Curious: Does God always get what He wants?

[Potluck]

John 6:44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.

There it is.
The bible is not a rule book. It's the story of God's pursuit of the hearts of men. Does God get what He wants? Yes. Every time. Those He wants, the things He wants He draws to Him. Does He want me to love my neighbor? If I am so drawn I will do as written. I will do as He wants. Being saved in Salt lake City I've been asked, "How do you KNOW you are saved? How can you say that?"
Because Christ promised me. And I believe Him.
Do you?
We are all sinners. Our very nature is sinful. When we repent our nature remains. We are still sinners.
Rom 5:8 But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

But our minds are changed. Our spirit knowing right from wrong. The body dies, but the spirit lives for eternity in the presence of the Father.

Rom 7:24 O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
Rom 7:25 I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.

"unless the Father who sent me draws him"

Praise our Lord Jesus Christ forever and forever.
Amen

 

[Runner]

To ask what God "wants" is an anthropomorphic view of God, one that attributes human thinking to a transcendent Being. The Bible admittedly speaks of God in anthropomorphic terms in numerous places because this is the only way humans can relate to a transcendent Being.

What God "wanted" was a universe like the one He got. If the one we have wasn't what He "wanted," He would not have created it in the first place. For reasons known only to Him, He "wanted" a universe populated with beings having the free will to turn to Him or reject Him. Apparently He wanted a heavenly host with that attribute as well.

He "wants" all people to be saved in the sense that He "hopes all people will exercise their free will to turn to Him." But He knew before His act of creation that they wouldn't.

All my uses of the term "wants" and "hopes" are likewise anthropomorphisms because that's the only way we have of speaking of a transcendent Being. The incarnation in Jesus was the fullest revelation of God to humans - the ultimate "anthropomorphization" - but it was not a full revelation of the transcendent Being.

There is an entire branch of philosophy that argues that all metaphysical terms are fundamentally unintelligible because they attempt the impossible task of describing the transcendent in human terms. "The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao, the name that can be named is not the eternal name." This same thought is expressed in God's answer to Moses when he asked God to identify Himself: "God said to Moses, 'I AM WHO I AM'; and He said, 'Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, I AM has sent me to you.'” Exodus 3:14, NASB.

I don't think it's unintelligible to talk of God in anthropomorphic terms, especially since we have the incarnation, but it is important always to remember that this is a transcendent Being whose thoughts are not our thoughts and whose ways are not our ways,

 

[Kidron]

1.) God gets what He says.

2.) God always knows what He's going to get.