 Do we have free will or not? Many of you are going to disagree with what I'm going to say at least for the moment But in about a minute or two I'm going to ask you a question a challenge if you will and then we'll see if maybe you begin to change your thinking on what I'm Saying, literally speaking the Bible never says we have free will the term free will is never found in the Bible But does that mean that the notion or the concept of free will is not in there also or is it? When we say free will we mean volition or that man has the ability to choose what he wants to do So yes, man does have volition man does have will but is it free? We are in one of two categories We are either of our father the devil or we are sons of God of the Holy Spirit and therefore slaves to God There is no in between no third category. We are either one of the two We are either influence controlled or motivated by sin and Satan or We are controlled and motivated or influenced by the Holy Spirit One or the other so really a better term would be controlled constrained restrained limited or influenced will But not free will consider this when God says something is going to happen It's because he decrees it to happen not because he predicts it's going to happen And if he decrees something to happen, how then is God confident that it's going to come about? God is assured that what he decrees is going to come about because of his will. Ah, there it is God is the one who has free will God is the one who has a will that is not influenced or controlled by anything other than himself We can't say the same thing can we so think of it like this in this corner You have man five foot six foot whatever weighing 100 200 pounds with his will and in this corner We have God and his will now you tell me in this ring who was going to impose his will on the other Okay, I hear what you're saying Corey, but doesn't the Bible say that God is not willing that any man should perish But we know that some do and isn't that because of their own free will to leave to not choose God Well, that would make sense However, if we read carefully we discovered that the word for will is not the word the Greek word Philo, which means his own volition or his choosing it is the word Bulamai, which is that he has not determined or Planned for anyone to perish. So that makes a difference. And so God though He hasn't planned for anyone to perish those that come to him will do so as a result of his will But the next question is going to be does that mean that we are robots? Of course not. God does give us the ability to make choices and decisions However, he does so in a constrained confined area according to his will and if we don't Make the right decisions and choices within this confine or then he holds us accountable For those decisions that we make But if God has narrowly willed in some cases that this or that would happen and we decide that no I'm not going to do that. What do you think is going to happen? Well, I'll tell you what's going to happen. His will is going to be done Don't believe me ask Jonah the Bible is crystal clear on God causing all these things to work for his good for his glory And so that's why it's important that we also know that he is the one whose will is in control He is the one that has free will and ours are controlled Why is that important because then we can begin to give him glory for what he's done in our lives Our salvation is not so much a work of what we've done by our own hands, but because of what he's done So you still don't believe well in the future We're going to have some more in-depth studies on this particular topic Touching on God's sovereignty and his providence as as it relates to our salvation But I said earlier that I'm going to give you a question a challenge To see if maybe it might cause you to change your thinking or at least cause you to think a little bit more about this And so here's the question if you have free will meaning you can choose to do what you want to do and Your will is to not sin you choose not to sin then here's the question Why do you?