John 6:21 NIV
Then they were
willing to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the shore
where they were heading.
What Are You Willing To Do?
When I was in college I attended a mini conference
on prayer. The speaker was not
particularly charismatic and he didn’t fascinate us with his stories. In fact his method of presentation was much
like a lecture and all of us had little booklets that we used for note taking. The auditorium was filled with college
students though, all wanting to know more about praying. At the conclusion of the seminars, we were
challenged by the speaker to make a commitment to an hour of praying a
day. That was of course a stupendous
challenge! He laid out for us a methodology
for praying through an hour using a wheel diagram. As I looked at the parts of the wheel, I
could not find any one of the sections that I could in good faith say needed to
be eliminated to try to whittle down the time from an hour to something more
manageable for me. It was of course ludicrous
for me to take an hour of my time each day to pray given my college
workload. Yet something happened to me
that evening that changed the dynamic of my evaluation of the challenge. Christ met with me and I could not deny His
presence. It was Him, not the speaker
who called for me to rewrite my priorities and begin praying an hour each
day. Billy Graham could not have
convinced me to make such a profound and grave commitment. Only our Lord Himself could “talk me into it”
and He did but not with His finely conceived arguments, rather He came up to my
will and addressed it there.
We each have a Will and it is not some separate part
of our personality; not a segment of who we are like we see with the spirit and
the body and even to some degree with the soul.
It is you in totality deciding what you will do, the ruling force over
your actions. You cannot give your will
to someone else any more than your body belongs to another person. You may let people tell you what to do and
you might use your body for the purposes of others but it always is your body,
your spirit is always your spirit. No
one else can borrow it or live in it. It
belongs to you. The question is never
whose will is it; it is what you, your will has decided. Your will is you choosing how to act at any
given moment. The will is a most
precious and critical gift you possess and many fail to realize how valuable their
will is.
Solomon, the ancient king of Israel is a classic
example of how the Will can be corrupted by the lack of a clear devotion to
anything. Just as his reign began,
Solomon had a momentous encounter with the Lord in which God famously asked him
what he wanted as a gift. Solomon
acknowledged how difficult it would be to rightly govern the people of the
kingdom and so he called for the Lord to “…give your servant a discerning
heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of
yours?" (1 Kings 3:9 NIV ) This
request was an act of Solomon’s will and it certainly was not in keeping with
how most people would respond if given the options God provided. God graciously granted Solomon’s request and
made him the wisest person on earth. Later
Solomon, in keeping with the mandate his father gave him, built the Temple to
the Lord and it was lavishly constructed.
Again God met with him, this time following the dedication of the Temple
to the worship of YHWH. "As for
you, if you walk before me as David your father did, and do all I command, and
observe my decrees and laws, I will establish your royal throne, as I
covenanted with David your father when I said, 'You shall never fail to have a
man to rule over Israel.' But if you
turn away and forsake the decrees and commands I have given you and go off to
serve other gods and worship them, then I will uproot Israel from my land,
which I have given them, and will reject this temple I have consecrated for my
Name.” (2 Chronicles 7:17-20 NIV)
The Lord laid out for Solomon clearly the terms of a
covenant with him. God would establish
Solomon’s rule as a lasting dynasty if Solomon kept the Commandments and lived
with faithful commitment to the Lord as his only God. However, if he didn’t, the Lord would
eventually wreck Israel and destroy the Temple that was built. This was of course simple enough and Solomon
certainly understood the ramifications of the Lord’s agreement with him. Yet Solomon never settled this matter fully
in his heart. His Will wavered between
loyalty to God and rebellion against Him.
Solomon, in opposition to the clear commands the Lord gave his kings, made
himself extravagantly rich, married thousands of women, married women who were
not Jewish and most egregiously of all, he joined with his wives in their worship
of idols which we all know is in actuality much more than bowing before a dumb
rock or statue, it is in fact a pledging of loyalty to demons and the Satanic
realm.
Solomon’s Will made decisions and led to specific
actions. His Will built a Temple to
God. His Will also built altars to
demons. By his Will he wrote the
Proverbs which have inspired billions in their life with God. His Will drove him to greed, selfishness and
lust. By the determination of his will,
Solomon destroyed his relationship with God and joined forces with Satan in the
corruption of his kingdom. Solomon
decided to do all this not because he was forced but because His will was not
thoroughly loyal to God. In the end,
Solomon died a miserable, bitter and angry man who gave up the joy God had for
him because his Will stubbornly refused to be joined with the God who met him
at the Temple.
To show the contrast between Solomon’s Will and the
Will of others in the Bible, let me point out the surprising actions of a man
who had been possessed by demons. When
Jesus met him, this fellow was wild and violent and uncontrollable, not even
chains could hold him. The Lord drove
the demons out of him and in his right mind, he had a simple wish. The man from whom the demons had gone out
begged to go with him, but Jesus sent him away, saying, "Return home and tell how much God has
done for you." So the man went away and told all over town how much Jesus
had done for him. (Luke 8:38-39 NIV)
Rather than argue with Christ over this “rejection” or angrily pout that
he was turned away, the man’s will determined a new course of action. He told everyone he could what Jesus had done
with him. It did not matter to him what
others thought of his message, the man who had been healed by Jesus turned his
will toward what Christ wanted and we can only imagine what happiness it
brought him.
The same could be said of Mary who had a jar full of
expensive perfume, worth a year’s wages and generously poured it on Jesus’ feet
and used her own hair to clean them.
When questioned about the action, Jesus retorted, "Leave her
alone," Jesus replied. "[It was intended] that she should save this
perfume for the day of my burial. You
will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me." (John
12:7-8 NIV) The point we have to make
here is that it was the Will of Mary that decided how she would act at this
gathering. With Jesus present, she
decided to be extravagant in her love for Him.
She didn’t have to use up all the perfume or any of it on Jesus’
feet. But her will, the ruling force
over her actions decided to do it.
We see this in Paul also. Raging against Christianity and using his
authority as a Jewish leader to have Christians imprisoned and executed, Paul
literally met Jesus on the road as he was traveling with companions and the
force of that interaction with Christ changed the way Paul saw things. He immediately joined the Christian Church
and became its most important missionary and teacher. He was not brainwashed or talked into giving
up his life of murder and hatred. Paul’s
Will decided, once he met Jesus, to act differently. It is the same for each of us. None of us become Christian because we are
convinced we had been wrong. No argument
seizes your will or overthrows it and forces it to capitulate to Christ. Only when Jesus breaks through in the
supernatural way He does and enters your inner world, goes where your Will is
and meets you, then are your free to be Christian. He must meet you, He must come to you and
then and only then can your Will truly change its course and you become
Christian.
It is wrong for us to think our goal as a church, as
Christian people is to talk others into following Christ. It is not.
Our goal is for each of us to introduce others to Jesus. He must meet them if any good is to come of
their lives. We cannot force anyone to
change. It is your Will that must decide
to do something differently and follow Jesus whole-heartedly. The same is true of me and of each person
around the world. You decide in your
Will if you will love others, be kind and generous, forgive and worship Christ devotedly. Your Will is the great power that holds you
back from the peace of God that passes all understanding and it is the force
that opens the door so that the life of Christ can fill you with all the joy a
soul could ever want.
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