1 John 4:8-9
God is LOVE
8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.
Deuteronomy 4:29-31
Seeking God with Your Heart and Soul
29 But if from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find him if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul. 30 When you are in distress and all these things have happened to you, then in later days you will return to the Lord your God and obey him. 31 For the Lord your God is a merciful God; he will not abandon or destroy you or forget the covenant with your ancestors, which he confirmed to them by oath.
John 7:17
Jesus Does God's Will
17 Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.
Isaiah 48:18
Following God's Commandments
18 If only you had paid attention to my commands, your peace would have been like a river, your well-being like the waves of the sea.
John 4:34
Jesus Does the Will of His Father
34 "My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.
Revelation 3:20
God Will Come to Those Who Listen to Him
20 Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.
1 Corinthians 13:8-13
The Three Great Virtues of Faith, Hope, and Love
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Free will is an interesting thing...God gives us free will...God gives us freedom to make our own daily choices...The problem comes when we make poor choices and poor decisions...The problem is that we always do not follow God's will...As Jesus tells us His food is to do the will of God, who sent Him to earth and to finish the work that God gave Him...Jesus always followed and follows God and His will...We do not...We do not always do God's will and because of that evil enters the world...And because we do not follow His will, the world does not operate peacefully, lovingly, and abundantly...We know that God has made us free beings with free will, and because of this free will we can either use it for good or for evil. ..
Moses wrote in Deuteronomy that if we seek the LORD our God, we will find Him...If we seek Him with all of our heart heart and all of our soul, we will find Him...When we are in distress and different troubles and things have happened to us, we will return to the LORD our God and then do His will...(When we are in trouble, we seem to pray more)...For the LORD our God is a forgiving and merciful God...He will not abandon or destroy us, nor will He ever forget the covenant He made with our ancestors, which He confirmed to them with an oath...
Free will allows us to seek the LORD...Free will allows for many good things in life, like joy, faith, hope, and love...For those who believe in free will, we believe that we choose to seek God and choose to have faith and believe in God...I do believe, we choose to have faith with the free will He gives us...But free will gives us a life, with a possibility of things going wrong...Free will is a price worth paying when we have happiness, love, faith, and hope...But on the other side of free will, it seems a much more difficult decision (to want and have free will), when we think that by having free will it causes us to have sickness, death, grieving, troubles, and evil (and the times that we are in distress)...
C. S. Lewis said this about free will...“God created things which had free will...That means creatures which can go wrong or right...Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong, but I can't...If a thing is free to be good it's also free to be bad...And free will is what has made evil possible...Why, then, did God give them free will?...Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having...A world of automata -of creatures that worked like machines- would hardly be worth creating...The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water...And for that they've got to be free...Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently, He thought it worth the risk. (...)...If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will -that is, for making a real world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings- then we may take it it is worth paying.”...
God thinks free will is worth the risk...Free will is is a price worth paying...And thus the evil and wickedness of the world is worth the risk, when all the good things are considered surrounding our free will in following and seeking God and doing His will...So, if we are free to do good and be good, then we are also free to be bad and do evil...We see this evil on many days in our headlines...People often choose to be bad and evil...
When we choose to do His will, then the world operates in the right way...Wouldn't it be a better world is all our choices were based on love...And we know that God is LOVE...But we always do not, so the world always does not (operate in the right way)...But that being said, in the end God's will does get done...Regardless, of our wrong decisions...God is totally in control and has Divine Providence over the world...And by His will always getting done shows us something about Him...Even though we get free will from Him and make many wrong decisions and sin -His will still gets done...This shows the sovereign power and control He has over the universe...