In doing so He would then forfeit the chance to have a people of divine purpose. He chose instead an invasion of love, where the hearts of people are conquered by One who sacrifices fully for their well-being. As a result, we now have a Gospel of power that solves the issues at hand quite well, enabling us to bring that same message to them that changed us forever.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n We now just need people who believe it, live it, Extract from \u201cGod is Good\u201d Chapter 9 by Bill Johnson<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Why, then, did God give them free will?\u00a0Because free will, though it makes evil possible,\u00a0is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,3,27,20,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-destiny","category-faith","category-good-news","category-love","category-mindset"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cassowary.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cassowary.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cassowary.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cassowary.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cassowary.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2303"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cassowary.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2304,"href":"https:\/\/cassowary.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2303\/revisions\/2304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cassowary.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cassowary.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cassowary.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/i><\/span>C.S. LEWIS, Mere Christianity<\/span><\/p>\n
\nand will risk all to display it.<\/span><\/p>\n