We Love God!

God: "I looked for someone to take a stand for me, and stand in the gap" (Ezekiel 22:30)

Oh, to think of heaven without Christ! It is the same thing as thinking of hell. Heaven without Christ! It is day without the sun, existing without life, feasting without food, seeing without light. It involves a contradiction in terms. Heaven without Christ! Absurd. It is the sea without water, the earth without its fields, the heavens without their stars. There cannot be a heaven without Christ. He is the sum total of bliss, the fountain from which heaven flows, the element of which heaven is composed. Christ is heaven and heaven is Christ.
C.H. Spurgeon

The Scriptural authority for the doctrine of decrees: 1. [They] are eternal (Ac. 15:18; Eph. 1:4; 3:11; 1 Pet. 1:20; 2 Thes. 2:13; 2 Tim. 1:9; 1 Cor. 2:7). 2. They are immutable (Psm. 33:11; Isa. 46:9). 3. They comprehend all events. a. The Scriptures assert this of the whole system in general embraced in the divine decrees (Dan. 4:34, 35; Ac. 17:26; Eph. 1:11). b. They affirm the same of fortuitous events (Pr. 16:33; Mat. 10:29, 30). c. Also of the free actions of men (Eph. 2:10, 11; Phil. 2:13). d. Even the wicked actions of men (Ac. 2:23; 4:27, 28; 13:29; 1 Pet. 2:8; Jude 4; Rev. 17:17. As to the history of Joseph, compare Gen. 37:28, with Gen. 45:7, 8, and Gen. 50:20. See also Psm. 17:13, 14; Isa. 10:5, 15). 4. [They] are not conditional (Psm. 33:11; Pr. 19:21; Isa. 14:24, 27; 46:10; Rom. 9:11). 5. They are sovereign (Isa. 40:13, 14; Dan. 4:35; Mat. 11:25, 26; Rom. 9:11, 15-18; Eph. 1:5, 11). 6. They include the means (Eph. 1:4; 2 Thes. 2:13; 1 Pet. 1:2). 7. They determine the free actions of men (Ac. 4:27, 28 ; Eph. 2:10). a. God Himself works in His people that faith and obedience which are called the conditions of salvation (Eph. 2:8; Phil. 2:13; 2 Tim. 2:25). b. The decree renders the event certain (Mat. 16:21; Lk. 18:31-33; 24:46; Ac. 2:23; 13:29; 1 Cor. 11:19). c. While God has decreed the free acts of men, the actors have been none the less responsible (Gen. 50:20; Ac. 2:23; 3:18; 4:27, 28).
James Boyce