There is a difference between predestination and election. God predestines for purpose/direction, and God elects/chooses people, including individuals. I have heard it be said that God chooses us and we choose Him, like in a marriage. Was it by your choice? Was it your wife's? No, it was both! I think that is a brilliant picture. With that said I can reconcile the idea that God predestined us for salvation and at the same time we chose Him by giving our life to Him. I would be quite happy to rest on that being a mystery, something we can't or need to figure out.
That view of marriage is far from the only valid one. Years ago, and still nowadays, in some cultures, arranged marriages was the norm, and they were more 'successful' (by numbers, anyhow) than the current norm.
The last years of my life has been a bit like that, giving my whole life to God and a few days later I pull it back in again for my own purposes. I know it's wrong and I know I should change. One difference between you and me, is that I believe God can make that change in me where I wholeheartedly, with mind, soul and Spirit conform my whole life to Christ, not only in thought, but also in deed. I believe this because this is what happened to me that summer of 2010.
Yet your view hasn't changed the facts. Further, the perceived success of results is no measure of the validity of the interpretation of scripture on the matter. But as far as practicality goes, your view has no advantage over mine. God is the one driving both of us, but I think myself happier than you because I KNOW that God is the one in control of not only results, but the very situation in which I find myself. I have no excuse; and I have no recourse, but God himself.
Maybe you will recall me telling someone about the song by the Christian rock band,
Love Song, called "Welcome Back", where they have a line about returning to Christ, "...and you have all that lost time to make up for...". I grew up in that mentality, where God has my life mapped out and it is up to me to follow that map, and where I fail, I have to make up for lost time. But I see it is not that way at all. My life moves at God's rate and pleasure, not mine. Where I am is where he intended for me to be at that moment. Nothing but what he predestined for me will happen. The storms, darkness and fog of life are by HIS plan. Nothing can separate me from him. My failures and setbacks are all within his plan. These are not, as far as his plan is concerned, a set back or failure. But they do teach me to depend on him and to walk in him.
Christians talks about being more and more sanctified, for me it's been more of the opposite. Where I through my own self interests have opened a rift between me and Jesus. It's really a sad thing, something I want to mend. It's hard when even Christian brothers and sisters you know, don't give their whole life to Jesus. It's like it's giving you an excuse. I feel in similar way with the view you shared that we cannot really do what Jesus says. Like it's giving us an excuse to not commit our whole life to Christ.
I know what you mean about the rift between you and Jesus, the sadness, the pain and even despair. But no, obedience is not ACCOMPLISHING, it is about pursuit. Wholehearted, definitely a decision, no excuses. It is not, (at least from my POV), about results to present to God; those are already his. But the pursuit, which can only be by the indwelling Spirit of God or it is not true, is never lukewarm.
I know life isn't easy, and that we won't be perfect in obedience, but I don't think it is helping us holding to it's impossible to wholeheartedly live for Jesus. By ourself it is of course impossible, but everything is possible through Christ by the Holy Spirit he has given us. That is my firm belief.
Amen that, brother!
I do have to say I feel with you in the struggles you have been through. I just don't know if "God predestined everything" is the best way to deal with this.
In the years of questions, fears, tears, sorrow, despair and even near madness (or so it seemed to me at times), and agonized prayer and Bible reading, this (monergism, and the like) is the only thing in the end that makes sense to me. Monergism includes, to my mind, not just salvation but all the subsequent walk with God. I can't do this. But in Christ I can do anything. And monergism keeps good company with the simple logic of predestination and full causation.
Like I said before, I didn't even know what I had come to believe was Reformed Theology or Calvinism, until I came on some reading from them, and was told so by some friends. All I knew of Calvinism was the caricature, that they deny real choice.
