Because free will – although it makes evil possible – is the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. Any parent can verify this: obedience and even hugs can be compelled from young children, but their freely given love is what truly matters. (C S Lewis)
If we ask "why me" when problems come, then we should also ask "why me" for our blessings. Through prayer we should not so much ask for relief, but rather ask to discern God's will and ask to give us strength to carry out his will. (recording of Fransican Friars, 11/15/96)
God will not be out done in generousity.
We can't save ourself because only God saves.
A man should seek nothing at all, neither knowledge nor understanding nor inwardness nor piety nor repose, but only God's will. Knowing God outside of God's will is naught. In God's will, all things are, and are something, they are pleasing to God and are perfect. A man should never pray for any transitory thing: but if he would pray for anything, he should pray for God's will alone and nothing else, and then he gets everything. (Contemplation, p66)
God wills to bring us unto salvation (Matt )
God wills to forgive us while we are/were sinners ( )
God wills to give us dominion over the earth (Gen )
God willed that man s/b left in the hand of his own counsel. (Sir 15:14)
Reason for creating man was to love him?????
For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be. (Matt 6:21)
"Whoever loses his life for me will find it (Matt 16:25).
We must entertain those dark spaces inside us that,
when scratched up and turned over, offer darkness
and death to the seeds of a transformative new life. (SRC????)
Not my will, but thy will be done. (Matt 26:42)
The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. (Matt 26:41)
Many are called, but few are chosen. (Matt 22:14)
In the Lord's Prayer "Thy will be done on earth as in heaven (Matt )" may mean "your character/nature/spirit be done willingly by us here on earth as it is done in heaven". (Randy)
Cannot God work on matter by His will, as easily as we ourselves work on the matter of our bodies by our wills? (Rebld, p252)
Don't demand explanations. Don't lean on your ability to understand. Don't turn loose of your faith. But do choose to trust Him, by the exercise of the will He has placed within you. (p89, When God Doesn't Make Sense by Dr. James Dobson)
Christ saying "not my will but thine be done" showed MATURITY and BALANCE and HUMANITY and all the rest. And if we want to help save the human race, there's only one way to do it - with Christ, "... through Him, with Him, and in Him." (Crucifix, p86)
By giving his human creatures free will, God offered them all kinds of choice. The most important one is whether to reciprocate his love and how intensely to reciprocate it. He also sets up a rival to selfless love - a rival to himself - and bids his human subject [to] choose. (Quest, p54)
In his will is our peace. (Sign at North Assembly of God)
You can end all war tomorrow. Simply. Easily. All it takes - all it has ever taken - is for all of you to agree. I will do nothing for you that you will not do for your Self. That is the law and the prophets. (Conversations, p50)
There is no way of salvation except by changing one's consciousness, which means trying to do the Will of God. (p135) We abuse our free will, trying to work apart from God. Our business is to bring our whole nature into conformity with the Will of God, by constant prayer. Paradiso is the state of the soul that has achieved its conscious unity with the Divine Will. (p160)(Sermon on the Mount)
When pliable our Lord can lead you at last to the spiritual perfection and union with his WILL, which is perfect love. In this time of suffering your love becomes both chaste and perfect - it is then that you see your God and your love, one with his love. Utterly despoiled of self and clothed in nothing but him, you will experience him as he really is, stripped of all the trappings of sensible delights, the mind sees God is no more seprate from him, because they have become one in grace. (The Cloud of Unknowing, the the Book of Privy Counseling, p186)
The reason Jesus could move to a higher dimension of viewing evil and sufferings was that he was vitally conscious that everything he did came from his Father. He lived only to please the Father [and to do his will] and bring him glory. (Trust, p106)