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UGW #18: Our responsibilities regarding God's Will

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  Understanding God's Will #18   (no Calvinism stuff added to this post) : You keep saying that we have responsibilities in getting God’s Will done?    What kinds of responsibilities? I’ve already gone through many of them, but if you read the Bible, you’ll find lots more.   Because as I said before, His Will is a Verb.  It's more about the way we live in obedience to Him than it is about finding "His plan" for our life. He says to seek wisdom.    Do we?    He tells us things that He wants us to do in His Word, things that are always His Will for us, like loving our neighbor, tithing, not gossiping, etc.    Do we obey?    Are we guarding our tongues and building others up, instead of tearing them down?    Are we honoring our marriage vows, and putting up strong protective boundaries around our marriage?    Do we pray or do we think it’s good enough that He can read our minds?    Do we for...
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UGW #16 and 17: Can we change God's mind?

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  Understanding God's Will #16: #16:  Can we change God’s mind with our prayers?                Yes and No.    There are Old Testament examples of people who pleaded with God in prayer to not apply a punishment that He said He would do.    And as a consequence of their intercessory prayers, God relents and doesn’t do what He said He’d do.    It seems to me that the times that He has changed His mind in the Bible were almost all because of appeals to His merciful side, to spare the people the terrible consequences of their sins.   If Calvinism is true that God predestines everything that happens, then He would be lying if He said He was going to punish the people if they didn't repent.  Because He didn't end up punishing them which meant He was never going to punish them to begin with.  It was never part of His "predestined" plan.  Calvinism essentially negate...
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UGW #13-15: Limiting God's power? Does He cause nations to sin?

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  Understanding God's Will #13, 14, 15 #13: But aren’t you limiting God’s power when you say that He’s not in total control of everything?               No, I don’t think so.    And yes, He is in control of everything as far as everything that happens to us has to go through Him first.    And I am not saying that He’s not all-powerful.    I believe that He is indeed all-powerful.    If He chose to wipe out the earth in a second, He could.    He could do whatever He wants to do.   He could control every movement we make, if that's what He wanted to do.   But I don’t think that He  does  do whatever He wants to do or control every movement we make.  Because that's not how He wanted things to be.    I think that when He created the world, He decided to make man with a free-will that He (generally) will not override, even though He can....
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UGW #12: God works all things for good?

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  Understanding God's Will #12: I used to take comfort in the fact that God does whatever He wants to do and that God causes everything to happen for a reason.    But if that’s not the case, then what?                I once heard about a mom and dad who were going away for vacation.    They had to leave their nearly-adult teenager at home.    They knew that he might end up making bad decisions; he might throw a party and do things that they didn’t want him to do.    And they had the power to prevent that.    They could have stayed home or sent Grandma over to watch him.                But in their wisdom, they knew that he was going to be an adult and on his own in college in just a year or so.    And they realized that this was a good opportunity to test him and to see what decisions he would make.    They encouraged him to choose wi...
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