When my children were young, they wanted to give me something for my birthday. Realizing they had no money, they drew me pictures instead. They wanted to express their love, so they gave what they could. Sometimes the drawings were nothing more than crayon scribbles; as they grew older, the pictures became more detailed and even included clever captions (I have always been a sucker for a good pun).

I could have purchased far better artwork myself, yet it was their drawings that I taped to my walls and placed on the refrigerator. The paper itself had little value. What mattered was the freely offered love behind the gift. As a father, that love was priceless.

LUMEN helps clarify why this matters theologically. There is nothing we possess—or could ever produce—that God needs. Everything we use to serve Him already belongs to Him. Even the breath in our lungs is His gift. We cannot add to God’s glory, improve His fullness, or supply something He lacks. Like my children, we ultimately have nothing of intrinsic value to give.

So what do you give the Heavenly Father who has everything?

According to LUMEN, the answer is simple and profound: freely offered love. Love is the only gift worthy of God precisely because it cannot be coerced, manufactured, or predetermined. God cherishes what we give Him not for its material substance, but for the love that animates it. Even if all we can offer are scribbles, He gladly displays them in the halls of Heaven.

This is why human freedom matters so deeply. God did not grant libertarian freedom as a philosophical experiment or a concession to rebellion. He granted it because only free beings can love. Obedience matters, and acts of mercy matter—Jesus tells us that what we do for the least we do for Him (Matt. 25:40)—but it is not the deed itself that blesses God’s heart. It is the love behind the deed. God looks at the heart.

David understood this when he refused to offer to God that which cost him nothing (2 Sam. 24:24). Paul affirms the same truth when he writes, “God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Cor. 9:7). LUMEN makes explicit what Scripture assumes throughout: God protects our freedom because love is His supreme aim. He preserves the spark of His image in us—even after the Fall—so that we might freely turn toward Him and share His joy forever.

This is why any theology that claims God unilaterally ordained who would be saved and who would be lost before creation fundamentally misunderstands the economy of love. Such a view removes the meaningful role of repentance and faith, drains Scripture’s exhortations of urgency, and quietly erodes the motivation for holiness and mission. If “what will be will be” regardless of choice, then love itself becomes unnecessary.

If a person were created with no genuine capacity to choose the good, God would gain no glory in judging them. A creature with no more freedom than a cannonball cannot be morally responsible for where it lands. In such a system, blame would ultimately fall on the one who fired the cannon. LUMEN rejects this not merely on moral grounds, but on relational ones: forced outcomes cannot produce love.

While God is omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, and omni-temporal, Scripture reveals Him first and foremost as personal—indeed, as three Persons in loving communion. God’s knowledge does not require coercion. Just as knowing the past does not cause it, God’s knowledge of the future does not force it. He is present everywhere, yet personally present in a deeper way through the incarnation of Christ and the indwelling of the Spirit. He is all-powerful, yet He does not do nonsense—such as forcing love.

God’s highest purpose is not short-term control but long-term formation. He is raising children, not programming servants. For that reason, He permits pain, death, and resistance in the temporary so that love may be learned for eternity. He invites His people to act as His body—His hands and feet—rather than to sit back as spectators under the assumption that everything is already determined.

Many Christians say they wish God would simply tell them what to do in every situation. Yet that is not His will. His will is that we learn to choose the good. Constant override would eliminate moral growth. God does not want obedient drones; He wants sons and daughters. He leads by His Spirit while respecting our agency. Often He is forming us most deeply when His guidance feels least explicit.

Philosophical traditions such as Platonism and Stoicism imagined a god who could not be affected, who could not suffer, and who therefore could not love. The God revealed in Scripture is nothing like this. He loves the world (John 3:16), grieves human rebellion, rejoices in repentance, and is moved by compassion. To love is to be vulnerable to another’s pain. God hurts when His children hurt and rejoices when they rejoice (Rom. 12:15), because love demands participation.

Scripture is unambiguous on this point. The Father grieved over human corruption (Gen. 6:6). Jesus wept at the devastation of death (John 11:35). The Spirit can be grieved and even quenched by human resistance (Eph. 4:30; 1 Thess. 5:19). These are not regrets over predetermined outcomes, but responses to genuinely free human choices.

Human sin introduced pain and death into the world—not because God desired it, but because He was committed to a greater purpose: teaching His children how to love. When people refuse salvation, it is not because their destruction somehow glorifies God. God desires all to be saved and has made provision for all (1 Tim. 2:3–4; 2 Pet. 3:9). His lament remains, “All day long I have stretched out My hands to a disobedient and obstinate people” (Rom. 10:21).

LUMEN reframes sovereignty accordingly. A sovereign God is not threatened by freedom. It is the smaller god who must control every detail to remain secure. God is fully sovereign because He can permit freedom, grieve its misuse, intervene when necessary, and still bring His purposes to completion. He is in control without being controlling.

What is that purpose? Nothing less than a loving family. From creation to covenant to incarnation, God’s consistent desire is to dwell with His people and share His life with them. He adopts, reconciles, and commissions us into the family business of love (2 Cor. 5:18).

This truth should transform how we live. God created the universe so that you might learn to love and join Him in eternity. Prayer, holiness, evangelism, and mercy cease to be burdens when their purpose becomes clear. They are no longer duties performed for glory points, but living expressions of love freely returned to the God who first loved us.

God does not seek passive spectators or programmed robots. He seeks free children who learn to love and reign with Him. When this purpose is recovered, motivation returns, love deepens, and life realigns with Heaven’s call. God is not glorified by necessity, but by love—and love is only real when it is freely given.