Speaker 1: Most of us eat every day, some of us too much,
because yesterday's food is not enough to supply energy for
today's needs. Why then, do some of us expect yesterday's
portion of heavenly manna, the word of God to keep
us through today's challenges. On this program, we are going
to change all of that. Let's experience God's words today
and receive the power we need to live healthy, vibrant lives.
Welcome to your Daily Portion with your host, author speaker,
Elle David Harris.
Speaker 2: Good morning, Good morning, Good morning. It is Wednesday, February twelve,
twenty twenty five. Hello, my name is Elle David Harris.
I am your host, and this is your Daily Portion
where we give you God's word every single day, and
today is no exception. We are continuing in our lesson
study series, God's Love and Justice, and our caption for
today is the free Will Defense. The free Will Defense.
We'll get into that in just a moment, but first
I'd like to say welcome to you and ask you
to go over to your Daily Portion dot com. Please
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to continue to grow in your spiritual development and let
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of the ways that we continue to build faith and fellowship.
Let's go ahead and pray and then we will get underway.
Father in Heaven, thank you for giving us the freedom
of choice. Please teach us to choose you. In Jesus' name,
I pray, Amen and Amen again. Really and truly, I
think we can and our broadcast right here with the prayer.
God has given us the ability and the right and
the privilege all at the same time to make our
own decisions freely. We are not robots. I know that
artificial intelligence is out here now and we have sort
of become accustomed. And I'm going to reveal my age
here right to sort of a Jetson's era. I remember
when I was a child there was a cartoon called
the Jetsons. Look it up right, and everything seemed to
be automated. Everything seemed to be fictional. But now we
have surpassed where the Jetsons were. And sometimes you don't
even know what's real. We don't know who's really speaking,
We don't know what we're seeing anymore, because the machine
has become so artificially intelligent that most things are not
what meets the eye. You see, we're going with this,
And so we think that robots are cool because we
use robots so much. Some of our vehicles park themselves.
Some of them are even more autonomous, where they drive
us where we need to go like a chauffeur would.
So we've become accustomed to the robot mentality. But let
me just say that has never been God's goal for humans.
He's always had in his mind as he has for
all of the other beings that he created, that love
determines how we exercise our will. It's either love or fear,
love or hatred. The angels had that privilege to decide
do they love God because they love him because of
whatever they believe that He's done for them, or because
of a relationship that they had with them. I'm not
an angel, so I don't know what the standard would
have been. Do humans, now that we have experienced what
the Bible writers call the fall, the fall into sin.
How do we determine whether we're going to love God
or not, whether we're going to follow God and submit
to God or not? Like what is the standard? And
so sometimes skeptics and others, not thinking clearly, not thinking
with the power of the Holy Ghost, blame God or
attempt to indict God. Because he gave us the will
to choose. He did not create beings who desired evil,
but those same beings, some of them decided to commit evil,
beginning with Lucifer. You see. So from C. S. Lewis,
he wrote that free will, though it makes evil possible,
is also the only thing that makes possible any love
or goodness or joy worth having. You see, i' created
a machine. Maybe I should put that. I'm gonna put
that machine up on the screen right like you if
you're watching, you're watching me. Look at that. You're not
listening to my machine. But I have a machine that
I call Mishka two dot O, Like, that's my machine.
I wish I had the time to tell the story
why Mishka. But anyway, that machine is artificially intelligent, and
it's programmed to serve me in a particular way. Well,
I cannot be sure that a machine can love me?
Why not because it's a machine like what? Okay, I
wish I had the time to drill that, But I don't.
Let me keep going, Let me keep going. We are
not machines, okay. So the writer continues a world of
auto mata, of creatures that worked like machines, would hardly
be worth creating. If CS Lewis were alive. Now, I
don't know what he would what he would say. The
happiness which God designs for his higher creatures is the
happiness of being freely, volunteerily united to Him and to
each other, and for that they must be free. This
is coming from the book Mere Christianity, page fifty two,
written in or published in nineteen sixty. We are not robots,
and I'm grateful God created us in his image and
after his likeness, and then he put into us the
kind of intelligence that can reach out for a relationship
with God. He's the author and finisher of our faith.
Here in twenty twenty five, we can have a relationship
with God because we are fearfully and wonderfully made. If
I were to ask, and maybe I should have planned this,
but I don't have mishkatu dot loaded up right now.
But if I ad asked, mishkatoo dot o mishka, how
do you feel about X? Do you feel happy? Do
you feel sad? How do you feel when I call
you fill in the blank some other name. My machine
is programmed to laugh and say ha ha, come on, LT.
You know I don't have emotions, but there are people
that and then would give me like this super clinical
logical explanation about how ridiculous what I'm asking is, because
after all, mushkato dot oh is a machine, not a human, Okay.
And so in the Bible we see many people who
have made the right decisions. I don't want to go
down through the dark paths about people making wrong decisions.
We don't need to go in the Bible for that.
We can see it right in our own lives. How
many times have I made the wrong decisions? Because God
gave me the free will doesn't mean I have to
make the wrong decision. So Noah, when God gave him
the call to preach and then also to build an
arc on dry land, the Bible says in Genesis six
twenty two, Thus did Noah according to all that God
commanded him, and so he did it. So Noah's obedience
saved him his family, and preserved human and animal life
on planet Earth. Was an opportunity for everybody to be saved,
but some people chose, with their free will to go
the wrong way. Joseph resisted temptation Genesis, chapter thirty nine
and verse nine. The Bible reads, how then can I
do this great wickedness and sin against God? So his integrity,
his connection with God caused him not to commit adultery
with Potiphar's wife, Ruth, Ruth, she decides to stay with
us Naomi, she said, as recorded and wrote Ruth chapter one,
verse sixteen, for wherever you go, I will go, and
by the way, by the way. Ruth's loyalty led to
her marriage to Boaz, securing her place in the lineage
of David and ultimately in the lineage of Jesus Christ,
the son of God, who gave his life for us.
I wish I had the time we see esther. She
used her free will, and it was salvation to her people.
And Daniel and his three friends. They did not choose
to be defiled by the king's table. And you see
what good effect that had. So we have the privilege
of free will. Let's not see it as a curse.
Choose life with that will peace.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us listening. Friends. Always remember we cannot
live by bread alone, but by every word that comes
from the mouth of God. This has been your daily
portion with El David Harris. Make it a great day. Yeah,