We're all invited to a heavenly feast, but we must RSVP!

Do we have free will, meaning the Will to decide to believe or not to believe God or Jesus as our savior?

My understanding is that God is God and he is love. He wants to save us that's why he came to our wicked world to save his children. And it is Only through Grace that we are saved, but in my understanding, is that Since He is Love, he won't FORCED us to believe Him. We have our FREEDOm (WILL) to choose to believe him or not.

To me, this is the beauty of the relationship. It's a two-way street, where love is to each other. Love is not forced. That's why we state our minds and our hearts to receive Jesus as savior. But, I understand also, even when we pray, when we decide, God through Holy Spirit, ENCOURAGE us to do that. (I read this from CS Lewis Mere Christianity)

The next question is: is that FAIR of God to do that, what about people who never heard of God in the middle of pacific ocean somewhere? My answer is, I don't know, we are not in the position where we can judge other people, God is God and he is perfect, he is just, and his judgement is true.

So, when we DECIDED that we received Jesus as savior, we proclaimed our own connection, reconcilliation with God, to God and to other people. What about predestination? Are we predestined that we are CHOSEN amongst the nations and the people? My first reaction is that: this issue has created such a misunderstaning of Christian values, that claimed that Christians are arrogant! Here is my explaination of predestination, or the way I am trying to picture it:

Since I (used to be) an architect, I will use an architect's office analogy. An organized architect will have in his/her room: a drawing table, a computer, books, an easy chair, and his/her works neatly arranged and organized the way they wanted to be. When s/he has a three year old come into her/his room, he would know, where or what is the three year old target would be. The three year old will target the most interesting (and valuable) drawings on top of the drawing table. WHY? Because he/she (the architect) has a more "superior" intelligence compare to this three year old.

God, (1) the superior intelligent beyond our capacity as human being, would know what will we choose, are we going to believe, or not. God is also (2) the creator, that knows by heart each of us, our thoughts, our way of thinking, our decision making, and the way we grow. God, (3) also stands in the eternity, beyond time, that he is here right now and yesterday and the future. We experience time that passed by us, but God, see them alltogether (that's why NOW is the closest time to eternity which I think is very cool! that we can be as that close to God).

I don't know what will I do without God: he picked me up from dirt and blessed me with his love everyday.

cci

My Boss is A Jewish Carpenter

Since I was little; perhaps when I started to realize that the world was not all about playing and reading alone, and when I started to watch late at night news with my brother, I always want to save the world. The chaotic world. Why would be war? Why would be disasters? Why do people kill each other? Why do some people cannot even find anything to eat while others have so much to waste? And I would say to myself that when I grew up, I want to save the world.

The bigger I got, the more I found out that it is almost impossible to fix the corrupt government system where I lived, since everyone is doing the same thing, and if you want to survive you have to be in the system, whether you like it or not. And the list on my "save the world" mission is just getting longer and longer. It was not about everything, but varies from becoming a missionary; social worker; social minded architect; community planner; librarian; and community organizer who work for the homeless, and one more, a writer who would change everyone's mind through her writing! And none of them fit my mission to save the world. Have I became one of them? No. I am now working in a small organization that work with neighborhoods in Cincinnati, that turn around houses for low income people. It's pretty slow, in my radar, if I want to do this all my life, to be able to save the world!

I would frustate myself on what is it I would do to change this world. It's seems that everywhere I go there are people hurting; there are injustice (some people are so rich they can't figure out what to do with their money, while some is struggling if they would pay gas bill this month of buy medicine for their health); homelessness is all over in the richest country in the world; poverty rate is not even decreasing; while in Sudan, people are killing each other for different ethnic background; and in Indonesia people died for tsunami or other catasthrope that sort of thing. And I began to think about my capacity and what I can really do to save the world. That was enough to frustate me. Enough to give me reason for not to enjoy my days.

Only through Jesus, I found the answer. I don't need to save the world anymore because Jesus did. He did it with love for you and me, on the cross, about 1970s years ago. When I look around, in the faces of drug dealers, or homeless people around my neighborhoods, or angry man on traffic light because someone was cutting him, I could only find one answer: only Jesus would give you peace. Knowing Jesus and accepting him as a savior would give you a peaceful soul. And He loves you whether you like it or not.

We can track the way the world is in this state now from two people: Adam and Eve. They had broken the relationship between God and man by betraying God; violating his trust. They sin. And death is the wages of sin. It's not that they would die right away; the consequences of sin doesn't come right away, but from that point of time, we live in a broken world, not as in the way God created it. And man continue to do his own things: such as war, killing other people; prejudice; selfishness; self-preservation; indulgences; ignorance, whatever. But God has a grand plan for us. He humbled himself to be born of a virgin, as a human being, his creation, and saved us from all of the wages of sin that we're continue doing in our lives. Only Jesus could save us. And it was done by God, through his grace, not on our own. "My grace is sufficient for you" said God to Paul. And His grace is sufficient for all of us.

So I started to work for Him, this Jesus, the carpenter guy born in the middle east 2000 years ago, who was crazy enough to declare that he was (is) God in front of jewish religious leaders, and crazy enough to think that Love is the answer, and proved that by laying his life for you and me on the cross, so that, when you believe in him, you would find peace, cause the damaged bridge between you and your creator had been broken, and that nothing else could separate you from his love. That was a beautiful, powerful love story. And I am still, to this date, become a God project, where he continue to work on me and my soul and my brokeness, while I chose to continue doing what I am doing, according to what talent I think God has blessed me with, and to use that as a way to work for Him. No matter what it is that I do, where I am in life, and what is it I am working on, God would bless me and use me for his purpose on earth. Just as what he has in every soul on earth: a unique plan and mission.

Writing Resources Beyond Google

Google is great, but there are more than google when researching materials for your writing. Here is a list I found at the library I want to share:

refdesk.com

lii.org

yourdictionary.com>

americanpressinstitute.org/toolbox

newspapers.com

google.com/help/refinesearch

archive.org

lib.umich.edu/govdocs/stats.html