In this Daily Mail article about what summer was like before air-conditioning, young boys are shown cooling off by the spray of a fire hydrant in New York’s super-heated Lower East Side in 1957.
Beyond God’s completed work of creation, man’s continued relationship with Him is pretty much one-sided: i.e. How it goes – or doesn’t go – is all on our side. We have our hands on the spigot. We can fully open it, open it somewhat, open it to a mere trickle, or close it down.
All the while God’s love and forgiveness is constant and extravagant. God’s love for His creation has consistently filled the entire world and every cell in every body since the beginning.
Nothing can diminish God’s love for us. Neither sin nor rebellion nor apathy nor full-out rejection.
Also nothing can alter God’s perfect justice, which is completely vested in the principles of nature which He set in place at creation, His perfectly timed and executed miracles, and His respect of our free will.
So now that we see God’s part in the relationship, let’s talk about man’s part, which is entirely grounded in our free will. Given to all equally, free will is neither punitive, discriminatory, nor arbitrary. God will never interfere with our free will.
Free will is God’s gift to mankind so that we are free to choose Him, not choose Him, stand against Him, love Him, be indifferent about Him, or, even, hate Him. With our hands firmly on the handle of the spigot, we have the freedom to choose the type and intensity of relationship we want with God.
Speaking from the viewpoint of some who have opened the “God relationship” spigot as far as possible (at this point in our lives, anyway), we can definitely recommend to others that they do the same. In other words, we agree with the author of Ephesians 3:18-19: “I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
When we choose to open ourselves to God, He acts in accord with His perfect loving and forgiving nature and His perfect intimate knowledge about each of us. When we choose God we choose to trust His ways. We choose His decisions and plans for our lives.
When we choose God, we are choosing to trust His good intentions toward us. And, since He loves us with unconditional, agape love we are assured that His intentions EXACTLY match what we really desire, what we really need, what we really delight in, what will really fulfill us.
Although, in our estimation, intentionally choosing God is the best use of our free will, it is also true that God’s goodness is available to all of creation whether He is chosen or not. Jesus is recorded as saying in Mark 9:40: “Whoever is not against us is for us.”
In other words, not choosing is still a choice. Failing to exercise our free will to invite God into our life, doesn’t negate His goodness but, rather, negates the flow of his goodness into our lives. In control of the spigot, we can use our free will to stand against God’s goodness and completely block the flow.
Still, God’s protection, mercy, healing, comfort, etc. is always available to all. Jesus, who is the great equalizer, is recorded as not only saying this once in the gospel of John, but He is recorded as saying it twice: “I will do whatever you ask in my name . . . If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.” (John 14:13-14)
God IS love. God is kind. God does protect. God does comfort. God does heal.
So what causes someone to not choose God or, even, stand against Him? It is the influence of generations of men (from Adam and Eve on) desiring their own way according to their own desires using their own power. Men wanting to make their own plans, to operate with their own devices and their own inventions. It is generations of men hurting each other, wounding their children, telling lies about God, hiding His goodness, making the things of God sound like foolishness, craziness, an absurdity. It is generations of men inflating and promoting the value, success and importance of what man can do ON HIS OWN (without God).
So how do we choose God? According to the writer of 1 John 4, God lives in those who have “love for one another.“
Seems simple especially when we consider that it is through God’s love for us that we love others. “We love because He first loved us.” (1 John 4:19) “God is love and those who abide in love abide in God and God abides in them.” (1 John 4:16)
It is also out of God’s love for us that we choose to love Him. We don’t choose to love God and open the spigot of His goodness because it pleases God, although it does. God doesn’t need us to choose Him. God has no ego to be stroked or appeased. God isn’t changed by our choosing Him. We are changed by choosing God.
Choosing God is worship and testifies that the Holy Spirit abides in us. “If we love one another, God lives in us, and His love is perfected in us. By this we know that we bide in Him and He has given us His Spirit.” (1 John 4:13-14)
When we choose God we stop searching for anything or anyone else to protect us, to provide for us, to satisfy us, to fulfill us. We are saying, “All my hope is in you Lord.” (Psalm 39:7) This makes us free to love ourselves and others.
So, choose freely (open the spigot) and let it flow!
Catholic Apostolic Group 