The Christian’s
Will
What I’d like to
start talking about this evening is another part of the personality.
What we have been doing loved ones, is trying to talk about the
interior life with God, that is, the spiritual life. And I had a
burden to share that on Sunday evenings, which we’ve been doing now
for 10 or 12 years, because I thought that there were many of us
caught in the old difficulty of being born of God and then asking,
"After conversion what?" And people tended to tell us,
“Grow in grace.” And so we tried to 'grow in grace', but we
really didn’t know how. And we didn’t know what it meant to
'grow in grace'. And we heard about things like the 'baptism with
the Holy Spirit' or 'walking in the Spirit'. But we didn’t know
much about what they meant.
So, that was why I
thought it was important to begin to talk, in some detail, about the
inner spiritual life with God that each of us has. And what I’ve
tried to do is to take the scriptural outline as you remember, if you
promise not to laugh, it’s actually -- though many of you wouldn’t
laugh. It’s just the old soldiers here that do laugh, because they
know it so well. But really, if you follow scripture through, it
does suggest in, you remember, 1 Thessalonians 5:23, “May the God
of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul
and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ.”
Now I know that many
people kind of go for a twofold division, into maybe, soul and body.
But really I don’t know that it matters so much really the
terminology that you use, as long as you see that your soul can
either be directed by your body, or it can be directed by God through
your spirit. We’ve taken this trichotomy view of the personality
because it seems to fit in with many verses of scripture. And we’ve
tried to follow those verses through.
And as you follow
'spirit' through, of course, you find that it has these functions:
that it is your spirit that contacts God. [Shows diagram of the
personality as 3 concentric rectangles with the 'spirit' being the
innermost with the 'soul' around it and the 'body' being the
outermost. In the 'spirit' rectangle are the words 'communion',
'intuition', and 'conscience'.] We’ve found that our souls are the
psychological parts of us that have these functions. [In the 'soul'
rectangle are 'will', 'mind', and 'emotions'.] And our body: which
we’ll talk about probably at the beginning of next year, when we
talk about health, and sickness, and death.
What we’ve been
doing therefore, the past two or three years is, we’ve talked about
the communion of our spirits, and the intuition of our spirits, and
our conscience. Then during the past year we’ve talked about our
emotions and our mind. And now tonight, I would like to begin the
study of our wills, and the place that our wills have in our life
with God.
Now it may help some
of you to know that this is the way we were meant to work. [On the
diagram 'God' is above all the rectangles. With his hand Pastor shows
a movement from 'God' into our 'spirit', and from there to our
'soul', and from there out to the 'body' and out to the 'world'
(below the outermost rectangle).] We were meant to operate like that.
That is, we were meant to operate from God. We were meant to
receive his love and be content with his love only through communion
in our spirits; through intuition to know what we should do; and then
our conscience would constrain our will to obey what we had received
from God. And the will would direct the mind, that would understand
what our intuition received, and would direct the rest of our bodies
to execute it. And our emotions would express the joy of our
friendship with God. And that’s the way we’re meant to operate.
And really peace
comes when we operate that way, you know. And the fall consisted of
us rejecting God, as if he did not exist, and operating the other way
completely. So that instead of getting our security, and
significance, and happiness from God’s love, we have to get it from
elsewhere. And we usually try to get it from each other. We usually
try to scramble to be important, or get others to look up to us. We
usually try to scramble for enough material things to give us a sense
of security. We usually try to grab as many thrills, and as many
exciting experiences as we can to make ourselves happy.
And that’s what
the fall consists of. It consists of a personality that is dependent
on the world, and things, and people, and events instead of on God.
And most men and women of course, live that kind of life. They are
little better in a way, than little animals, because most of them
live at the level of the body.
Now loved ones, what
happens when we do that is of course, our ability to commune with God
just dies completely. And that’s what we mean when we say, “You
are dead in your sins.” Your spirit dies. And we’re left really
only with souls and bodies that are functioning. In a person like
Jean Dickson [known in the 1950's and 1960's for predicting the
future] the spirit is very alive, but alive of course, to the
elemental spirits of the universe. A person like Edgar Cace
[1877-1945, psychic and mysticist answered questions on varied
topics] has a very living spirit. But it’s alive to the elemental
spirits of the universe that in their turn are trying to get men and
women more and more dependent on the earth, on the stars, on fortune
telling, on anything that is a substitute for God’s Holy Spirit.
And so most people live that way. [Indicates movement from outside
in, from the world into the body, then into the soul and the spirit]
Now with us, the
first step back into the right relationship with God is the
realization that we are wrong, that the whole thing is wrong, and
that what we need is to be made alive in our spirits. Usually what
God does first of all is, he appeals to the part of our spirits that
is still somewhat alive. It’s interesting if you think of it --
apart from you ladies and your woman’s intuition -- most of us find
the part of our spirits that is still most alive is the bit that
actually is, to some extent, reinforced by the fact that we eat at
the tree of knowledge of good and evil. We’re preoccupied with
what is good and what is evil. And that, strangely enough, somehow
manages to keep this part of our spirits alive. [On the diagram
Pastor indicates the 'conscience'.]
And so our
consciences are probably less asleep, less comatose than any other
part of our spirit. And that’s what God directs his word to. And
this will tie up with the importance of will, if I point out to you
that any preaching that does not appeal to the conscience is not able
to bring about the birth of the spirit. Preaching that appeals to
the mind is able to bring about intellectual conviction, and
persuasion, and people who can talk about that kind of thing. But
unless preaching, or unless a message about God appeals to the
conscience, you’re not even touching the spirit.
So I’d point that
out to you if you’d like to look at a verse in James. James 2:19,
“You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe
– and shudder.” And God’s word says that even demons who
oppose God believe that he is one. In other words, it is possible to
believe all the right things and be persuaded of them mentally and
not be born of God because, all that’s being touched is your soul.
Your spirit is not being touched at all.
It’s possible to
speak to the emotions. That was the weakness, you remember, of, “Oh,
you’re on heroin, why don’t you turn onto Jesus?” Well, I mean
turn on was alright if it was used very metaphorically. But the
emphasis tended to be, “You got a kick out of heroin? Boy, will
you get a kick out of Jesus.” And really, with due respect to us
all, that wasn’t the Calvary Road, Nazarene's cry. It wasn’t his
cry as he walked down the Calvary road, “Will you turn onto me?”
It wasn’t. It was anything but that kind of lightness. And so
preaching, or a message of salvation that appeals to the emotions
doesn’t bring about spiritual regeneration. It simply brings about
an emotional kick.
And that was present
loved ones, in the Old Testament. If you look at Jeremiah 6:14, the
Bible was very clear about what these people were who made that kind
of appeal. They were, of course, false prophets. Verse 13 gives you
the context, “For from the least to the greatest of them, every one
is greedy for unjust gain; and from prophet to priest, every one
deals falsely. They have healed the wound of my people lightly,
saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.” So there is a
kind of salvation preaching or salvation message that tries to make
people feel better at all costs, saying, “Peace, peace, God loves
you, he forgives you, just believe that and you’ll be alright.”
But the people’s conscience itself is not touched.
And you may have
wondered, as I have, about the situation in our nation. And it is
interesting how much religious activity there is. Isn’t it? And
yet, the crime rate is higher than ever. And that’s not the mark
of a real Christian revival, as you probably know. When a Christian
revival took place in the Hebrides of Scotland in the 1950s, they did
-- really, they presented white gloves to the judges in the courts,
because there were no cases to be tried; because the lives of the
people and their ordinary dealings had been so changed by the Holy
Spirit; because, it was a revival message that went to the
conscience, and therefore resulted in the regeneration of the spirits
of the people.
And you can see the
difficulty of course, we’re up against. If you get some maniac who
is prepared to preach that heavy law of God that deals with the
conscience, we -- loved ones, I’m sorry to say, we are such milk
and water people in our generation. We have been brought up so often
by authority figures that were afraid to contradict us, that we just
will not stand for it. We won’t.
And it’s
interesting, our cry is not so much, “What you’re saying is
untrue.” Our cry is, “What you’re saying makes me unhappy and
depressed.” And it’s totally irrelevant! What does it matter
whether it makes you happy or depressed? Are you happy as long as
you’re going to hell? You don’t care? If you’re going to
hell, as long as you’re happy, that’s all that matters.
But it’s hard in
our days to get loved ones to sit under salvation message that gets
to the heart of conscience. If I could encourage you in your
witnessing, unless you sooner or later get a loved one to do what we
talked about this morning, to face the fact that God is saying to
them, “I have a controversy with you! I have a controversy with
you! I have a controversy with you! You are breaking this law of
mine. And I am committed to destroy you for that.” Loved ones,
until we see that it’s us against God’s will, we aren’t even
beginning to get near the conviction of sin that, strangely enough,
enables you to see the Savior.
It’s interesting.
Do you know you’ll only see the Savior when you need saved?
Really! You can see a fine example of good living, if you’re not
in desperate straits. You can look at Jesus and say, “He’s a
great example to follow.” You can see a great guru who seems to
understand the ins and outs of the spiritual life, if you don’t
need saved. But it’s only if you need saved that you see the
Savior. And you only know that you need saved when you see that
you’re doomed to hell for the personal rebellion that you are
involved in against the mighty God of the universe.
So loved ones,
unless preaching and witnessing sooner or later gets to the
conscience, you’re not even touching the part that needs to be
regenerated.
Now, when the Holy
Spirit gets to the conscience, the first thing that has to be done is
the person has to see that they 'can' respond to their conscience.
They 'can' respond to their conscience. And they 'can' do it by
their wills -- by the exercise of their wills. And if they don’t
do that, the Spirit of Jesus cannot come into their spirits.
I think a lot of us
have a little misunderstanding about this. We kind of think, “Listen
brother, I need the Spirit of Jesus in me to help me obey.” No!
The Savior is standing, or hanging, on that cross! And your sins
that you’re committing are continuing to put new nails into his
hands, and a new sword into his side. And you’re saying, as you do
that, “Come into my spirit. Come into my spirit. Come in and help
me to stop this.” God knows that’s unreal.
Loved ones, you can
full well stop. Even those of us who have been caught in things like
nicotine, or caught in things like alcoholism, when the 'writing is
firmly on the wall', quite apart from God or Jesus, we’re able to
stop. When we see that this has to be done, we stop. You remember
that guy, you remember, the guy who was the prosecuting attorney –
I don’t know how many of you will remember, old Raymond Burr and it
must have been Perry Mason [Television program in the 1950's and
1960's]. And you remember, that was before "Iron Sides"
[After the role of Perry Mason, Raymond Burr played in another TV
show as Robert T. Ironside] before... And you remember that
prosecuting attorney began to appear on television in commercials
against smoking because, of course, he had discovered that he had
cancer. He stopped the smoking! He stopped the smoking when he
discovered he had cancer.
And so it is with
us, when God’s word convicts our conscience, we are responsible.
And God knows we are able to exercise our wills in alignment with our
conscience. And until we do that loved ones, God cannot send the
Spirit of his son into us. That’s really important that you see
that, because I think you kind of feel, “Oh yeah, God zaps the
Spirit of Jesus in. And he forces his way out of here, breaking out
with six shooters going in all directions.” And he doesn’t.
The Holy Spirit is,
“Behold I stand at the door and knock. If any man open the door I
will come in and will sup with him and he with me. But I will not
break that door down.” And so the beginning of the new birth is
exercising your will in obedience to your conscience. And when you
do that, God knows it. And he sends the Spirit of his dear son into
your spirit and makes you alive. And it’s then that you sense God
is your Father and that you are his child. But it only comes after
you exercise the will.
Now, if you say to
me, “Oh now brother, do you mean you have to change your whole way
of life?” No, but you have to be willing to do that. And God, the
Holy Spirit, knows when your will is really set in that direction.
I’ve told you the
story before of an altar. And there were loved ones seeking to come
through to conversion. And it was a friend of mine was involved in
the thing. This guy was a farmer, was kneeling there and could not
get through, and had asked God to forgive him his sins, and had asked
Jesus to come into his heart. And each time the pastor said, “Has
he come in?” The guy would say, “No, no he hasn’t.” And the
pastor prayed of course, for a word of knowledge. And then it came.
And he said to the guy, “Have you got a big white rooster?” And
the guy looked at him, and could not believe that he would know
anything about it. And he said, “Yes. Yes, I stole it two years
ago from my neighbor.” And he said, “Alright, I see. I have to
be willing to return that tomorrow. Lord, I am willing.” Jesus
came into his heart like that.
See, the Spirit of
Jesus can only come in to a person who is responding to what God has
shown them in their conscience. I don’t know how many of you were
in my position. But I was an academic and kind of enjoyed
intellectual things. And I believed that this kind of stuff that
we’re sharing tonight was the most primitive, uneducated, crude
emotionalism that anybody could dream of. And I felt, “No, that’s
stupid. God isn’t that kind of a little child, that I have to stop
doing the things that are wrong. He knows. He knows the things that
I understand. And if I just think through things enough, and see
them the way he sees them, I know it will all become real.” And so
I used to read the mystics, and study the Bible, hoping that somehow
I would make it real inside me.
Loved ones, it was –
you may say, “Oh, you must have been stupid.” I was! I was!
But at last it came home to me that God required me to be crude and
primitive enough to change my will, and to stop doing the things in
my life that he showed me were wrong. And that for me, was the new
birth. There was no difficulty. Jesus just flew into my heart. The
Spirit came in, rose up inside me. And I knew I was born of God,
when my will responded to my conscience.
That’s how
important the will is. The will is king. It really is. The will is
king. The mind may be thought of as the 'eye of the soul', because
the mind, of course, is the part of us that understands what we
received through intuition from God. But the will is the one that
governors whether the soul is going to be directed by the spirit, or
is going to continue to be directed by the body. The will is the key
to everything, loved ones. The will is the part of us that we can
touch.
It’s interesting
you can’t touch that lot there. [Pastor indicates the 'spirit' with
'communion', 'intuition' and 'conscience'.] That’s why
transcendental meditation and all attempts a annihilating the soul,
or bringing it into passivity, cannot bring you into spiritual life.
You see, what transcendental meditation does, or muttering the one
phrase repeatedly over in order to hypnotize yourself into passivity.
It brings your soul and will into passivity so that your spirit is
guarded by nothing, and then is at the mercy of evil spirits that
come in and fill it with all kinds of counterfeit, God-like,
suggestions. And the only way in fact, that your spirit can be
touched by God is if you do what you’re able to do. And the only
thing you’re able to do is to believe 'right' and to will 'right'.
And God promises, “If you do that, I will send my spirit into your
spirit.”
But all attempts at
TM [transcendental meditation] and eastern religions are attempts to
pretend that the spirit has come alive without actually submitting to
the conscience and to God’s will for our lives. And so there are
all kinds of false Christianity that does the same thing. There are
all kinds – every type of Christianity -- that try to bring and
create the sense of peace, joy, and delight in God that can only come
from a regenerated spirit. And that stuff is popular today, because
today is the day that we want everything without tears. And if we
can get a semblance of salvation without having to change our lives,
then we’ll do it.
And so loved ones,
what we do have in our nation is a kind of a dangerous situation,
because we have a lot of religion around, and a lot of Christian
religion. But we don’t have many people who are governing their
lives by their wills. We have great hordes of loved ones, who are
governing their minds by what certain people think should be done in
the country as Christians. And we have another great section that
govern their emotions by the way they feel -- people should feel --
when they’re praising God.
But it’s amazing
how few we have that are governing their lives by 'cold will'
submitting to God’s will. And yet, that is the only action that
brings real spiritual regeneration. So yeah, we do have lots of
loved ones who think they’re saved, and aren’t saved. But, they
feel they are, because they seem to have the right feelings, or they
think they have the right thoughts. But they, themselves, have not
come into a real new birth. And it is because of this refusal to
exercise the will.
Loved ones, Jesus
made that clear, the importance of the will, if you’d like to look
at some of the things he said in Luke 12:34. It says in verse 33,
“Sell your possessions, and give alms; provide yourselves with
purses that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does
not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where
you treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Where the thing
is that you want above everything else, where the thing is that your
will desires above everything else, there will your heart be also.
Then in Luke 18:23,
there’s that famous incident you remember, of the rich young ruler.
It might be good to start at Luke 18:18, “And a ruler asked him,
‘Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’ And
Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but
God alone. You know the commandments: “Do not commit adultery, Do
not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor your father
and mother.” And he said, ‘All these I have observed from my
youth.’ And when Jesus heard it, he said to him, ‘One thing you
still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and
you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.’ But when
he heard this he became sad, for he was very rich.”
So Jesus puts his
finger on the one thing in your life where your will is in
controversy with his. It’s funny; it doesn’t matter if you give
him all the rest of the things in the world, if you won’t give him
that one thing. So it’s interesting, so many of us, both guys and
girls, have lived in misery with Jesus because, of course, he’s
been asking us for a certain girl or a certain guy that we have set
our will on. Others of us have set our wills on certain kinds of
lives, certain kinds of jobs, and we will not submit. And we submit
on all kinds of other things, but we will not submit on the one thing
that God has touched our conscience about.
And I would
encourage you tonight, if you have anything in your conscience that
you haven’t really settled with God, if you don’t submit on that
point, you will eventually lose every sense of Jesus that you have
even tonight. It’s the will that is the key to everything, loved
ones. Jesus expressed it there. He didn’t care if he obeyed all
the other commandments, but he did care that he obeyed the one thing
that he spoke to him about.
Matthew 7:26: And
it’s the parable, you remember, in Matthew 7:24, “Every one then
who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man
who built his house upon the rock; and the rain fell, and the floods
came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, but it did not
fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And every one who
hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish
man who built his house upon the sand; and the rain fell, and the
floods came, and the winds blew and beat against the house, and it
fell; and great was the fall of it.” And really, it’s true.
I mean, you build
your house on sand if you listen to all the great teaching from
different places and you do not change your own life, and do the one
thing that God is speaking to you about. And Jesus, you remember,
said, “They 'will' not believe.” And he wasn’t just using the
future tense; he was using the 'wish', “They do not want to
believe.” That’s why people don’t believe, because they don’t
want to believe.
Do you know why you
don’t pray? Because, you don’t will yourself to pray. I mean,
you may want to pray; you may desire to pray because you hear of all
the great things that prayer does for you; or you may want to pray
because you do want to please Jesus. But you don’t pray, because
you won’t will yourself to pray. And it is amazing loved ones, the
key to everything is the will.
I hope to talk maybe
in the coming weeks about the place of the will in connection with
the baptism of the Holy Spirit. But every move forward with God
refers back again to your will. If you won’t change your will, God
can give you nothing of himself. The will is everything. The cold
obedience of the will is everything.
You know how
desperate the world is. You know how desperate it is. Do you know
how few of us -- I mean this may be a sad thing to say -- do you know
how few of us here tonight may end up abroad for Jesus? It’s
pathetic, if we really could see into 20 years hence. And you know
what the reason is? The reason is that we have all kinds of
realizations, and justifications, and rationalizations in our minds
that will persuade us to be like Jonah. [Old Testament prophet whom
God called to go and preach to the city of Nineveh, but went
somewhere else instead.] Really! We’ll have all kinds of feelings
inside our emotions for moms and dads, for loved ones, for friends --
in Ireland for the mountains and the ocean, in America for the plains
and the lakes. We’ll have all kinds of emotional feelings that
will be more important to us than simply connecting our wills
directly up with our consciences.
I don’t know how
you all feel about your wills, but I think on the whole in America
our wills are like big flappy jellyfish. And I think many of us have
no experience of exercising our wills. And the way we live is our
body absolutely directs our minds. I feel thirsty: into the ice box
grab the Coke. In fact, the mind is even hardly used in it. It’s
just the body goes right in like that! It’s just right in. It
hardly touches our souls. Once in a while the old mind may look and
say, “Well, we have only one bottle left. Should we drink it?”
But usually it doesn’t even have to do that; it just whips right in
and out again.
Many of us are just
like little animals, like little dogs. It’s just the body needs
this, so the body gets it. Once in a while it gets through to the
mind. Once in a while of course, it gets through to the emotions.
And the body feels very, very hungry; the emotions are very, very
depressed. And so the emotions say, “Oh yes body, you want to have
a good meal to make yourself feel better.” But really, the 'will'
is utterly repressed, and is virtually dead also, in most of our
lives. So our spirits are dead, and our wills are dead. So for many
of us it requires a good deal of 'cold turkey' [reference to symptoms
of withdrawal from some addiction] to begin to get that will
exercised again.
And loved ones, I
would encourage you to do it, you know. I do believe that a lot of
us suffer agonies in our life with God because we won’t exercise
our wills. The will is king. The key to life with Jesus is "the
will obeys the conscience!" "The will obeys the
conscience!" All the saints as they crawl down alleys with
blood flowing from their wounds -- all the saints, all the martyrs
willed to do what God was telling them to do in their conscience.
Every Martin Luther that nailed the "Ninety-Five Theses" to
the door did it irrespective often of what the mind said --
irrespective certainly, of what the emotions felt. They willed to
obey their conscience.
And loved ones, the
more you do that, the more you’ll find that not simply your will is
strengthened, your spirit is strengthened by the Holy Spirit. So the
will is king! It really is! Oh, if you tonight – I don’t know
what it amounts to -- well it comes up tonight. Tonight will you go
up to the fellowship in the lounge, and will you ask Jesus, “Lord,
will you enable me to be outgoing to somebody, to love somebody
tonight, to be joyful with somebody tonight?” Or, what will
happen? I wonder how many of us think, “Oh well, that’s alright,
but I know what I’m going to do tonight. I don’t change. I had
it all settled before I came to this service. I have that TV program
that I want to go home to. And I may look young, but actually I’m
ancient, and middle aged, and dull.” And that’s it! We get
ourselves ground into habits and attitudes where the will, dear love
it, it’s so flabby and fat, and so like a jellyfish that it
couldn’t burst its way out of a paper bag if it had to.
And really, the key
is to begin. The key is that you can, loved ones! You can exercise
your will. You can ask – and again it’s foolish, I’m not
asking you all to go up to the lounge. Don’t do that! That’s
worse. That’s the other side of the thing where we all do what
somebody else’s will tell us to do. Don’t do that.
But, be in a
position where tonight, when you’re going to get up after the
benediction, you are going to think and you’re going to ask Jesus,
“Lord, what would you like me to do tonight?” And then you’re
going to be strong enough, raw enough, crude enough, brawny enough,
to make your will obey your conscience.
And really for many
of us -- I know it sounds funny. But for many of us it will be
stepping into a new life. You’ll be amazed to find that you can
control your thoughts. You can therefore, control your emotions
because your emotions spring from your thoughts. And most of all,
you can control your outward life.
And it’s the same
tomorrow morning. Do you realize all that all of us will fight when
– if you set the alarm -- I don’t know if you pray every day.
But if you set the alarm tonight for five AM in the morning, or six
AM, do you know that all hell is bent against you getting up to pray?
It is. And yet it’s all a lie! It’s all foolishness! The
heaviness of the body disappears immediately you exercise your will.
It does! The heaviness of the body is an extenuated heaviness
brought on by the satanic spirit! So that it feels to you as though
it’s a thousand tons, “No, I’ll just die if I get out of this
bed at this moment! I’ll just die! I’ll fall apart in neurotic
chaos!” You won’t! If you exercise that dear old will and get
one foot out of that bed while the alarm is still ringing, actually
you will not fall apart. You’ll be strong, and you will be able to
pray. And so it will go on the rest of the day. But loved ones, it’s
a different way to go you see.
And just one last
little word: I think a lot of you say, “Oh well, I think the Lord
wants me to do this.” What you mean is certain circumstances have
fallen about that make it easier for you to do that than not to do
it. And so you decide, “That’s the way of least resistance.
Okay. And I think it’s the Lord, because he made that fall that
way and that fall that way.” Or, "You feel a feeling that you
feel you felt before." And you have a feeling. And you feel...
and you kind of feel, “Oh, it would be nice to maybe speak to this
person about Jesus. I feel like it.” And you do it.
Well, God can do
nothing with that. Really! It was you who believed it. You may
think, “Well, can’t he bring something?” No! No he can’t,
because it isn’t obedience. It isn’t obedience! It’s just the
'jellyfish' has wobbled that way [Pastor gestures to the left.].
Wobbled over to the feelings today! Tomorrow is may wobble over to
the mind! Tomorrow it may wobble over to circumstances. But the only
thing actually that God can bless at all is the obedience of the
will. That’s true!
And I would testify
to you that I can tell you, you can get up on the stage with all
kinds of things that you’ve just come through, all kinds of
feelings that you’ve just come through, all kinds of situations out
there looking at you. And if you were governed by those things, I
don’t think you’d ever get up here. And the fact is that any of
us who are being used by God at all, walk an awful lot of our way by
raw will power! We do! We do an awful lot of things because we know
it’s God’s will.
And actually, that’s
the truth, just as in marriage, so with God. There’s only one real
union and that’s the union of two wills. That’s a union. That’s
a cord that cannot be broken. That is a kingdom against which the
gates of hell cannot prevail. And that’s what God is after in each
one of us.
So loved ones, we’ll
go on talking about the will, but I would suggest that you start
exercising it. Let us pray.
Dear Lord Jesus, we
do sense that Calvary road had to be chosen deliberately. We do
sense that it wasn’t something that you allowed yourself to be
pushed into. It wasn’t something that you felt in your emotions
would be a good thing to do. But Lord, we read that you set your
face steadfastly towards Jerusalem. Lord Jesus, we’re grateful to
you that you did. And we see that you’re calling to us and saying,
“If any man wills to come after me, let him deny himself, take up
his cross and follow me.” And Lord, we thank you that you are
calling us to the same freedom as you have, the freedom of exercising
our wills after you and after your Father’s will for our lives.
Lord, I do pray for
my loved ones here, each dear man and woman here in this room. I
pray especially for those who have never really exercised their wills
much in their lives. I pray Lord, that you’ll bring home to them
that that is the key to their service of you. There is only one way
to be happy in Jesus, and that’s to trust and obey. Oh Lord, I
pray that you will bring many of us tonight into the liberty of
obeying with our wills, whatever we feel like; however bad we may be;
however difficult the circumstances may be; that we will will
ourselves to do what you tell us.
And then we thank
you Lord, for the spiritual results that follow within. We thank you
for the regeneration and the fullness of the Spirit that come from
that.
Now the grace of our
Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy
Spirit, be with each one of us now and throughout this coming week.
Amen.
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