Quote:
Originally Posted by uewsh944
……executive decision……
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Hello and welcome to the forum. All executive decisions in Christian lives come from God.
Jesus is the vine. In the same way that grapes or leaves do not themselves choose which vine they'll attach to but are are produced by the vine and grow because the vine nourishes them, Christian lives develop as part of Christ.
I Peter 1:18-28 Ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you.
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We exist in time, temporarily, but God sees through time. You know those old "stereoscopes" where you put in a card with two photos to produce a 3D effect? Each eye gets a slightly different view, a waterfall in my example, but imagine if you could see the picture from every possible angle – and not only from every angle in space but in time as well? It's difficult to imagine what that would be like, impossible probably, but the concept is easy enough to grasp. Here is the waterfall.
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God sees waterfalls form every perspective in time and space simultaneously. He knows when they will freeze and when they will run dry. Similarly plants. From the moment of their creation He knew which ones would have fruit and which ones would have grains for the animals to eat – once He'd created the animals. Finally He created us. Knowing as He did that Redemption would be necessary because no-one took the hint when He smote us with The Flood and just kept on sinning anyway, even before the foundation of the world God ordained that suitable blood would be available to drain out onto the world so that Redemption could be effected. It was a terrible price to pay.
Something else happened before the foundation of the world. Not only could God see all the plants and animals, He could also see you. He knew all about you and everything you did and everywhere you went and whether you would be adopted in love through Jesus Christ. You could think of this as ultrascopic vision. It's not for me to speculate how many minimum units of time exist in the universe or whether they're a necessary by-product of quantum gravity because however many there are, that's how many eyepieces there for God to use when observing the wonderful world He created and how it's ruined by sin.
GOD'S ULTRASCOPE
HE CAN SEE YOU
HE KNOWS EVERYTHING YOU DO
EVERYTHING YOU THINK
EVERYTHING YOU ARE
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Ephesians 1:3-5 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will.
Whether we flutter like leaves or swell like fruits upon His vine is not determined by any executive action from us. Who we are and what we become was determined before the world was created, perhaps like the trajectory of a droplet of water seen frozen in time—for a moment in a picture—which although we know what the trajectory will be in no way has the forces acting upon it diminished. We are free to choose. We can choose God's Perfect Love or choose to fry. But like the fruit on a vine, whether we grow or wither is not determined by us. It comes from the sap in the stem.