Choices

Choice is all about your ability to choose. If you say "I have no choice" than you believe a lie. In the old testament, God says "choose you this day, a blessing or a curse". Fundamentally, those are the two choices we have.

In The Sermon on the Mount Jesus speaks about making choices...

Matt 18:9 And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It’s better to enter eternal life with only one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.

If your flesh causes you to sin, well you have a choice. From the hyperbole in the Sermon on the Mount to Paul's practical advice from his own experience...

Rom 8:12-14 "Therefore Brethren we are debtors not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh, For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if you through the Spirit put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the children of God."

Galatians 6:7-8  ESV  Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. Col. 3:5 Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry. 6 For which things' sake the wrath of God comes on the children of disobedience.

Know this...

1Cor. 10:15. No temptation has seized you, except what is common to man. And God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but will also provide with the temptation the escape, to be able to endure it.

The only thing you have no choice about is about making choices.

You have a choice! Sow to the flesh and reap the curse. Sow to the Holy Spirit and reap the blessing.

Learning to overcome our fleshly nature through the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit, this is the process of sanctification. God's will is for us to be overcomers.

Jehovah Shammah: God is "Present"

The "present" is the time that is associated with the events perceived directly, not as a recollection of the past (memory) or a speculation of the future (reason). It is often called now.

Presentism vs Eternalism

What exists resides in the now. What exists is temporal because it is dynamic and constantly changes and the change is tensed because cause and effect produces the change.

What exists in the now creates tensed facts that are unalterable.

The change is deterministic outside of the observer's ability to choose. The ability to choose comes from the capacity to remember what things were like and the ability to anticipate what things will be like. Memory and reason.

Choice creates the potential to break the bonds of determinism.

Once the choice is made it becomes unalterable.

The now is eternal. Divide infinity in half, what do you have? Calculate how many moments eternity holds?....

The truth is always simple.

What is Time?

The illusion of Time is the observation of the interaction between Mass and Energy.

This interaction of Mass and Energy results in Movement. Movement produces change and it is the change recognized by an observer that gives Time it's conception. For each observer in a given inertial frame the rate of change is observed as constant.

Movement, then, is also continuous in the

way in which time is - indeed time is either

identical to movement or is some affection of it.

                                           (Aristotle, Metaphysics)

The rate of change can vary in a given inertial frame but since the change affects the whole frame of the observer it can not be detected. This change therefore appears constant for a given observer’s locale. An observer can compare frames and detect variations in the rate of change relative to each. This gives the illusion that Time slows down or speeds up.

We percieve time passing because we remember when things were different and we call it the past. We think of the future because we can anticipate how things will be different. The observer recognizing change brought about by movement is only possible because of memory. Reason can anticipate change and the mind imagines the future. This all happens in the present now. The Now is held together by God who upholds the physical reality that creates the illusion of time by the observation of change brought on by movement that is a result of the interaction of Mass and Energy.

Without the mind's memory and capacity to reason time has no meaning. The illusion of time helps us make sense of reality. It brings cohesion to existence and our place in all that exists.