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The Seven Questions
1. Did you make your own mind?
No. You did not choose your brain, your neurons, your capacity for thought. Every mental faculty you are using to read this sentence was given. Even secular neuroscience grants this.
2. Did you choose the desires that drive your choosing?
No. Desires arise. They surface. Nobody sits down and decides what they will crave next. You choose among the desires that rise in you; you do not choose which desires rise.
3. If your desires were different, would your "choice" be different?
Yes. Given the desires you had this morning, you did what you were going to do. Had they been different, you would have done differently. Your will follows your strongest desire. Every time.
4. Then what is the real source of your every choice?
Your desires. And the one who made you — who set the initial conditions — wrote those. Your "free choice" is you, responding truthfully, to what is already in you. You are free; you are not ultimate. See why we resist.
5. Apply this to your faith in Christ. Where did the desire to believe come from?
You did not wake up with it one day by random self-generation. It rose. And given that it rose in you and not in your neighbor, something distinguishes you — not from yourself, but from your neighbor. Paul asks the exact question in 1 Corinthians 4:7: "What do you have that you did not receive?"
6. What does Scripture say about the source?
Ephesians 2:8-9: "It is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast." John 6:44: "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them." Philippians 1:29: even belief "has been granted." Read more in is faith a gift?.
7. If faith is a gift, what should you do?
Stop claiming credit for it. Stop defending the one contribution you thought you made. Turn the gratitude all the way up. Receive the staggering comfort that the God who gave you the faith also keeps you in it — because the God who starts a good work finishes it (Philippians 1:6). You were drawn, not dragged.
The Catch
If you find yourself resisting the conclusion — that is also part of the argument. Resistance is not neutrality; it is evidence of a will that was already inclined away. Resistance is proof. But the quieter thing — the faint flicker of, I want this to be true — is proof of the opposite. That flicker is not yours. It is the first sign He has already moved. You were chosen before you were broken.
Walk the full-length argument at where did your faith come from? or read the essay The Gift That Proves Itself. More handouts at printables.