New Guy with BIG Questions

[Grey Wanderer]

Hey guys & gals.

Longtime Christian here who has seen a lot of things and developed a lot of questions but never got many answers. When I ask my tiny community these questions they either don't know and get frustrated and accuse me of trying to break Christian faiths, or they have good intentions but just fall back to vague, rehearsed answers that help none. You know, those one-liners like "Just pray more and the answers will come to you." or "Follow your spirit and it will show you the way."

Now, I'm not bashing them, I just think that with a small church comes small thinking and limited versatility in thinking methods. And they're so terrified of their own shadow that if they found themselves thinking a little outside the box and questioning even a syllable of the bible, that might be considered mistrusting God or doubting his word. So they're just stuck, it seems.

Anyway, on with the big questions that have been prodding me for quite a while. **NOTE** I looked at the different forum categories and this one seemed to be the most fitting. However, if I have this thread in the wrong forum, please let me know so I can fix it.


DIVINE INTERVENTION

I have reworded the whole "run-through" on this topic dozens of times to attempt to make it smaller and simpler.

Ok, one of God's greatest gifts (and curses) was free will. We all act on our own accord in this existence because without CHOOSING to love God or CHOOSING to accept Jesus, there would be no point. It would be a programmed, involuntary love. Ok, gotchya. So if we are in control of our own actions and choices, how could divine intervention exist?

Examples:

You're in a car. The light turns green, you start forward and right after you pass the intersection WHAM, the car immediately behind you gets t-boned by a semi. Common explanations I always hear for the guy in the first car is that it wasn't his time and/or God saved his life that day. For the unlucky driver in the 2nd car, it was simply "their time" and God wanted one of his children back home. And for the trucker in the semi, this all happened so he would pay more attention at the wheel or check his truck better next time for brake line leaks, or if he wasn't a Christian, the wreck was solely orchestrated so he could find faith. Not to mention, every bystander somehow translates the situation being meant for them in some way. The overall conclusion is that it ALL happened for a reason. It was all in God's plan. For what purpose, we won't know, but just trust that God knows what he's doing. So crashes never happened because of human error, ever? The programmer of the traffic light, the mechanic that worked on the car/s, the convenience store attendant that didn't put enough scoops in the trucker's coffee?


You're at a bank. Waiting in line, robber comes in for some free cash. Tellers empty the drawers into his bag, he feels the need for violence and bam.....takes out one of the clerks, the manager and one of the customers. So did God have his hand in that? Did he puzzle this robbery together to happen on this certain day to kill those certain people and make a lasting impact an everyone that was in the building and their families. And if so, is the robber guilty of murder and theft and are those sins really his own that he should be punished for if God was controlling him the whole time? So there's my crossroads on that. If God was controlling the situation, then free will didn't exist in this case and the robber wasn't controlling his actions, therefore he did not sin. But if free will did exist and God merely watched, then it really wasn't their time to go. It was simply the robbers choice when those people left this life.


I've got a few more really big questions, but I don't want to overwhelm anyone (mostly myself) and just take this one step at a time.

Thanks in advance. I look forward to some intellectual insight on this.

 

[BL2KTN]

We have total, 100% free will. God seldom meddles in human events. The reason behind an event is almost always chance or human decision.

Surely your BIG questions are going to get harder than this,

BL

 

[supersoldier71]

There are no stray molecules. So whether God made it happen or whether He allowed it to happen, He's in control. And since only He knows everything about all parties, only He can know what message, if any, is being put out. Sometimes, the message is : "Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?"

God cannot sin. God can and does allow people to sin. In this fallen world, the only time people don't sin is when God prohibits it. So the robber has his free will: he chose to rob and murder. God is sovereign, so His reasons for allowing the crime to take place or not are His own. Everyone dies, the timing and the method are the only real questions.

 

[singpeace]

Hi Grey W.

There are over 120 separate miracles performed by God from Gen - Rev.

Some that stand out as Divine interventions are these:

Jesus turns water to wine John 2

Jonah in the belly of the fish Jonah 2

Shadow of sun moved back 10 degrees on sun dial 2 kings 20

shadrach, meshach. and abed-nego in the fiery furnace daniel 3

 

[Grey Wanderer]

We have total, 100% free will. God seldom meddles in human events. The reason behind an event is almost always chance or human decision.

Surely your BIG questions are going to get harder than this,

BL

Surely your BIG answers are more solid and less vague than this.

The impact of your statement and strength of its argument would have been just the same if you simply said, "God is in control at all times. There are no chances and everything happens for a reason."

There's no scripture or at the very least a slightly more descriptive philosophy on why you believe this way. You simply typed a sentence and presented it like it was a universally obvious fact. You and I both know it's not that easy. Case in point: The VERY next post by supersoldier. You believe God doesn't intervene, supersoldier believes he does. He clearly stated that he believes God prohibits people from sinning at times.


So here we are.......back at ground zero.

Scriptural References > Simply stating what you believe

 

[Grey Wanderer]

Hi Grey W.

There are over 120 separate miracles performed by God from Gen - Rev.

Some that stand out as Divine interventions are these:

Jesus turns water to wine John 2

Jonah in the belly of the fish Jonah 2

Shadow of sun moved back 10 degrees on sun dial 2 kings 20

shadrach, meshach. and abed-nego in the fiery furnace daniel 3

Very true. There was divine intervention back then. But I don't believe it exists NOW, simply because God had to physically show himself and his works back then because people didn't have the guide of the bible. Now that we do, intervention is not needed. We have the word right in front of us to build our faith on.

Don't get me wrong, I do believe in divine intervention, just not in these times.

 

[ddjones1230]

.

 

[realtruth101]

Being someone who has experienced a divine intervention myself, I can tell you only what the Angel told me, At the time, I had walked away from God, and was living a very evil life. I was told by an Angel that alot of people were praying for me and it was the prayers of my little 10yr old niece that moved the heart of God to send this Angel to save me, as I was marked for death by a group of gangsters, I was shown in a dream how it was going to come down, and as it was unfolding, since I knew what would happen next I was able to get away. why I was given a second chance I can only conclude it was the prayers of my family, I live a very different life now. why God allows some people to die and others to live, I can't tell you but I can tell you that prayer is a big factor in the equation, best of luck trying to figure out God, I have found it alot less stressful to just trust that He is good.

 

[JesusFreak4L]

Hey guys & gals.

Longtime Christian here who has seen a lot of things and developed a lot of questions but never got many answers. When I ask my tiny community these questions they either don't know and get frustrated and accuse me of trying to break Christian faiths, or they have good intentions but just fall back to vague, rehearsed answers that help none. You know, those one-liners like "Just pray more and the answers will come to you." or "Follow your spirit and it will show you the way."

Now, I'm not bashing them, I just think that with a small church comes small thinking and limited versatility in thinking methods. And they're so terrified of their own shadow that if they found themselves thinking a little outside the box and questioning even a syllable of the bible, that might be considered mistrusting God or doubting his word. So they're just stuck, it seems.

Anyway, on with the big questions that have been prodding me for quite a while. **NOTE** I looked at the different forum categories and this one seemed to be the most fitting. However, if I have this thread in the wrong forum, please let me know so I can fix it.


DIVINE INTERVENTION

I have reworded the whole "run-through" on this topic dozens of times to attempt to make it smaller and simpler.

Ok, one of God's greatest gifts (and curses) was free will. We all act on our own accord in this existence because without CHOOSING to love God or CHOOSING to accept Jesus, there would be no point. It would be a programmed, involuntary love. Ok, gotchya. So if we are in control of our own actions and choices, how could divine intervention exist?

Examples:

You're in a car. The light turns green, you start forward and right after you pass the intersection WHAM, the car immediately behind you gets t-boned by a semi. Common explanations I always hear for the guy in the first car is that it wasn't his time and/or God saved his life that day. For the unlucky driver in the 2nd car, it was simply "their time" and God wanted one of his children back home. And for the trucker in the semi, this all happened so he would pay more attention at the wheel or check his truck better next time for brake line leaks, or if he wasn't a Christian, the wreck was solely orchestrated so he could find faith. Not to mention, every bystander somehow translates the situation being meant for them in some way. The overall conclusion is that it ALL happened for a reason. It was all in God's plan. For what purpose, we won't know, but just trust that God knows what he's doing. So crashes never happened because of human error, ever? The programmer of the traffic light, the mechanic that worked on the car/s, the convenience store attendant that didn't put enough scoops in the trucker's coffee?


You're at a bank. Waiting in line, robber comes in for some free cash. Tellers empty the drawers into his bag, he feels the need for violence and bam.....takes out one of the clerks, the manager and one of the customers. So did God have his hand in that? Did he puzzle this robbery together to happen on this certain day to kill those certain people and make a lasting impact an everyone that was in the building and their families. And if so, is the robber guilty of murder and theft and are those sins really his own that he should be punished for if God was controlling him the whole time? So there's my crossroads on that. If God was controlling the situation, then free will didn't exist in this case and the robber wasn't controlling his actions, therefore he did not sin. But if free will did exist and God merely watched, then it really wasn't their time to go. It was simply the robbers choice when those people left this life.


I've got a few more really big questions, but I don't want to overwhelm anyone (mostly myself) and just take this one step at a time.

Thanks in advance. I look forward to some intellectual insight on this.

Hey! Great question here!

I personally believe that the Lord has given us free will on what we choose in our lives! However, I believe that the Lord is present in our lives everyday and that He is here to guide us and draw out our story for us! When we seek after Him He will show us where we are to go in our lives and the path that we are to take! However I believe in Divine Intervention and that the Lord uses certain situations to grab our attention or to bring us closer to Him. This idea i personally don't believe comes from free will. It is how God intersects us where we are at show us alternatives on how to live our lives if we are straying away from Him. (I hope that made sense)

Some Examples:

My mother the other day was at a light and the light turned green where she was at and she did not see the light turn green so she was sitting there till someone behind her honked at her to go. So as she was putting her foot on the gas, the car in the other lane was ahead of her and went right as the light turned green, and that person got hit on the driver side by a guy coming the other way who ran the red light. Now personally I think that the Lord wasn't ready to take my mom yet, and that He was possibly trying to show/tell my mom something through that instance.

My friend in high school was driving one morning down the road to head to our high school and it was a cloudy day and an older man was driving the wrong way on the road that morning, and hit her head on going around 50MPH. She was living her life opposite of what the Lord had for her, and through the accident (that she should have passed away in) the Lord opened her eyes and showed her that there is more to life than partying and drinking and sleeping around!

So just a few examples of how the Lord is present despite us having free will and through that free will He will come in and interject and change our course for us!

Hope that helps and hope that makes sense

Blessings
-Cameron Ensz

 

[Lily_Among_Thorns]

There is no free will. Everything that is was and will be is all authored by God. God is the all. All things came from him and to him all things go to him.

This shouldn't be disconcerting to free will as all things are made holy by this intervention. The intervention of everything including ourselves.

 

[Harry3142]

Divine intervention is not to be seen as a constant. There have been instances in which we could say that we have witnessed divine intervention (such as an illness that was supposedly unrecoverable, but the person recovered), but most of the time the 'divine intervention' boils down to what we ourselves are willing and prepared to do in certain situations.

 

[Walter Kovacs]

So if we are in control of our own actions and choices, how could divine intervention exist?

I don't see how it couldn't exist, unless we are to limit God so that He can't act of His own accord, which I'm sure you aren't implying. But I don't think the two are mutually exclusive...in a nutshell I believe God generally chooses to work within our own decisions and actions...but occasionally, He sees fit to intervene in a supernatural way. That's my initial take. I may add on to this later.

 

[supersoldier71]

The OP was about Divine Intervention: I suspect that if there were no need for God's Intervention in the lives of His elect, he wouldn't have sent the Holy Spirit, the Comforter to indwell His saints. Without hyperbole, the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity is what moves believers along the path of santification, being more Christ-like. Biblically, no one was said to have the Spirit "in them" until after Christ breathed His last: the blood debt was paid. The Holy Spirit could then indwell the redeemed, because they had been imparted the purity of Christ.

Divine Intervention: I know I see things differently than I did before I was saved. I think differently, and I know that other believers have had similar experiences. Raising someone who is dead in their tresspases and sins from that spiritual death IS God doing His thing, "intervening".

Does He still do miracles? I say yes! In my opinion, if it weren't for mountain of miracles, I wouldn't still be drawing breath. It seems to me that any discussion of modern day miracles would be largely anecdotal in nature...because it obviously can't be Scriptural.

 

[Grey Wanderer]

Wow.

Lots of great input guys. I sincerely appreciate your obvious passion about helping me with this. I can tell by the mood of your posts that there is lots of genuine care in here.

Before moving forward, I really appreciate that.


Moving on, I think there's some confusion with me saying there's no divine intervention. I don't limit God in any way. Could he perform divine intervention? Absolutely. He can do anything. But him choosing to intervene? I don't think he does. Like the evil things that happen in our existence.......does God do that? Evil events seem to be more memorable and more shaping to our world than good events. The holocaust, for instance. Do I think God tinkered and toyed with different things to make that happen? No way. That's insane. So there was a HUGE event in our history that was done by man's hand, and his hand only. God COULD HAVE done something, but didn't. Vlad the Impaler, Atilla the Hun, Elizabeth Bathory, HH Holmes......how could God have had participation in any of these people's actions when it was all evil? And just imagine the scope of millions of lives that were affected there. But good hearted, optimists want to believe it's part of a big picture that was solely constructed by God. The concept "Perception is Reality" strikes again.

My conclusion (which is always open to evolving) is that divine intervention only exists when us mortals CHOOSE to give up our free will and let God do the driving. However, evil people who don't believe in God or his interventions do as they please. And the people they affect, has nothing to do with God's will. (that's a funny statement, because obviously evil people aren't going to be performing God's will, but you know what I mean)

This whole thing is very hard for me because being a Christian but not believing in God being physically involved in our every day lives seems like the utmost contradiction.

 

[JesusFreak4L]

I understand what your saying for sure! I will be praying that the Lord continues to shape your view on this! It's so fun to ask questions and find out possibilities about what it could be and where we can go from there! Always ask questions man never stop because there are a lot of wise people out there who have definitely helped me with some of my questions!

 

[singpeace]

Very true. There was divine intervention back then. But I don't believe it exists NOW, simply because God had to physically show himself and his works back then because people didn't have the guide of the bible. Now that we do, intervention is not needed. We have the word right in front of us to build our faith on.

Don't get me wrong, I do believe in divine intervention, just not in these times.

I have to disagree with you.

The Mosaic Law was finished in Deuteronomy 31. That was somewhere between 1100 and 900 BC; at least a thousand years before Christ was born.
This Law consisted of 631 commandments; not just the first 10. This tells me that they had their Bible.

 

[Lily_Among_Thorns]

Divine intervention is not to be seen as a constant. There have been instances in which we could say that we have witnessed divine intervention (such as an illness that was supposedly unrecoverable, but the person recovered), but most of the time the 'divine intervention' boils down to what we ourselves are willing and prepared to do in certain situations.

Divine intervention not a constant?

John 1: 3

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

God is the all. The all came out of him. And all things come to him. God's will governs all. Even your own thoughts and actions are willed by God, who we are--he made us. Every part of his creation he made. His intervention is his will that governs his creation. Not one thing on earth or in your head happens without him willing it.

That doesn't mean we are puppets on strings but rather, like babies at a mother's bosom taking millk.

Peter 2: 2

Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that you may grow up in your salvation.

 

[supersoldier71]

I may sound a bit kooky, but I see the movements of the stars in the heavens as the manifest will of God. When I jump out of an airplane, when my chute opens, I see THAT as God.

It's difficult to fully understand omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence, but that would mean that the smallest occurrence in Creation is under his direct control.

It's hard for me to comprehend: I play the guitar, and as hard as I'm concentrating on doing that one thing, and as tightly as my attention is focused, God can do that with ALL things, EVERYWHERE all AT ONCE.

So I guess it's not an intervention after all. That word implies moving from a state of being uninvolved to being involved: He's never NOT involved.

 

[Lily_Among_Thorns]

Wow.

Lots of great input guys. I sincerely appreciate your obvious passion about helping me with this. I can tell by the mood of your posts that there is lots of genuine care in here.

Before moving forward, I really appreciate that.


Moving on, I think there's some confusion with me saying there's no divine intervention. I don't limit God in any way. Could he perform divine intervention? Absolutely. He can do anything. But him choosing to intervene? I don't think he does. Like the evil things that happen in our existence.......does God do that? Evil events seem to be more memorable and more shaping to our world than good events. The holocaust, for instance. Do I think God tinkered and toyed with different things to make that happen? No way. That's insane. So there was a HUGE event in our history that was done by man's hand, and his hand only. God COULD HAVE done something, but didn't. Vlad the Impaler, Atilla the Hun, Elizabeth Bathory, HH Holmes......how could God have had participation in any of these people's actions when it was all evil? And just imagine the scope of millions of lives that were affected there. But good hearted, optimists want to believe it's part of a big picture that was solely constructed by God. The concept "Perception is Reality" strikes again.

My conclusion (which is always open to evolving) is that divine intervention only exists when us mortals CHOOSE to give up our free will and let God do the driving. However, evil people who don't believe in God or his interventions do as they please. And the people they affect, has nothing to do with God's will. (that's a funny statement, because obviously evil people aren't going to be performing God's will, but you know what I mean)

This whole thing is very hard for me because being a Christian but not believing in God being physically involved in our every day lives seems like the utmost contradiction.

The Lord is a thing of fire. This earth is the furnace in which our Lord casts us in to be made. There is no problem with good and evil. Good and evil is the will of the Lord, his fire which makes us.

Blame the devil. but the Lord is the master of His creation. Into this fire we are thrown along with the Holy Ghost to be utterly consumed by it.

Deny this--that the Lord is a thing of fire. Deny everything that I just said but you can't escape it because here you are on earth in the midst of good and evil. Baptized in fire and the Holy Ghost.

 

[Jack544]

God does not will our thoughts. Our thoughts are OUR own. He gave us free will. But He knew what choices we will make. It is all part of the greater plan.

Divine intervention not a constant?

John 1: 3

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

God is the all. The all came out of him. And all things come to him. God's will governs all. Even your own thoughts and actions are willed by God, who we are--he made us. Every part of his creation he made. His intervention is his will that governs his creation. Not one thing on earth or in your head happens without him willing it.

That doesn't mean we are puppets on strings but rather, like babies at a mother's bosom taking millk.

Peter 2: 2

Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that you may grow up in your salvation.