Against Free Will

I thought that free will was generally accepted in all Christianity.
Ten years ago, I left the Methodist church (in fact, it was a branch from Methodist, not the main Methodist church) to another one because the pastor was profaning the sacred. He was basing his sermons on the importance of tithe reading Malachiah 3. I decided to scan all the Bible searching for tithe. It revealed to me that tithe was not possible to gentiles because we have no levites, no treasure house and even worse, tithe was related to food and sharing it, not money even though money existed at that time. In resume, this Methodist pastor, in particular, (please, do not generalize, the Lord works in Methodist churches too!) was at least ignorant, at worse, he was playing to say things in name of the Lord falsely. He was always joking in the pulpit saying things like: "open your eyes, Japanese" towards me. Amazing his lack of respect to the Word and to the congregation. Anyway,  I left this church.
In a new church, I tried to argument that no one could claim eternal life assurance due to free will to a friend. He asked:
- How do you know Free Will exists?
And after that, he gave me a book from A. Pink: "The Sovereignty of God". There is a chapter against Free Will.
I began to reason that it would be possible to have eternal life assurance in a deterministic view. I was somehow designed to belong to the Lord even before the Big Bang, the creation of the universe as in Ephesians 1. If it were true, it would be even truer that the Lord would lead me to repentance, to believe in Him and also, He would make me persevere in the faith. I had already repented and was a believer in Jesus, but I was missing some peace in my heart: I believed in a god that could not sustain me due to some kind of defect in me: the free will that would always made me sin.  I had been fighting against pornography for a long time. I could be free of it for months, but somehow, I was always attracted to it. I had to fight hardly not to type words that would lead me to porn in google. My flesh wanted porn, my spirit not. I thought that I was saved, but I had this fight as in Romans 7. Whenever I felled, I confessed my sins and I believed in His forgiveness. I failed so many times that I decided not to promise anything to the Lord as "I will sin no more".
The Lord was merciful to me and changed my desires. The Spirit gave me a new life with new desires. I really do not know exactly when, but I am quite certain it was after I realized how the Lord loves me so that He created me to Him, despite my problems and sins.
Today, I can not say that I have no desire at all to porn, but it is so small compared to before! I have been free from porn for some years, thanks to Jesus, my Savor, my Redeemer, my Lord. I have been believing that I belong to Jesus and it is as certain as one and one are two; and Jesus belongs to me. I eat Jesus, my Bread from Heaven; I drink Jesus, the Living Water. Jesus is mine and gives me life. I live because He lives.
Am I implying that Free Will is against the Bible as A. Pink did? Am I implying that I was not saved till I departed from the Free Will belief?
No, I am not. Perhaps, I was saved before; In fact, I think I was saved but I had a heavy life, I had to carry a heavy burden to follow Jesus and even worse, I was always displeasing Him because I knew deep in my heart that I was not living as He expected me to live. Now I think different: in Jesus, I know that I please Him. Today I really do not need to please anyone but the Lord. My mission is to glorify Him, to praise Him, to surrender to Him everyday. I have to write more words about Free Will. Today, I think that somehow the Bible is Arminian: they are not completed wrong; somehow the Bible is Calvinist: they are not also completed wrong or completed right. In fact, some verses say that man must choose, seek the Lord, depart from evil, etc.; and some verses say that it is the Lord who operates. Both are true. I have to write about it in another post.

Pro Free Will

I was practically born in the Methodist church. I do not remember attending to any message about "Free Will", perhaps, because it is impossible to find "free will" in the Bible. However, I developed (due to reading, thinking, etc.) a reasoning like this:

• God created everything good and saw that it was all good. So, how does evil entered in the world?
• God created some kind of evil as in Isaiah 45:7: I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things. God created the possibility of evil when He gave Free Will to his creatures.
• Free Will is the basis for love. Would someone create a machine that says "I love you dear creator" and feel pleased about it? Certainly not. Love has meaning when based on free will, when the creature decides by itself to love its creator and it has a will that is free from the creator.
• The evil becomes real when the creature decides not to love its creator, up to this moment, we have just the potential of evil.
• The creature is responsible and must be punished for bad decisions in face of free will. In absence of free will, we have no responsibility. God is fair to punish its creatures when the creatures make bad decisions. 
• A bad decision is to look for its own glory, instead of praising the Creator. Satan and humans made bad decisions.
• The saints are those who chose Jesus, accepted that He died in their place. 
• We, as humans, must search the Lord as in Matthew 6:33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. The Lord expects that all humanity respond to it. He loves all human being, gave free will to each one, and expects that everyone seeks for Him.

Basically, it was my belief. For me, the book "Mere Christianity" of C S Lewis gave some comfort supporting these ideas. I even developed some despise to Calvinists. I thought that they were some kind of Christian fundamentalists that love so much their own doctrine despite sending many to hell. Who can claim in good conscience that is saved by Jesus? Even worse, how can one claim that some other guy is destined to hell? 

I thought that it was ridiculous to have eternal life assurance. 

My reasoning was like this:

• In Jeremiah 17:9, we read: The heart is deceitful above all things  and beyond cure.  Who can understand it? Certainly, I knew that although I claimed to have chosen Jesus, accepted Him in my heart, I was a sinner. There were many things that I did not like to do, but I did it anyway. Why did I sin? Because, my heart was not all prone to the Lord. But, did I have control of my heart? Jeremiah said that my heart was deceitful and I could not agree more.
• I was certain that perseverance is crucial to salvation. In Revelation 2:7, we read: 7 Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God. If life is a battle and the Lord demands victory and my heart is deceitful, how can I be sure that I will be choosing the Lord up to my death? If the Lord demands perseverance, how can I be certain about it? I can not. I had many cases to base it. I saw many in church falling. Many that I thought were really saved but showed up to be a great deception. 
• As the heart is deceitful, no one can claim eternal life assurance because no one can say anything about his own perseverance. Perhaps, one could claim that is saved today, but can not say anything about tomorrow. So everyone could at maximum have a fragile salvation because salvation depends on each one hearts, each one choices, each one seeking. 

That was my reasoning 10 years ago. I had concluded that we can't believe in salvation assurance and free will at the same time. They are incompatible, at least, for the "free will" that is defined as the will free from the Lord's will. Given what I had in the Methodist church, some verses of Bible craved on my head, the reasoning was quite good. In fact, it was somehow against the main stream belief in the Methodist claiming Free Will and Salvation Assurance at the same time. 

Now, I think very different. I will write about it other day, but my problems began when I could not say to myself: "I have eternal life assurance" and who claims it, is lying to himself. I wanted to prove it to others whenever possible.

Fighting against me

Today is Sunday.
Besides preaching once in a month, I was assigned to teach in Sunday School.
I would like to say things that change lives, however, I must be just a boring teacher.
Last year, I was teaching to seniors (> 50 year's old); I felt that the class was diminishing along the year. This year, I am teaching to 6 adolescents, three are my children. I think that I can keep my three children attending to the class.
I decided to teach the short catechism from Westminster. Today I read questions from 21 to 25. I must confess that it was a difficult reading. Our Lord Jesus is our sumo sacerdot who intercedes for us and He is also the Lamb. He is the prophet that speaks according to the Lord's will and He is also King. He is human and He is also God. As human, He was born, grew in wisdom (He did not possess all wisdom at birth), and He was tempted; but besides other humans, He was not born in sin. I told that Adam was created without sin and he was an exception to other human beings, however he was tempted and felled.
I think that it is somehow profound all these statements; however, it is extremely difficult to join all these in a comprehensive way, in half hour. What is the impact of this knowledge in my life?
I tried to argument that it is important to see Jesus as God because all sins offend God and only Him can forgive, but He also must pay for it. For a better understanding, I should have studied in a seminary.
I tried to read many Bible verses that support all these statements and I tried to explain each one; but I would like to have done much better.
Today I am not in my normal state.
I have been proud in the church.
First, there is no "credo" in our church: it is a mix of Amianism and Calvinism. I have seen myself as some kind of ex arminian, illuminated by the calvinism, some kind of a salved person with a stronger faith. I have not been considering myself as proud till now, but certainly there are many things in the Bible that I can not explain; besides, this pride makes me repulsive to others, and makes me a much more sensible guy.
Certainly, today I am fighting against me; or the Lord is fighting against my pride.
Let the Lord win.
Let my soul praise the Lord and not me.
Let me see the hands of the Lord conducting me.

He leadeth me, He leadeth me,
By His own hand He leadeth me:
His faithful foll’wer I would be,
For by His hand He leadeth me.

Persistence, salvation and eternal life assurance: are they compatible?

What is salvation?
A person who is drowning in deep waters is saved from death when he comes to the surface and breaths air.
A slave is saved when he is set free and does not have to honor his former master.
In a certain way, Jesus was saved when the Lord resurrected Him.
We Christians say that a saved person is the one who has eternal life while a lost person is the one who has not.
Who is qualified to be saved?
There are many verses in the Bible talking about that, however we tend to simply put: the one who believes in Jesus.
We forget to pay attention to:
Matthew 24:13 13 But the one who endures to the end, he will be saved.
How, then, may someone be confident that he will endure to the end?
This was my question for a long time. I have seen many people abandoning their faith in Jesus: people that do not congregate in a church, do not read the Bible, do not pray. Perhaps they say to themselves that they are saved, but I am quite sure that under persecution they would not endure to the end because of the great signs that they had already given up their faith.
How can I be different?
In my youth, I also had given up congregating; therefore, I have never been confident on my abilities to follow Jesus.
I have always heard in churches:
- Unless you have assurance of your salvation, you are not saved. If you want to be saved, come and receive Jesus as your savior.
I responded many times to altar calls. I do not know how many times I received Jesus.
For a long time, Matthew 24:13, among many other verses, do not fit to our american model of salvation (quite sure, it is american or, at least, it is British).
Therefore, for a long time, I have seen salvation, endurance and eternal life assurance as not compatible. It took sometime to perceive the root of the incompatibility: free will.
In another post, I will try to be pro free will and then, against free will. I will try to show how it affects our eternal life assurance.

Orchid

My daughter received an orchid as a birthday gift. My wife made her responsible for it, however, she fertilized it and suddenly, the orchid lost their leaves and now it is piratically dead.
My wife is trying to bring it to life again.
I tried to take a lesson from it:
Life is fragile.
She has just discovered that its roots were immersed in plenty water. Certainly our daughter does not know what pleases an orchid. This made me think:
We must respect God's laws to keep life.
The Lord created the human being that was stained by sin. As a sinner, every human must die and every human seems the orchid that is almost dead. How to bring a sinner back to life? The Lord established the way to salvation, as the Lord established how an orchid should live.

Bullying

I was bullied when I was young: I was a good Japanese descendant student in a public school full of Italian descendants. Now I am 54, but I feel some kind of bullying ghost following me.
I work with another 2 other professors. I am very anti social and I really do not enjoy these December parties before Christmas, but I am not so averse to have lunches with closer friends; so today I and my colleagues went to lunch. I became the spotlight as others enjoy to tease me: the joke was that I had to pay the bill as I am famous for being scrooge. After a lot of jokes, mainly by one of them, I got tired. The other professor noticed that I was fed up and I told him:
- It is more important to love than to be loved as San Francisco told. I really do not deserve so much love.
The bullier professor answered: Yes you deserve.
But what really have annoyed me was that my bike tire was empty as I was leaving school at the end of the day. I am quite sure that it was emptied on purpose, not by accident. I called my wife to take me at school and she rescued me despite the traffic jam.
I and my family were having a dinner when I remembered about Job: his children died on a accident, but he was also robbed by thieves. I asked my children: what annoys more: to be robbed or to become sick? They told me: to be robbed. I said that other humans seems more aggressive than sickness, but in case of Job, both were at the same level: God let both happen.
In conclusion, my bike tire and bullies from my colleagues are some kind of test that the Lord sent me; He is writing the story of my life. In his story, I have doubts, sometimes, I do not discern things very well, but at the end, my soul rests in him. Blessed be the Lord.

psalm 90

Yesterday, I read Psalm 90 to my children before sleeping.
It is a prayer to God from Moses (a tradition, not specified in the text, but let us assume it).
Some point of the Psalm are:

• Life is short. 
• 5 We are merely tender grass 6  that sprouts and grows in the morning but dries up by evening. 10 We can expect seventy years, or maybe eighty,  if we are healthy, but even our best years bring trouble and sorrow. Suddenly our time is up and we disappear.
• Life is not easy. 
• 9 Your anger is a burden each day we live, then life ends like a sigh.
• God is somehow behind our suffering. 
• 7 Your furious anger frightens and destroys us, 8 and you know all of our sins even those we do in secret.
• God is the All Might. 
• 2 You have always been God long before the birth of the mountains, even before you created the earth and the world. 3 At your command we die and turn back to dust, 4  but a thousand years mean nothing to you! They are merely a day gone by  or a few hours in the night.
• We fear God. 
• 11 No one knows the full power of your furious anger, but it is as great as the fear  that we owe to you.
• We ask Him to make our lives easier, happier, 
• 15  Make us happy for as long as you caused us trouble and sorrow. 16 Do wonderful things for us, your servants, and show your mighty power to our children.
• 13 Help us, Lord! Don’t wait! Pity your servants. 14 When morning comes, let your love satisfy all our needs. Then we can celebrate and be glad for what time we have left.
• We ask Him not to waste our lives.
• 12 Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. 17 May the favor of the Lord our God rest on us;    establish the work of our hands for us— yes, establish the work of our hands.

It is very interesting how the psalmist prays in a much more different way than we pray in our churches today. He is certainly much more sincere than we commonly are. The Lord is the All Mighty. I suffer. Thus, the anger of the Lord is a burden each day I live. In our churches, we are always talking about his love, his compassion; but it is very rare to mention his anger. Is it possible to fear a Lord that is said to love us, but seems impotent to deal with our suffering? For Moses, the Lord is really in charge of everything, our sufferings included; so he fears him.
Moses was an example of a well succeeded life. How then did he write: "establish the work of our hands for us"? Certainly, the deeds of the Lord through Moses will be remembered to the last day of our times; so his work was established by the Lord.
I really want that the Lord establishes the work of my hands.
It is so easy to waste the life, and I certainly have wasted so much time...
Establish the work of my hands for me, Lord, -- yes, establish the work of my hands, please.