How does God’s will/plan prevail when we have a freewill to make our own choices? How does God’s will override our free will? Our daughter believes she is in God’s will but, as her parents,and after praying, we believe that she is not in God’s will. How does God use the wrong choices we make to bring about His will in our lives?
Because we have free will, we have to voluntarily set aside our own plans for our life and allow God to implement His plan for us. This is what Romans 12:1-2 and 1 Peter 1:13-16 are trying to teach us. The reward for doing this is the opportunity to live a much more rewarding life than anything we could achieve on our own.
The parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32) is meant to show us that when we insist upon going our own way, we often miss out on blessings we could otherwise have enjoyed. God waits patiently for the realization of this to settle in so we’ll voluntarily come back to Him. In the meantime we never stop being a child of His and upon our return we’ll find that all is forgiven and forgotten, and we’ll be showered with blessing after blessing.
As parents we want to help our children avoid making some of the same mistakes we made. But just as we insisted on making our own choices, we have to allow them to do the same. We may think that trying to influence the direction of their life is an act of love, but believe me when I say they usually don’t see it that way.