Psychological Effect of Redemption The Will

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”.

Pro-Choice

Have we seen yet that we are completely free to live within the world we choose?  We can go down one road or another and it becomes our road but what sort of world we find as we travel along the road is completely up to God.  The Hebrews did not determine the sort of country they would have when first they chose a wilderness and then Palestine.  In neither case was it up to them when the manna fell or didn't, when the storms arrived or stayed away, what hills sprang up along the way and how much dew settled upon their tents.  We choose a home but our Lord decides how that home will be.  Heaven is not up to us to build and Hell cannot be demolished by human hands.  When the poor beggar chose Abraham's country, he could not make it more delightful and when the wealthy Lazarus selected Hell, he could not take down its sorrow.   God sovereignly rules over the worlds but we are kings of the road.  The man or woman who calls for the Law of his or her own way must accept the Law to the end God has determined.  But whoever opens the door to Grace has Grace in its all its wild unpredictability.  The wine that came out of the water pots was from Jesus but the water that was poured into them came from the friend of the groom.  We each live within the economy of our choices but the value of the coin we have in our pocket is decided by God.    God's commands are built on the construct of choice.  We do them or not but His rewards for keeping them are not our choice; they flow out of the Sovereign will of our Savior's Cross.  He chose to take away our Sin, we did not.  He chose to put together a home for us, we did not.  Choice for humanity started in the Garden of Eden...the Garden was not our choice nor was the deconstructed world where Adam and Eve found themselves later but at the point between the two, choice was theirs. Take the low road of "my will" and you have what follows.    Take the high road of "sovereign grace" and every command of God will lead you up and in to a world prepared for you by the same Lord who died to save you. 

"Set up road signs; put up guideposts. Take note of the highway, the road that you take.    Jeremiah 31: 21 NIV

Comfort Re-examined

What makes you so certain you have all the facts?  Do you know everything you need to know when you make your decisions?  Are you clear on all the factors involved as you move forward?  We find in 2 Thessalonians 2: 7ff that there is a great set of unseen forces at work all around us and we are like mindless bobs bouncing at the whim of a seething  ocean storm if we do not seek the Lord in all we do and say.  The deception is at every level and in each turn; everything that is of God is opposed by the power of lawlessness and we pretend to our great harm that it is not present in our spot of the world.  The vast majority of our personality is hidden from our view and therein is the rub.  What we don't see we pretend doesn't exist but we cannot continue to hide from it.  Forces are at work within us and without and it is the fool who does not bring Christ into each part of his day because those forces are most certainly there already.  If insanity is the mental deviation from the norm, then it is insanity to take into consideration forces operating within each of your moments influencing your emotional reactions and marring your mental acuity.  Yet insanity is sanity when reality goes unnoticed and denied by the acknowledged "norm".  Jesus Christ died to free you from slavery to the rebellion in the universe and to let yourself be subservient to that rebellion without a care is the remaking of General Custer's march into the Little Big Horn.  The Lord broke your bondage to Satan and the will of his cohorts; why put back on those chains by ignoring the working of Holy Spirit in your heart; guiding you, inspiring you, elevating your view.  The man of lawlessness is no comic book character...he is at the heart of our world's misery even in your corner of the world.  Take action.  Pursue with determined fortitude the power and might of Holy Spirit at the very spot where you are in your day through all those spots of your day.  You are at the front line of the battlefield and you must have the eyes of God Himself seeing through you if you are to be of any good in this fight.

The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders and in every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing.  They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.  2 Thessalonians 2: 9-10

The Daily Dilemma

When we reach the conclusion of a day, do we give much thought to how it went from God's perspective?   There seem to be two non-Biblical takes on a day.  The first is that God really doesn't care much how it went.  It seems laughable to many that anyone would even attempt to ascertain God's view of experiences and reactions.  Commentators mock the fools who claim God gave them victory in sporting events or brought them success at what they did.  The other view is that everything always goes just as God wants it to go and so each decision made and every circumstance is divinely determined and thus "His will".  And yet the Scripture seems to be in neither of these two camps.  God is presented as angry at how some things go and pleased as punch on other occasions.  The details of the day seem to matter to the Lord; they aren't just meaningless minutia or orchestrated point by point as God determines.  We can really decide to turn left or right and in the examples of life lived out in actualities we find in Scripture, God cares which way the people go.  It genuinely seems to sadden and anger God that Israelites bend into paganism and He appears really happy when a single sinner repents and turns to Him for help.  It may appear clownish for a young wife to pray her husband like the meal she prepares or for a basketball player to pray he win his game but even if such praying is immature, it isn't for the reasons often voiced.  We are told to pray for God to intervene in our circumstances; no parameters are set for us.  And if things cannot and do not turn ever on our praying, then what an absurdity it is for the Lord to tell us to pray for our daily bread and the "whatsoevers" of our day.  It is meaningless noise if everything is set in stone by the will of God or not even noticed by Him.  As a young scholar stretches his vocabulary by reading great works and an athlete builds her strength by pushing her muscles to the limit, so we build intimacy with God and develop holiness by turning to Him for the breadiness of our minutes and hours.  Each day is filled with a multitude of "daily bread" moments that God wants us to bring before Him and admit our need for His help.   Why does an old man go to a doctor for medication if not because in his maturity he recognizes his limitations and admits his poverty?  Have we so little faith and are we so childish that we do not have it in us to persist in knocking and seeking and asking?  Are we so calloused by our troubles and failures that we no longer have space in our day to go to God and expect Him to have at least as much concern for what we face as us?  Is God not god enough to care for you and want to wrap you in His arms in a tender embrace ?  Do you not think He celebrates with you your victories and weeps over your defeats?  Aren't you aware of how much He cares about your reaction to the temptation you face, what you decide about your long-standing grudges and how you respond to your critic?  It is odd, just based on what is clearly evident in Scripture, that any believer would dismiss the possibility that God has something to say about His day.  And it seems to be an absurdity that He would do nothing to try to ascertain what His thoughts might be!

Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, "Teacher, don't you care if we drown?" He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, "Quiet! Be still!" Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.     Mark 4:38-39 NIV

The Moment...

The moment of surrender is not just before the big crisis or the courageous endeavor but it is at the breakfast table when your wife scorns your advice or at the school when your son barks at you for being late to come get him or in the evening when everyone walks away from the dinner table and leaves the dishes for you to clean and put away.  The moment of surrender is at the store when the line to check out is ten deep or as you take out the trash and discover your husband threw away your mail without checking with you first.  The moment of surrender is the point at which you decide you have been crucified with Christ and you no longer live but Christ lives in you and you let Him steal your self-righteous indignation and your justified frustration and replace it with real forgiveness and actual rejection of the grievance.  Christ died for those moments when you want to scream in despair but you don't because the Lord Himself has enough joy to see you through it.  Take care to not take care much and let Jesus live fully in you.

It Matters...It Matters Not

My friend is on the verge of completely rearranging his life through a career move and I could not be happier for him. How do we end up here or there, befriend him or her, have this child but not that one, marry her but not her or her or her? And then when it all is, we call it a life. We circle the wagons and try to defend this choice or that, squeeze this wish out of God vs that one and make a go out of finding happiness. Last night my son almost crossed home plate...but didn't. Should he have prayed more and forced his way past the catcher through God force or better yet, bowled him over? One cancer cell in the liver and we are battling into death, one lovely chance meeting and we are barreling into marriage. I have never been more in love with Jesus than I am now and yet more reluctant to try to plan my way into success or happiness or comfort or peace. I just finished Surprised by Joy and if there was one theme that bopped me more than any other in C.S. Lewis' book, it was this. all that is good is that we are in Jesus...Cross home plate or not, find a new house or not, get a more comfortable job or not pale in comparison to living within Christ. The stuff of it all...the encouraging conversation, the rolling waves, the cozy book, have a place to this life but never are the home of it. In Christ, we are home...