God's will versus our free will

I've been giving a lot of thought to the topic of free will versus God's will for us. I know a lot of people think that God has this ultimate plan for their life (with regards to who they are supposed to marry, their career, having children, where to live, etc. The list goes on). They just keep praying and waiting on God to give them an answer and sometimes it doesn't seem to come. I used to subscribe to this line of thought too.

The more I think about it, the more I think that God's ultimate will for us is to accept His Son, Christ Jesus, and try to love everyone else in our life (regardless of their beliefs, race, sex, etc etc etc) and put others ahead of ourselves. The rest is up to us. God isn't going to write it in the sky (though He could if He wanted to). I think that God has ultimate purposes for us in some matters. He puts people in our lives for a reason, to point them to Him, or to point us to Him. I think that God creates people as a blank slate. Well, perhaps He does create us with certain qualities that we are born with and which we may have little control. The bottom line is, God gave us free will, and we can use that free will as we may. With the free will God has given us, He has given us the capacity to love intensely, and to cause much evil. (If you subscribe to the chaos theory, you will see where I am going with this). Does that mean that God is the source of evil? Absolutely not. It is a by product of our having a choice. If we do not have the option of doing evil works, we really don't have a choice at all.

This entry has gotten a lot deeper than I intended, but the bottom line is, I think a lot of people pray for God's will in their lives with certain things, and they seem to go unanswered. Does that mean God is uninterested or doesn't care? Absolutely not. He does care, and with the power of His Spirit, as believers, we have the ability to make the choice that we feel is best. It doesn't matter if you head a church, or are a CEO, a musician, a waitress, or work in a call center. We all have the ability to show God's love to others that normally might not see it. It is our responsibility as believers. Whatever our lot in life, it is our job.

I have Scriptural basis for this, but I will have to post that at a later date. I know some people may disagree with me, but that's OK. I don't think any of us have it 100% right. A lot of it is just guesswork on this side of eternity, and that's OK. I know all of these questions will be answered one day, and for that I rejoice.