Daily Devotional for August 22nd

Restoration of Our Freewill

I mentioned yesterday that our world is filled with so much illusions and false teachings working to hinder and disable our free choice in Jesus Christ. It practically means our freewill could be impaired. Yes, it is possible to impair and even deprive somebody of his/her freewill! It involves profound philosophical concept and ideas. Nevertheless, freewill is basically independent and free volition on a pragmatic ground. In other words, freewill is the power to make conscious choices and deliberate decisions in a free and independent manner.

Nowadays, some people question the existence of “freewill” because they claimed that there is scientific evidence showing that people make decisions before the area of the brain responsible for rational thought even gets activated. It is definitely an issue too complicated to be thoroughly discussed in this article. However, we may refer to some of our daily experiences to get an insight of the issue. Parents know well how conflicting or uncontrollable our children and youngsters are. Their behavior is not only rebellious but often unpredictable. For instance, most young children would be excited and happy to go to parties and most of them would make honest promises for behaving well. Nevertheless, clashes and quarrels among youngsters are almost inevitable subsequently. This is a typical illustration for our (youngsters’ at least) inability to fulfill or live up to our freewill and its promises.

Adults are not much better. Taking the example of making New Year resolutions, an American statistics shows that in the longer term, 80% of resolution-makers become resolution-breakers. If you would make a log of what you’ve been decided or resolved to achieve or do and follow them up diligently, I am sure you would agree with me that we are more often side-tracked or off-tracked than not. One of the main reasons behind such discrepancies is the impairment of our freewill. The question becomes then what shall we do to restore our freewill?

The Apostle Paul states that (II Cor. 3:17) the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. In order to regain freedom and hence freewill, we must trust and be abide by the Lord Jesus. The reason is obvious, no one can be living and free before God our Father without a regenerated soul. From a biblical point of view, we may attribute the impairment of our freewill to sin. Indeed, we were once dead but are alive, were lost but are found as God’s children. In order to keep and cherish such a miraculous regeneration and the faculty of freewill, let’s be reminded of the importance of keeping our heart with all vigilance; for from it flow the springs of life (Pro. 4:23).