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LOOKING FOR MY FREE WILL
I keep hearing about this thing they call free will. I can't find mine. True, I have a will, but it is a part of me and my heart – desires and emotions – are evil. The prophet wrote in Jeremiah 17:9, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” My will is to act according to my heart. I sin because it is my will to sin. If my will was free from my nature I could will to stop sinning and do so, but I cannot. I have studied the Bible for many years and talked to many people about this thing called free will. None of them have been able to show me even one verse in the Bible that says that we humans have a free will. I cannot find such a verse either. And since I am not the only one who commits sin, I think it must be that everyone has a “deceitful” and “wicked” heart as the verse quoted above says. Jesus said to some very religious people, “O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh,” (Matthew 12:34). Another place the Lord said, “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies,” (Matthew 15:19). So while I may want to do what is right, my will is not free from my heart and I still sin. Since I cannot remember having a free will, I do not remember losing it. It seems to me that Adam and Eve had free wills because they were created in untested holiness. So I think Adam must have lost free will for himself and all his posterity in his fall. Jesus said: “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life,” (John 5:39-40). The people to whom Jesus spoke these words had a problem. They did not have a will to come to Christ. And not having a free will to enable them to come in a saving way to Him, they could not come because their will was bound to their heart. That is why Jesus said, “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day,” (John 6:44). If anyone can tell me how to get a free will, I would be glad to hear from them. If you know of anyone who has a free will, or if you have a free will, please tell me how you know your will is free from your evil heart. A person who has a free will and is therefore sinless should be able to tell me how they got their free will and should no longer sin.
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