free-will

It is the Godfather, not God the Father, who makes you an offer you can__ refuse.

He who falls, falls by his own will; and he who stands, stands by God's will.

God allows man to learn His supernatural ends, but the decision to strive towards an end, the choice of course, is left to man's free will. God does not redeem man against his will.

To explain the matter I will employ a simile, which yet, I confess is very dissimilar; but its dissimilitude is greatly in favour of my sentiments. A rich man bestows, on a poor and famishing beggar, alms by which he may be able to maintain himself and his family. Does it cease to be a pure gift, because the beggar extends his hand to receive it? Can it be said with propriety, that 'the alms depended partly on THE LIBERALITY of the Donor, and partly on THE LIBERTY of the Receiver,' though the latter would not have possessed the alms unless he had received it by stretching out his hand? Can it be correctly said, BECAUSE THE BEGGAR IS ALWAYS PREPARED TO RECEIVE, that 'he can have the alms, or not have it, just as he pleases?' If these assertions cannot be truly made about a beggar who receives alms, how much less can they be made about the gift of faith, for the receiving of which far more acts of Divine Grace are required!

Getting unstuck is a matter of choice. If you want flourish in life make a choice today to move into that reality. You can do it.

We must believe in free will. We have no choice.

Help others while respecting the Sacred Law of Free Will. By recognizing and honoring God in others, you recognize and honor God within yourself.

Sure, the outcome was favourable, but what was the cost? Wasn't changing the way she felt about something not far from taking away her free will altogether?

Free will," she agreed, "our greatest gift, the thing that makes life worth living, in spite of all the anguish it brings.

Original sin and conscious awareness of human fallibility is the perpetual agent of transformation in human affairs. Humankind__ behavior is pathological; it is an admixture of instinct and reason, kindness and cruelty, immorality and seeking redemption.

The free-will of men and the sovereignty of God are operationally co-existent, neither Reality impunes the 'co-dependent' authority of the other".R. Alan Woods [2012]

The same way a compact disk isn't responsible for what's recorded on it, that's how we are. You're about as free to act as a programmed computer. You're about as one-of-a-kind as a dollar bill

...if in the heat of the dispute he insists and asks, 'Am I not the master of throwing myself out of the window?' I shall answer him, no; that whilst he preserves his reason there is no probability that the desire of proving his free agency, will become a motive sufficiently powerful to make him sacrifice his life to the attempt: if, notwithstanding this, to prove he is a free agent, he should actually precipitate himself from the window, it would not be a sufficient warranty to conclude he acted freely, but rather that it was the violence of his temperament which spurred him on to this folly. Madness is a state, that depends upon the heat of the blood, not upon the will. A fanatic or a hero, braves death as necessarily as a more phlegmatic man or a coward flies from it.

Free will? Either you follow the word of God, or you'll be punished with eternal hellfire. That's the same kind of "choice" an abuse boyfriend gives you: 'Either you do exactly what I say, or I'll beat the shit out of you.

As Lynn writes: "What angers me is the loss of control. At any moment someone could come to me, be dressed the right way and use the right code, and I no longer have free will. I will do anything that person requests.I hate them for that. Nothing else is as bad as known that I am always out of control; knowing that I am still a laboratory experiment, a puppet whose strings are hidden from ever but my handlers, and I don't yet know how to break free.p216

...in its practical purpose the footpath of freedom is the only one on which it is possible to make use of reason in our conduct. Hence it is as impossible for the subtlest philosophy as for the commonest reasoning to argue freedom away.

Your personal declaration of will is the first step in a seemingly impossible journey.

Joan spoke kindly, explaining patiently, as he always patiently explained things to her. __t__ like in that book you gave me, Jane Eyre. Jane says she isn__ a bird caught in a net. Instead she__ a human being with an independent will and that she has a treasure inside her that will keep her alive, no matter if anything bad happens.