Will

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.   

Talking Points Part One

1 Corinthians 1: 10-17 GJW
But I urge you brothers through the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that all of you might speak in one accord and there not be any schisms within you all but that you might continue being united one in your thoughts and opinions. For it was made known to me through Cloe’s people concerning you that wrangling arguments are going on in your midst. I am saying this because separately, each one says, “I myself am of Paul”, “but I with Apollos”, “but I with Cephas”, “but I with Christ”. Has Christ been divided, Paul wasn’t crucified for you nor into the name of Paul were you baptized? I give thanks that not one of you I baptized except Crispus and Gauius so that certain ones of you might not say that into my name you were baptized. Oh, but I also baptized the house of Stephen. As to the rest I don’t know another one I baptized. For Christ did not send me to baptize but to evangelize without wise words in order that the Cross of Christ might not be emptied.


A talking point is a focus of discussion, a set of items that you or your team are determined to make central to conversations you enter. We have Republican talking points such as the lack of experience Senator Obama has in governing and we have Democratic talking points such as the connection between President Bush and Senator McCain. Talking points are used to keep critics from addressing the weak parts of your argument and to accentuate your strengths. Talking points are an agreed upon approach to addressing issues that may be controversial.

Apparently the Corinthian church had its own Democrats and Republicans, Libertarians and Socialists. They were the: Paul, Apollos, Cephas and the Christ parties. Now commentators have developed a multitude of creative platforms these four different groups may have adopted. Barclay contended that the Paul Party was comprised of Gentile believers who lived lawlessly. The Apollos Party was a group of intellectuals who were turning Christianity into a philosophy like Buddhism rather than a living faith. Cephas Party was the Jewish Christians who promoted the Law and made little of grace. The Christ Party was a collection of Christians who thought they were the only true church. Now the only difficulty I have with this quite fascinating and logical explanation is that nowhere in the text do we find a hint of this. In fact, Paul’s complaint with the factions has nothing to do with doctrine, teaching or practice. To try to assess what was wrong with each group completely misses the point.

Paul did not critique the Apollos Group for being sophists, never attacks the Cephas Group for pushing circumcision and certainly doesn’t tongue lash the Paul group for being too lax on practice. He does later make much of the immorality in the church and blasts them for suing each other but there is not a hint of quadrangular setting straight the doctrines of the parties. His attack is entirely based upon their splitting from one another. He uses the almost grotesque image of Jesus torn into pieces as rhetorical proof of their lunacy. Several hundred years before, in the early days before the nation of Israel became a monarchy, an Israelite and his concubine were threatened by the perverted Benjaminites of Gibeah. When the man sent out his concubine to the crowd in response to their threats, she was raped through the night and eventually died as a result. Furious with what they had done, the man cut up his dead concubine into twelve parts and sent the body parts of his slave girl out on donkeys throughout Israel to raise up the righteous wrath of his countrymen. Needless to say, it worked. Paul knew of the story and its horror all too well for he was a Benjaminite and the occurrence was a dark blight on his ancestral background. The terrible image of Christ cut up like that and sent out was intended to disgust and shock the church.

We are so accustomed to splits and divisions and spin-offs that we have a most difficult time taking this passage at face value. We seem to have an inherent need to find out what was wrong with the factions. What were they doing that caused the split(s)? Where had they drifted from right doctrine? Now we know from church history that there were plenty of theological rifts that nearly tore the church asunder. From the Palagians to the Gnostics, there were a slew of cultic teachings infiltrating the church. Paul himself fought against the Judaizers and their effort to destroy the work of Grace. But this furious reprimand of Paul had nothing to do with setting straight bad doctrine. It was an attack against the church way of life. Paul had absolutely nothing bad or good to say about whatever arguments and counter arguments were being cast about for the various factions. He just despised the splits.
To Be Continued

Inside Out

Why do we think we should be any better off than Paul or any cooler than the Apostles? God isn’t concerned about making churches cool…He wants them to be clay pots containing the Gospel. Everything else it would seem; is about us…and superfluous. Inside or out, it must be the same. The Gospel within and the Gospel without!

If you only look at us, you might well miss the brightness. We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives. That’s to prevent anyone from confusing God’s incomparable power with us. As it is, there’s not much chance of that. You know for yourselves that we’re not much to look at. We’ve been surrounded and battered by troubles, but we’re not demoralized, we’re not sure what to do, we’ve been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn’t left our side; we’ve been thrown down, but we haven’t broken. What they did to Jesus, they do to us—trial and torture, mockery and murder; what Jesus did among them, he does in us—he lives. 2 Corinthians 4: 7-11 The Message