Our Choices Determine Our Destiny & God Foreknows Them Before We Are Born

Common Sense Commentary:    " I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live..." Deut.30:19. The choices we make will influence and affect our descendents for years to come. We are each, personally responsible for our own choices, not God or the devil or someone else. And WE will give account to God for our choices because we choose them. They are ours alone.

The original human choice was to obey or disobey God ... to choose to do right or wrong, which is to choose "life" or "death", "blessing" or "cursing".   "And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:   But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Gen.2:16-17. God gave permission to "freely eat" of all the fruit trees but one, and He commanded Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit of that one tree. The choice was theirs, not God's.
"And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and (she) gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat." Gen.3:6. It was their choice... not God's.   God's "perfect will" was what He commanded them, that they not eat of that one tree. He made it  clear, but He knew they would disobey. Their will was "to eat" and they did. They made the choice in disobedience to God's perfect will.  It was God's soverign will to give them the power to make choices and then be responsibile for their choices. He did not make the choice for them and was not responsible for their choices. God did not "want" them to disobey, but He foreknows all things and foreknew they would disobey.  He did not program them to disobey but He gave them the choice and the responsibility for their choice.  God was not responsible for their disobedient sin, they were, and they would pay for it for the rest of their lives. Whatever we buy with our choices, we will benefit or pay for with our time or pain or blessing or health or regret or guilt for the rest of our lives as did Adam and Eve. The choice is ours.  Our perfect will for our children is that they choose to be honest, honorable, Christians, responsible and self reliant, but we want them to learn to choose to be and do those things in their own hearts and minds.  If we always made them do our will as they grow up, their will would be restrained until the first chance they got to do what they wanted to do all along .... make their own decisions and choices.  We must teach them to make good decisions and desire in their own hearts to be right with God and make right choices for themselves.  If they do not chose it in their own hearts it is not theirs, it is yours, their parent...  That is what God wants in His children.... that they choose to love Him and obey him because they love Him, not because they have no choice to do otherwise. Our children are not supposed to be little predestined pegs on a game board who have no mind or decisions of their own.  God created us each to be an individual, unique person, not just a member of a herd of mindless sheep who can do nothing of their own thought and choice. What glory would God get out of a bunch of robots programed to do only His will? None!

The only way you can call that "predestined" is the fact that God foreknows all things.  Prophecy is a sample of God's foreknowledge.  Not that He predicted what He had "dictated" but He foreknew not only what He would do but what we would do, the choices we would make.  He foreknew who would obey Him and who would not.  And since He foreknows our choices, we are "destined" to do  what He foreknew we would choose to do.  It was pre-known not pre-determined. The key word is "foreknowledge".  God is Omniscient, which means "All Knowing" not "All Dictating".  God's foreknowledge is destined to play out exactly as He foreknows the future will unfold. Some of it He dictates or determines, but much of it, we decide to do on our own, right or wrong. 

A bad choice:
"Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan (Sodom)...." Gen.13:1. God did not choose Sodom for him, "Lot chose" it and suffered the consequences of his choice.

A good choice:
"Moses chose able men out of all Israel and made them heads over the people...." Gen.18:25. 

It's your choice:
"And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve...." Josh.24:15.

Results of bad choices:
"Go and cry unto the gods which ye have chosen; let them deliver you in time of  your tribulation." Judges 10:14.

Every individual has their own choices to make. Only God knows how and when and why and what we will choose to do before we do it or even know it ourselves. We can't blame God for knowing ahead of time what we will choose to do.  Our decisions are up to us and the consequences of wrong decisions and wrong choices are our own fault. Don't tell me that God pre-determined Adam and Eve to disobey Him and sin.  He foreknew it, but they determined it, not God. God is not guilty of making people sin by disobedience.

Jesus said, "That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgement." Matt.12:36. If they could not help doing it, He would not judge them for doing it. If it was His will that we sin, He would not punish sin.

"So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God." Rom.14:12.

"For whom he (God) did foreknow, (the key to pre-destination... God foreknew )
he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son...." Rom.8:29.
In a sence, God's foreknowledge IS predestination, inextricably linked as one thing.

We were foredestined  because God foreknew what we would do and what God "foreknew".... had to happen, of course, or He would not have foreknown it.

Study the meaning of the word "Forknowledge"..."To know before"