God Allows Freedom, and Still Maintains control...

I was watching a sermon by Louie Giglio, and it prompted me to begin pondering this. This absolutely blows my mind. How can God allow complete freedom to people on earth, and still maintain control? This seems like a very complicated thought to me.

Here's and example, when Jesus was crucified at the hands of [angry] men(Acts Ch.2). Here's a little background. It was a religious day and a one of the societal authorities(Pontius Pilate) would always release a criminal(I'm not too sure why, or how this became a tradition). And he had two people that he would offer up to be freed, and let the crowd of civilians choose which on was let go. He offered up Jesus, and he offered up Barabbas. Barabbas was a "Notorius prisoner"(Matt. 27:16). I did a little research on him(Barabbas) and found that he was a part of a group called sicarii, a militant Jewish movement that sought to overthrow the Roman occupiers of their land by force. And this guy was a murderer (Mark 15:7). This guy was bad news. While on the other hand, you have Jesus. Jesus was God's son. He hadn't commited any crimes, in fact, he had lived a PERFECT life on earth. According to the Gospels, Pilate was reluctant to kill Jesus, which I suppose(I'm not sure of this) is why he chose Jesus to be picked against Barabbas. I'm assuming that he chose Barabbas to go up there with Jesus because he was sure that the crowd would pick Barabbas. Now thinking about it, I see no reason why they wouldn't pick Barabbas to die and Jesus to be freed. They would get a criminal off the streets, which would make them and their families safer. But when Pilate offers up the two men to the crowds choice, the crowd starts to yell "Don't free this man! Free Barabbas!"(John 18:40). This, I can't understand. They would rather have the criminal back on the streets than Jesus. It looks to me like this mob was crazy, and looks as though no one was in control. So later on the deed was done. Men came and crucified our Savior, Jesus. All the guys killing him didn't have anything against him. Though, evidently the vast majority disliked him. I believe they were just doing their job. And there job that day was to put Jesus up on a cross for him to die. This situation was man's choice. It was the freedom of men, and when you look at it, it looks like chaos. But when you really think about it, was God in charge? Yes! Did the citizens make choices? Yes. Did God put the words in their mouths and force them to say Barabbas, so His Son could die for the sins of the world? No. Somehow, God allowed freedom and still maintained control and got His will done.

He is doing that all around us, and it blows my mind. How is God allowing us to have freedom, but still maintaining control? God gives me the freedom to do whatever I want (which isn't too good sometimes), and yet, He's still in control of my life. He is always in control, no matter our choices. Now, the freedom of people causes horrible, horrible things to happen, such as wars, killings, and everything else bad you can think of. And people say, "Why doesn't God just stop that from happening, and fix everything, and make people do the right things?". If God did that, then we wouldn't the freedom He gave us and we would be of no use to Him. Though, God does promise that one day He will end all of the chaos, and that is the day that we will ascend up to Heaven with him, but that day hasn't come yey. So until that day, we are going to have this freedom and we will make mistakes, and God will still be in complete control. I just can't wrap my mind around this. That is truly awesome...

Non-Christians Wanting to Go To Heaven

I have been thinking about this all day...


I have been asked a few times in my life, "If you could go to heaven, with all of your friends and family, Chick-fil-a for every meal, sweet tea whenever you wanted it, all your favorite activities, all your favorite things that you've ever had, all the fun things you've ever done, without any harmful things to you or your surroundings, no sickness, no emotional pain, could you be happy in heaven, if Christ wasn't there". I used to see this as a very, very tough question. I don't so much anymore. Don't get me wrong, all that stuff would be pretty sweet. But I would only be happy for like...a couple of days(if that), but If Christ isn't there, I don't want to have any part of it. He is the reason for heaven. I want to be there praising Him for eternity, not playing madden and eating freebirds. He is the reason for everything, and to have that stuff without Him, it would just get old and tiresome. This brings me to my main point. Why is it when a non-believer is asked what will happen to them when they die, the majority say, "Uhh.. I don't know. I think I've lived a pretty good life, so I think I'll end up somewhere nice. I'll probably go to heaven."? Why that response? They know nothing of Jesus, thus, they know nothing of heaven. Why would you want to spend eternity in a place that you know nothing about? I don't understand this. I see this as being like a person who dislikes sports wanting to go to every football, basketball, soccer, etc. event they can. If you dislike sports so much, why would you want to spend so much time watching them? If you don't want to have anything to do with God, why would you want to spend eternity with Him? That happiness that Christian feel in heaven, non-Christians would not feel. So what is their place there? They would be the ones who have boredom and unhappiness. This has puzzled me all day.