Free will vs God's intervention

[shanishani7]

I was engaged with my ex 2 years ago, i am not sure if our marriage will be good or not, so I had been praying to God for a few months: “if we are not suitable for marriage/ he is not a good partner/ or my vocation is not marriage, please make some thing happen to stop this marriage. If he is the one, please let this goes smoothly.”

Then last year just a few months before our wedding, part of my action (my free will? but i didnt intend to stop relationship, my free will and wish was wanted to marry him) triggered an unexpected event to happen, and this unexpected event has totally broke our relationship/ ended our contact (his free will? he did not want to marry?) and stopped our marriage. So we didn’t get married at last.

My mother had told me it is God’s intervention to stop our marriage. But i just blamed myself for triggering that event to happen.

Now it has past a year, when i look back, it probably is the will of God?

What do you all think?

I still have some doubts - if God had given every one Free Will, the result is due to our free will and not God’s intervention? then when will God intervene? How do we know its all God’s intervention?

Thanks all for answers.

 

[otjm]

You made a choice, according to your comment; you were not forced to do whatever triggered the breakup.

Did God have a hand in it? Possibly, but that does not obviate free will, a freely made choice.

You are confusing your action, your choice, with a reason or lack of a reason behind it, to wit: to end the relationship.

As you made a choice, the relationship ended. From what you say, you did not perceive that the choice you made would end the relationship, nor did you make the choice in order to end it.

However, it ended.

Was God involved in that? You did request his involvement. Did you make a free choice? That is what you appear to say.

Thus, if God was involved in it, it appears he guided your choice which you made without coercion.

Isiah 55: 8-9: " For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways , saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways , and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Don’t tangle ;yourself up trying to sort this out. You asked for help. You made a choice, not in order to end the relationship, but for whatever reason at the time moved you in that direction. You were not coerced. You are certainly welcome to believe God guided you (after all, you requested it); but you are not required to believe God guided you.

Be at peace.

 

[shanishani7]

Thanks for the reply. So when will God intervene? when we pray for his involvement?

 

[otjm]

So when will God intervene? when we pray for his involvement?

That would border on implying that we can control God (and many would like to!).

God will intervene when it is “appropriate”. And none of us can define “appropriate” - go back and read that quote from Isiah. The short of it is that we don’t necessarily know when God has intervened much, if not most of the time. Pope John Paul made the comment “There are no coincidences with God”, which may be appropriate; but I strongly suspect that much, if not most of the time we don’t reflect on the coincidences.

Others may differ on that.

God set the world in motion, and there are laws - we call them natural laws - which control nature; but that control is not rigid. And with humans one might think from time to time that it is nowhere near enough rigid. In any event, there are many who see any natural disaster (e.g. the current pandemic) as a “chastisement by God”. I see it as reactions of nature; there are untold numbers of bacteria and viruses in and about nature, and periodically people catch them, to their detriment. Positing that it is a chastisement seems more to me a desire for control; and if we have something we cannot control, then it is easy to say :it is from God".

The problem more likely is our overweening desire for control.

And back to your question: We pray. God may say “yes”, or “yes, but this way, not that way” or say “Not yet” or say “No”.

I tend to go back to an old saying: “Pray as if everything depends on God; work as if everything depends on me.”

Hoped that rambling helps a bit. Keep praying; but keep on living and making decisions as best you can.

 

[0Scarlett_nidiyilii]

It’s possible that you “accidentally on purpose” triggered the event because sensed something intuitively you didn’t want to face consciously.

 

[I-47]

Beautiful Isaiah verses there

 

[JanR]

Thanks for the reply. So when will God intervene? when we pray for his involvement?

I think God lets us act autonomously most of the time, and if he does intervene, he usually acts quietly behind the scenes. I recall the old saying, “God looks after children, drunks and fools,” because they often can’t look after themselves. Judging from some of my own life experiences, He might have had a subtle hand in helping me get out of some of the more serious scrapes I foolishly got myself into during my youth.

Does anyone believe there really is such a thing as coincidence? One parishioner put it this way: “Coincidence is God acting anonymously.”

May very well be.