I think there’s no bigger wild card in the entirety of existence than this small little gift from God Who is Love: free will.

If we think about it, free will is some super wild craziness.

So here’s my 12-point manifesto on the superwildcraziness of free will.

Point 1: God is Smart

God, in all His omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence and eternity knew Adam and Eve would eat the accursed fruit of that lesser tree and thereby corrupt all of human DNA.

Point 2: God is a Risk-Taker

Yet He Who is Love compelled Himself to give us free will. To give us a choice. To let us determine whether we would (A) be in union with Him forever or (B) separated from Him forever. He gave us the option to choose whether we’d want (A) His Divine Nature Awesome or (B) a shady corrupt replica of perfect creative life.

Because He loves us so dearly, He could not bear to see His prized possession of ALL CREATION, created to be in His perfect image, become any less exquisite and precious by stripping us of free will, of the choice to fail (aka that we would leave Him entirely and atrophy into crude creatures.)

He risked that we would abandon Him, insult Him, spit in His face…trample upon His gift of Love and perfect unity with Him by kissing another lesser lover. He instead decided to make us in His image, to form us out of Love. And Love is free; it cannot manipulate or control or make robots. God, in a way, couldn’t not give us free will. It wasn’t in His nature to not do so. (Wow that’s a lot of double negatives).

Point 3: The Mini-Trinity

This means that free will is embedded into Love and Life–free will cannot be separated from love and life. Love-Life-FreeWill are like a cute & complicated mini-trinity. When God breathed Adam and Eve to life, automatically He gave them free will.

Point 4: Immature Decisions

In the misguided & immature exercise of their gift of free will (again, free will is inseparable from Love, Life, and the definition of human), Adam and Eve foolishly ate the fruit, thereby relinquishing their birthright and inheritance to Satan.

Point 5: Lawlessness, Slavery, and More Lawlessness

God is Love. He was pissed at the deception, lawlessness/Sin-as-noun (sin IS lawlessness) that stumbled Adam and Eve into enslavement to the father of frontin’, the progenitor of pride, the fallen-from-glory Lucifer (who, interestingly, CHOSE to rebel against God. Yes, angels have free will too).

A principle of creation is that things get reproduced, seed bears seed after its own kind. Shocking, yes I know. Satan, having been created by the Creator and having enjoyed a pretty freaking very high position in heaven–I mean, come on, he was like THE worship leader–would have understood this principle of creation. Satan, carrying the seed of lawlessness & rebellion, was intent upon manipulating this principle of creation toward destruction by producing more lawlessness. What better way to hurt God than to attack God’s most prized possession (aka humans, you and me)? Thus, we see the seed/fruit of Satan’s lawlessness fully manifest in Cain, the second generation of mankind. The nature of sin is to escalate exponentially; that’s why its wages = death.

Point 6: The End of Lawlessness & Slavery

God is Love, and because He cannot not Love, He sent and anointed Jesus Christ to put an end to the riddiks sin-slavery-death trifecta and give us back our freedom, our free will–once we had no choice but to obey Sin and the spirits that are under the control of Sin, no choice but to be slaves to lawlessness. Humanity was once slaves to Sin and all its cronies, to the perverted cycle of lawlessness and more lawlessness and more lawlessness. But then Jesus Christ.

And this is what gets me every time: Jesus Christ is fully human, fully God. Which means…

Point 7: Jesus Has Free Will.

At any second during His entire Life leading up to the crucifixion He could have simply said, “No. I will not die for the sins of mankind. I’ve changed my mind.”

But He didn’t. Oh THANK GOD GOD ISN’T CAPRICIOUS!!! Ha, no wonder He sometimes takes a reallyyyyy long time to say something. Jesus is the Integritous Word. (Erm, I couldn’t think of the adjective form of integrity. Probably because it doesn’t exist. So I made up a word.) Once He says something it’s not like He can take it back and be all wishy-washy and flaky. Oh my, could you imagine if Jesus were like, “Oh~ dang, sorry Peter…I didn’t actually mean to tell you to follow me…I dunno, I kinda changed my mind after you denied me and stuff.” No deceit is upon His lips. When He says He’ll go with you to the movies, you don’t have to worry about getting stood up 😉

Ok, back on track: Jesus kept choosing to obey the Father, to Love the Father; He consistently chose to invest in people, share revelation, reveal the Nature and Character of God, heal people, set people free from demons and their issues, walk in the fullness of His authority, teach those who wandered like sheep without a shepherd;

He chose to humble Himself and subject Himself to being stripped naked, pummeled in the face, battered with a whip, bloodied, beaten to a pulp, spit on, insulted, slapped, jeered, made fun of, betrayed, misunderstood, abandoned, rejected;

Jesus unwaveringly chose to take our place. He is rock solid~once He decides, He sees his decision through to the end! Wow.

And His one act of free will (remember, He’s the 2nd Adam) went all the way back into chronological time and undid the lawlessness that was done during the first generation of humanity. He put an end to slavery, death, sin once and for all.

It was for Freedom’s sake that Christ set us Free.

Point 8: Stop Testing Jesus

Oftentimes we forget that Jesus has free will, as do the angels, as does God. It gives a whole new glittering-ness to the song, “Faithful One, so unchanging…”

God is not a bitter, angry, tempestuous, capricious emo-lover, though we ourselves might be moody and inconstant.

Jesus is such a trustworthy friend, He proved it on that cross from beginning to end. So you see how obviously riddiks it is for us to keep asking Jesus to prove Himself as a trustworthy, faithful Lover.

Yet I think we test Jesus a lot more often than we would if we could just let that Truth work itself into the fibers of our consciousness that JESUS HAS FREE WILL and HE IS STILL CRAZY ABOUT YOU AND ME and HE IS STILL INTERCEDING FOR US all BY HIS CHOICE because truly truly GOD IS LOVE.

Point 9: Don’t Fear Free Will

So now that we understand that free will is a GOOD thing, that it was originally intended as a life-giving, love-encased GIFT, we should stop being so freaking afraid of exercising our free will. We won’t make the same immature & misguided mistakes that our blessed Adam or Eve did. Why? Because JESUS CHRIST, who said “it is finished.” Because we have HOLY SPIRIT intertwined with our spirit, and He guides us into all Truth. We cannot not succeed.

In fact, we need to be BOLD in claiming our free will back because the righteous are as bold as lions. And we have been made righteous by the Blood of Jesus!

Point 10: We Are Free to Choose Correctly

So, we may be really good at asking God what He wants and submitting to His will. And this is SO GOOD, to remain humble before Him and serve Him, have teachable hearts that welcome the Father’s discipline. But He disciplines us so that we might know Him more fully, to grow and mature, be perfected in Love…

There comes a point when conversations with God similar to this will begin to happen:

Child of God: “So Pops, what should I do about X situation? Should I go or stay? Tell me, what do you want?”
God: “Hmm…well, why don’t you decide this one.”
Child of God: “Huh? Come again?”
God: “Son, you choose. What do you want to do?”
Child of God: “Whoa whoa, wait a minute. Uh-uh. Just tell me what to do, I’ll do it. My will is your will, whatever you want I’m coolio with. Really. Just tell me….I’m waiting on you…still waiting…yup and still waiting…”
God: “Exactly. I know my will is your will. So, choose. Jesus died to give you back your free will. I want to see you use it, I want to see you step into the full gloriousness that I breathed into you. You are my child, you carry my nature. I cannot not believe in you. So, choose. I’m right here. I’m right here. I trust you. You choose.”

How many of you have been having more and more conversations like this with God? Yea. It’s nerve-wrecking and terrifying to encounter such a Love like this that so fearlessly believes in us. It’s counter to our world culture and mentality. It’s abnormally normal.

Another facet is that we’ve been so wonderfully well-trained to submit to God’s will, and again I reiterate that this is GREAT, it’s WONDERFUL, don’t stop doing this! But a negative side-effect is that it’s caused many of us to passively sit around on our confused bums wanting God to just tell us what to do because it’s far easier being a mindless robot following rules than a glorious fully manifest Son of God who trusts God and knows his/her choices will always be the right choice because we walk in perfected and mature unity with our Father.

Point 11: Choice Breaks Chains

One of the first things God told me after He saved me from a life of crappy relationships, one-night stands, drugs, booziness, depression, sadness and you-name-its, was “CHOICE BREAKS CHAINS.”

The CHOICE that God made to send His Son

The CHOICE that Jesus made to Love like His Father Loves

The CHOICE that we make to say yes and yes again to God, to Love, to Holiness, to Life

The CHOICE to be free in agreement with Truth

God reconciled ALL THINGS through Jesus~this means that even free will, which Lucifer used toward corrupt and destructive means, has also been justly restored and reconciled towards life, creation, love, righteousness.

Point 12: Be a Revolution

God turns every bad choice we made/make into a good one. Because ALL THINGS work together for the GOOD of those who LOVE GOD, who are called according to HIS PURPOSE. You love God because He first loved us. His Love has called you to His purpose. He makes all things work together for your good. Can we really believe this and LIVE like it? If so, that’s revolutionary. And that is normal.

So…your assignment?

Go break some chains, express your growing maturity and the nature of Christ in you, and go make that decision you’ve been putting off out of fear of failure, success, shame, whatever. You cannot not make a vibrant, beautiful choice–because Jesus Christ. Period.