Question: Do the faithful know they are saved?
We're saved if we're mindful of it.
Some say it's the circumstances which God directly controls ...NOT the human.
Then, the human responds in their own will to the circumstances.
Thus human volition makes a free choice within circumstances while the Most High arranges circumstance so intended results occur.
Again: Some say it's the circumstance God directly controls, not human will. In this manner our choice is 'free'. Some say we're not robots or zombies. But again we choose according to the circumstances and we might as well be the circumstances as the result of the ripple effect of prearraged circumstances. We might as well be what God arranged us to be. Where is that fine line between God's Wills and human wills? I think it's the same.
Now, regarding how the Lord arranges circumstances, it varies for each instance. You have heard, though, the philosophical dictum that moving just one grain of sand on a beach eventually changes the course of entire history ? Same principle with Divine Providence.
We start with God's foreknowledge of outcomes. He knows in advance what effect any given change would have. Next, the Most High alters some small thing. And that has the ripple effect to present the circumstance God intended. [ Almost sounds like Science Fiction ! ]
The example I often give in the past posts is putting a bank within sight of a robber. That robber eventually robs the bank as the Supreme Being intended he would. Yet he does it out of his sin nature instead because of some kind of divine coercion.
It would be helpful to understand mindfulness of arranged circumstances before we go on. We human beings have an extraordinary capacity, which we sometimes take for granted until it is called to our attention: unlike other beings in the world who are living out their lives, we have the ability to be conscious of that process as we do so.
Mindfulness is often likened to a mirror: it simply reflects that is there. It is not a process of thinking: it is preconceptual, before thought. One can be mindful of thought. There is all the difference in the world between thinking and knowing that thought is happening, as thoughts chase each other through the mind and the process is mirrored back to us.
The only time that mindfulness can happen is in the present moment: if you are thinking of the past, that is memory. It is possible to be mindful of memory, of course, but such mindfulness can only happen in the present.
Mindfulness is unbiased. It is not for or against anything, just like a mirror, which does not judge what it reflects. Mindfulness has no goal other than the seeing itself. It doesn't try to add to what's happening or subtract from it, to improve it in any way.
It isn't detached, like a person standing on a hill far away from an experience, observing it with binoculars. It is a form of participation - you are fully living out your life, but you are awake in the midst of it. It can also follow us into the ordinary life situations that make up our day.
One word that I personally have come to associate with mindful living is intimacy. The mind is intimate with all things." To take a simple example: You're walking in the woods and your attention is drawn to a beautiful tree or a flower. The usual human reaction is drawn to a beautiful tree or a flower. The human reaction is to set the mind working, " What a beautiful tree, I wonder how it's been here, I wonder how often people notice it, I really should write a poem...."
The way of mindfulness would be just to see the tree. As you gaze at the tree there is nothing between you and it. No separation. You are one with it.
We are one with God's prearranged circumstances, I believe. We are mindful to what God had already arranged as well the present continuous arrangements. I observe the circumstances around me and become one with it. I accept everything God arranged. I believe that arrangement includes us. I believe we are God arrangements and we are the circumstances.
My question here is why do the Calvinist say we are separated from God's will as if we're not part of it?
Do we really see what we are?
