September 7, 2010
Will versus willpower
Today I want to consider will vs willpower. It is very important to have a proper view of this.
Your will is decision making, and your willpower is your carrying out of the decisions you make.
Satan wants you to have a very weak will – a weak decision making ability, and a very strong willpower. He does this by the world system that is in place – its a world system that defines what is important for you and pressures you into giving up your will in order to fulfill what society (the world) defines that you need to do. For instance, you may feel like the world is pushing you in a certain direction in a job or career, and if you don’t go that direction, then your life is inferior to others. Or, you may be with your friends and you may feel pressure to get into the things they get into. All of this attacks your will – your decision making ability, and makes you weak in deciding things for yourself.
At the same time, the world pushes you to work harder, be stronger, be more independent and to make your own way. Be all that you can be – work as hard as you can.
God’s intention is the exact opposite. First he wants you to choose Him. Then He wants you to let Him work it out.
A good picture of this is Abraham. God called Abraham out of his homeland. Abraham’s going was his choosing God. God also promised a seed and a land to Abraham. This promise was up to God to fulfill – yet Abraham ‘worked’ for his seed, bringing Lot, then choosing Eliazer, then producing Ishmael. Finally the Lord showed him that he could do nothing and that the Lord would give Him Isaac, the seed, to fulfill his promise.
What did Abraham do to gain Isaac? He didn’t do nothing – He gave up his natural strength. Although He chose to follow God, he still tried to do God’s will by his own power. Actually, when Abraham was stripped of all his power to do anything for God, God came in and produced Isaac.
God wants to choose Him – but once we choose Him, He wants us to stop and give up our natural strength to do His will, and let him do it in us and through us. This is opposed to Satan, who befuddles our ability to choose but compels us to try our hardest to carry out whatever we didn’t choose to do. A big part of the Christian life is God’s stripping of our natural strength in order to let Him work in us.
