Philippians 2:13 NIV
…for it is God who
works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.
What Determines Your Actions?
When I asked Mary Jo to marry me, it was an
important moment for her. She had to
make a decision that clearly would dramatically impact her life. No one else could decide for her although
others could influence her decision. Her
parents may not have been happy to have me as their son-in-law but they weren’t
the ones given the responsibility of saying “yes” or “no” to my proposal. Mary Jo might have had many factors weighing
on her when I “popped the question”. She
could have thought about my extremely good looks and my hilarious sense of
humor and that might have influenced her.
She might also have considered how poor I was, how limited my earning
power was as well as all my quirky ideas and how skinny I was and been pushed
the other way. Unconscious forces within
her might have impacted her opinion of me, determining factors that she could
not explain. Perhaps early childhood
experiences with taller men influenced Mary Jo’s decision. Maybe fears or lusts or angry feelings had an
effect on how she responded. In the end
though, it was her will and hers alone that acted upon my question of marriage.
You have a will, the part of your personality that
decides for you what you shall do. It is
what closes the deal. All day you make
decisions. Your passions influence how
your will acts. You have done things
simply because you were angry or broken-hearted or elated. Your conscious thinking impacts how your will
responds to what you face. You think
about things, weigh the evidence and ponder what is happening and how it
affects what you might do. Your
unconscious thoughts influence your will.
Sometimes childhood trauma, a destructive forgotten relationship or a
humiliating experience will without your conscious knowledge determine the
direction your will takes. Because your
heart is poisoned by sin, the will you possess is also damaged by Sin. For obvious reasons, a healthy and effective
will is critical to your well-being because what you decide can have lasting
ramifications for you and those you love.
Let us think of the will as the part of us that
creates the outward push of self. When
you reach outside yourself and act upon what is percolating within you; that is
the will making the determination. Your will drives your actions. We see this in Philippians 2: 13 in which the
Bible says,”…for it is God who works
in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.” (Philippians 2:13 NIV) The will is linked to whatever you do or decide
you won’t do. The Lord’s intention for
you is that your will would be free to do as it wishes. You,
my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the
sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. (Galatians 5:13 NIV) However, with a free will, we can be wicked
and cruel, selfish and filthy or loving and kind, truthful and generous. It is our will that decides what we shall do.
What is amazing is that the God of the universe does
not usurp your will. Christ asked the
two blind men who begged Him for help, "What
do you want me to do for you?" (Matthew 20:32 NIV) When two disciples of John the Baptist
started tagging along behind Jesus, He asked them, "What do you want?" (John 1:38 NIV) The assumption
underlying God’s relationship with us is that we are free to choose it or
not. “But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for
yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers
served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are
living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord." (Joshua
24:15 NIV) The very call of Jesus to Andrew
and Peter was, “Come follow me”. (Mark 1:17 NIV) It seems that they did not
have to follow Jesus if they didn’t want to do so, if they weren’t interested
in being “fishers of men”. Even when the Bible calls to us, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you
will be saved…", the will is left to decide how to respond.(Acts
16:31 NIV)
Consider the strange account of King David and his
affair with Bathsheba. The decision
David made to sleep with her had disastrous ramifications for him. It certainly impacted his family as well as
those who saw him as a spiritual leader.
How did it affect God’s plans for David and the good He wanted David to
accomplish? The affair did not just hurt
David’s reputation but God’s too. What
kind of God chooses men like David to lead His nation? Given all the bad David’s act of Sin brought,
it is interesting that God did not stop him somehow. But David had a will that God was not willing
to usurp even if it meant a disaster would be averted by doing so. God has made us sovereign in the Will we have
been given. We are free to have Him as
Lord or not, free to follow Him or not.
The will does not act in a vacuum however and in
many ways it is a slave to forces beyond it.
Saul, the newly crowned king of Israel had been told by God through the
prophet Samuel to wait seven days until Samuel returned before offering a
sacrifice to God in preparation for the war that was about to begin. He did wait for seven days but he did not wait
long enough for Samuel to return and against God’s will, Saul and his soldiers
offered a burnt offering to God. Some of
us have bought expensive presents for people we love even though they have told
us not to do it and usually it works out well anyway. In this case, it didn’t for Saul. God punished Saul for his disobedience.
At the risk of making it seem that Saul should not
have been held accountable for his rebellious act, we must consider the forces
working upon Saul’s will. First, there
were his conscious thoughts. He looked
about and saw a great army of Philistines before him who were battle tested and
far superior in numbers and weaponry. As
the Bible puts it, they were “as
numerous as the sand on the seashore.” (1 Samuel 13: 5) Not only that,
his own soldiers were going off and hiding in caves and behind bushes and in
cisterns. It seemed unreasonable to Saul
as he considered the situation, not to hurry and offer the sacrifice so that he
might gain God’s favor because if he waited much longer, nearly his entire army
would desert him and the Philistines would attack. Saul’s passion was pressuring his will
certainly as fear began to overwhelm him.
He may have been angry too with Samuel for taking so long. Consider Saul’s unconscious thoughts that pushed
up against his will. It was not that
long ago that Saul was made king and even though Samuel had told him that he
was God’s choice to be king, when it was time to present him to the nation,
Saul hid among the baggage gathered off to the side. When originally informed of God’s plans for
him, Saul referred to himself as from one of the most insignificant of all the
families among the Israelites. How this
impacted Saul unconsciously, we cannot say but it had to have some effect. From birth, he saw himself as not good
enough, as inadequate and incapable of accomplishing much in life. Even when assured that God believed he could
be king, Saul couldn’t buy it. This
embedded way of seeing himself made it difficult for Saul to accept the
challenge of courageously trusting God.
What our Lord did for us as Savior was to take out
of us the corruption of our will. The
Sin that makes the will unstable and untrustworthy is removed from it through
Christ crucified. It can function as God
intended when He gave Adam the challenge of rejecting the fruit from the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil. What
is more, with Christ joined to us, we can have a will that agrees with God on
everything. Philippians 2: 13 reminds us
that now, with Christ as part of us, it is God who works in you to will and to
act in conjunction with what He wants.
In other words, God gives your will backbone to withstand the sort of
pressures Saul faced.
There is one powerful force that works on the will
that must now be given its due consideration.
Our body, our physical desires can and have made the will a slave. There is a supernatural component to the will
that alters altogether the way we can live.
Do you not know that the wicked
will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually
immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual
offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers
will inherit the kingdom of God. And
that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you
were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our
God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-11 NIV)
There is a tremendous promise here that we must take into account when
we consider all those acts that it seems our bodies force us to perform. It is seen, and we cannot say this strongly
enough, that with Christ taking out of us our Sin and the Holy Spirit a part of
us, the body cannot force our will into anything. The will is altogether free in Christ to
withstand even the most powerful urges of the body. We must face this statement head on. Either God is for us and we are able to fight
off any addiction or behavior pattern that our will rejects or the Scripture is
a mythology littered with colossal empty promises.
How can you ever know if your will, joined with
Christ is strong enough to make free decisions that honor Christ and make your
life good? Jesus offers you an
experiment to try. Find out just how
powerful Christ is and how effective His work is in you. He says without pushing you, "Enter through the narrow gate. For
wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many
enter through it. But small is the gate
and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (Matthew 7:13-14 NIV) Impose your will upon every single desire
that goes against what God is saying to do.
The will is like a great muscle. You must train it to follow God or it will
be a slave to your passions, your body, your conscious or unconscious thoughts. If you take your will in through the narrow
gate you might find the way hard and uncomfortable and even some times
unreasonable and maybe boring. But as
you train your will to follow Christ, something will happen to you that may
surprise you. God’s peace and
contentment will begin to take over your heart and a joy that is supernatural
will creep into you also. The term the
Bible uses for this experience is “life” and it is promised to those who bend
their will to that of God. Eventually as
you train your will to follow Christ, God’s will becomes your will and you will
be “the will of God”.
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