THE GOD I KNOW Chapter Eight

THE GOD I KNOW

Chapter Eight

Free Agency and Prayer

It is against the law of free agency for the God I know to make our choices. They will not do it. Whenever we pray asking that God make a choice for us, the prayer is answered by allowing us to struggle until we can answer it for ourself. While God sees us as divine, They know we don’t see ourselves that way. They know the only way we will be able to see our divine natures is by using our free agency to choose what is carnal in us and what is divine – what we want to keep and what we want to discard. We can’t tap into God’s power with prayers which would rob us of our free agency or others of their free agency.

God will not answer the following type of prayer: “My school teacher and my Sunday School teacher are telling me two different things – which one should I believe?” or “I love both Richard and Tim -- which one should I marry?” or “Please make John under-stand me.”

These prayers would place on God the responsibility of making choices which determine the course of our lives. The purpose of mortality is to teach us the differences between good and evil. We learn those differences as we experience the consequences of our personal choices. If we could have learned the difference by simply asking God, there would have been no need for mortality.

At birth we are ignorant of both good and evil. Our environment introduces us to some of both, but does not necessarily differentiate accurately between truth and error, right and wrong. God’s gift of free agency gives us the right and the RESPONSIBILITY to be selective about what we accept and reject. If God chose for us, we would be robbed of the responsibility inherent in freedom. And we would not grow.

The only thing God can do, when we pray a prayer relinquishing our free agency, is let us struggle within ourself until we make a decision that is in harmony with our current knowledge. If most of our knowledge has to do with temporal, carnal understanding, we will be most comfortable making a choice that lets us abide the carnal laws upon which we are basing our decision. If our search for truth has drawn us into knowledge of divine wisdom, we will be more comfortable making a choice which allows us to abide those divine laws which we understand.

At any point of decision, if we make a carnal choice, we will be further away from God and from the truth of our divine nature. If we compromise two contradictory points of view so we can avoid changing, our knowledge will remain static. If we take a stand with our divine nature, God can confirm our choice as being harmonious with divine truth, and can endow us with a more sure knowledge of who we really are.

Choice and Change

Making a new choice will result in change, and changing is not easy.
Carnal man will try to avoid change until it is forced upon him, and then will resist it up to the point where accepting it becomes easier. Satan wins a lot of battles using these facts of carnal man’s laziness.

Divine man’s need, however, is to become – to be freed from the shackles that chain him to carnality – to grow and progress – to CHANGE from a lesser being to a greater being. The price he is required to pay for these changes is never too high, because with each new truth he embraces, he is freed to comprehend more truth. His decisions to change and his reasons for desiring change are continually based upon greater knowledge.

One of the most overwhelmingly humbling mysteries of the love of God is that it is God’s will for our divine will to be accomplished. In the infinite wisdom of God’s caring about each individual intelligence, God knows how to direct each of us to the fulfilling of his/her greatest potential. God knows what we need. The sooner we use our free agency to ask for help in ways They CAN help, the sooner we will reach our potential.

While it is fruitless for us to pray that God will make choices for us, it is vital to our becoming that we dare the possibility of change by choosing to pray prayers that will allow God to help us.

It is important to realize that if we don’t want to change, we will be left on our own. Satan will leave us alone because mortals are fallen and already in his domain. God will leave us alone because They honor our free agency. If we do want to change, if something inside us is not content with the status quo, we will certainly be subject to both forces.

Satan has no scruples about how he will influence us. He does not pay any attention to free agency. His methods are force and deceit. I’ve often wondered if Satan has our connections to God wire-tapped, because it seems that, if in our ignorance we pray prayers that ask God to ignore our free agency, Satan answers them with whatever response he sees as being potentially most destructive to our divine nature and most appealing to our carnal nature. We need to learn wisdom in how we pray and in how we listen for answers, so we will be able to discern whom our answers come from. Otherwise we may be deceived into thinking that good is evil and evil is good. Satan lets us imagine his answers are God’s answers. God continues to honor our freedom of choice, sincerely hoping that we will eventually be true to our divine nature and reach out in prayers which They can answer.

God can inspire us with answers to such prayers as: “Please help me understand more clearly Your concept of truth.” “What is the order of God?: How do you love me?” God can reinforce our divine self-confidence if we pray, “Help me to make this choice in harmony with Thy will.” “Please give me eyes that see, ears that hear and a heart that understands Your ways.” “Bless me with wisdom.” “Show me the way.”
Even when we are saying prayers which God can answer while still honoring our free agency, we may wonder whether the answers we receive come from God, or whether we are telling ourselves the answers we want to hear, or whether we are being deceived by Satan. These are valid concerns. God doesn’t often turn on flashing lights which announce “THIS IS GOD SPEAKING!” We must be alert to subtler forms of communication – a warmth in the heart, a surge of joy as an idea forms in our mind, a sensation of light flowing through us. If we believe that the Holy Ghost is our own divine nature, and if we are in tune with that spirit, we can trust that the answers which come from ourself are the same answers God would give. If we are principally in tune with our carnal nature, it is quite likely that we will be deceived both by Satan and by ourselves. Even in our prayers we will rationalize and blame, rather than taking responsibility for our own behavior.

Some of the biggest contradictions we face are created because our lack of knowledge causes us to believe that we have to somehow reconcile what we have personally experienced of the truth of God with what we have been told is true by fallen men. We don’t have to do that. We do have the responsibility to separate the evil from the good, reject the evil and embrace the good. When we can see a principle of God’s truth clearly enough to freely choose it, God quickens us with a confirmation of rightness which allows us to stand in a sure place of truth where Satan (or misguided men) have no more power to deceive us in that principle.