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To: Mad Dawg
God does not await us in the sense of Him reacting to what we are going to do. When we become ready, it is only because the Spirit has already been at work in our lives. Again, it is all His initiative, His drawing, His wooing, and His sovereign action on our minds and hearts by supplying us with believing faith. Faith itself is, after all, a fruit of the Spirit.

The minute you say "wooing" we have you.

Uh, Mad Dawg, you don't "have" anyone so don't get yourself all in a lather. Wooing is NOT about asking permission. It is the simple proclamation, "come to me!" It is a making attractive of oneself to the other person. It is a showing of adoration to the other person. The Holy Spirit approaches those who are caught up in their sin. Touches those lives and hearts. Issues forth the wooing words of salvation. "Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." In short, it is the invitation to enter into His joy. But it isn't asking permission to enter one's life. He is already there. The marriage has been arranged. The Bridegroom awaits the signal to go get His bride.

I feel like that's what we've been saying all along. Wooing is ALL ABOUT asking permission - -don't you remember? And yet, if you know your business, you know the permission will be granted when you ask it.
No, that's dating, not wooing. Wooing sometimes comes before Dating, sometimes after marriage (in human terms). In dating, the man asks the woman if she would escort him. Dating as we know it is largely a more recent invention. Formerly, it used to be that a groom would ask the bride's father if he could date his daughter. But, that was our Western culture. In Jewish culture, it was often that the marriage was arranged to begin with. Parallels to human systems will necessarily be inadequate to explain the divine courtship. Suffice it to say, we do not choose Him, He chooses us. He then draws us. Gives us faith to believe and the will to do so. And all that He draws will come.

The problem is, Does God wnat lapdogs or free humans? Yes there's a sense, I tried to address is above in the post about geometry, in which we are swallowed up, overwhelmed, ravished and glad to be so. But the lover always wants to hear the freely given "yes," of the beloved. He can compel a "yes," surely, but what is that worth? The challenge of wooing is to get a free yes, and yet the wooer knows he will get one, as I say, if he knows his craft.
As I have said, Christians are the only free humans in the equation. God gives us our freedom. Before that, we are slaves to sin and dead to Christ. The initiative is all His. Every bit of it. Once quickened, we are given the ability to truly do right for the right motives as well as the free will to do evil (within the bounds of God's plan). We are not "lap dogs" or robots. Yet, we are under God's sovereign care and He will not let us ultimately and finally fall.

He is such a sovereign that His subjects freely, eagerly, and joyfully grant him Sovereignty
Uh, Sovereignty isn't granted. It is something you either have or don't have. God doesn't have His sovereignty because we "granted it to Him." Otherwise, we are the sovereign one's who did God a favor.
7,814 posted on 01/27/2007 8:19:41 PM PST by Blogger
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To: Blogger
I am not in a lather. Or I wasn't until yhou said I was.

When you choose an unfortunate metaphor, I'd ask you not to make personal comments when the logical consequences of your metaphor are used to make a point you don't like and didn't foresee. The use of your words to show the possible areas of examination in your thought is not a hostile action and does not call for a hostile response. If you don't want your assertions to be examined, don't make any.

Wooing is NOT about asking permission.

Are you kidding? So you went to your future wife and said, "We're getting married." And she said, "Whatever." I bet. And even in an arranged marriage, the bride can acquiesce willingly or unwillingly.

And I wasn't talking about wooing in the old days, and didn't know you were. I was talking about wooing right now. Any son of a gun comes to my daughter and says, "We're getting married, the choice is all mine," he'll have me to contend with, and it will be ugly.

For the rest of it, we are not communicating. One doesn't make a refutation by asserting the contrary. One makes it with argument. I agree the initiative is all His. I've said it over and over and over and over and over and over again. And you never seem to hear it. I keep saying it, I've said repeatedly that works and merit are gifts, and I gave an example of how the self-disclosure of the Truth bestows freedom rather than taking it away at 7801. And yet you respond as if I'd never said these things.

You set up metaphors, like sovereignty and then won't allow them to be explored. Look, a sovereign can have willing subjects or unwilling subjects. Even if the sovereign comes into a city and overwhelms it, he still can make those he subjugates willing to have him as lord, or he can make them unwilling and resentful subjects. This is plain in history, in fiction, and in Machiavelli. So to pretend that I am saying that God depends on us for his sovereignty is, well, incomprehensible nonsense totally unsupported by what I've posted.

Get back to me when you want to converse. I've made every effort to be civil.

7,832 posted on 01/28/2007 4:44:58 AM PST by Mad Dawg ("It's our humility which makes us great." -- Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers)
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