2008 Note:  I wrote this shortly after the 2002 first post on faith -  see the note there for more info.  I think I can detect traces of the libertarianism so prevalant in my worldview nowadays!

I thought that I should briefly expand the ideas in my post “Faith is spelt n.o.r.i.s.k.”, to include Luke 11. In Luke 11 Jesus teaches his disciples how to pray. He goes on to say in verse 9 “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”  It should be noted that upon hearing and seeking God’s will He will often give you a choice.  There are an (almost infinite) set of wrong decisions, and usually at least one or many more right decisions. The default, in my experience, is that we have a set of right and wrong options to make when faced with a decision, but sometimes, comparitively rarely I would say, there are times when there’s just one right decision.

There’s so much more freedom than I personally used to live in years ago, I don’t have to seek God’s will for hours on end, yes I need to make myself available, give God the time, space and oppportunity to speak into my life, but the reality of decisions is usually about Collosians 3v15 “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts”, literally, let the peace of God referee in your heart. Let the peace of God call ‘offside’ and ‘foul’ when you’re going in the wrong direction, etc. It’s my experience that when life presents you with a decision there are any number of right and wrong moves, and the options you have (based on the character that God has made you so far, along with what you percieve to be correct via God’s word, and the peace of God), may still leave you with many alternatives that God is happy with you choosing. Why? Because he already knows what you’re going to choose and has planned ahead for it, so, so long as you do pick one of the options that God is happy with, you can’t go wrong.

So sometimes there is only one right option – at that point the decision is obvious. For some the idea of only having one right option seems appealing, it appears to take the pressure off us getting it right, but that is neither reality nor in harmony with the freedom God is giving us. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.