When someone mentions that we should do God’s will it can conjure up images of gritting our teeth and forcing ourselves to do something very disagreeable. There is some truth in this but the supreme reason we do God’s will is that we love him and know that his principles for living will produce more life and happiness than anything else. Learning to do God’s will when we don’t feel like it and when we don’t feel God is one of the greatest and most freeing lessons in the Christian life.
Remember that the purpose of all of God’s commands is that we would have more life, bear fruit, abide in the kingdom of God and keep us moving in the direction of the future perfect community of love with God and his followers. The directives in Scripture are ideals that we move toward as we are gradually “attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13, NIV). God expects progress but not flawless perfection. Is someone a failure as a child just because they sometimes give in to their selfish impulses? Does their father reject them? No. Likewise, one does not have to be faultless to abide in Christ.
Following are quotes from two great Christian teachers of the past which inspire us to commit our hearts to focusing on God’s will.
Johannes Tauler (c.1300-1361), taught that one should pray:
“Not my will, Lord, but Yours I shall accept; and should you will that I have nothing, I will surrender for the sake of your will.” To think in such a way, and to renounce self-will with such disposition, is to possess and receive more than could ever have been gained by having one’s own way.[1]
] Tauler, Sermons, 72, (Sermon 19).
Francois Fenelon (1651-1715) described the change in our lives when we fully surrender to God’s will:
From the moment that you wish nothing more according to your own judgment and that you wish everything which God wishes without reserve, you will have no longer so many uneasy returns and reflections to make over what concerns you. You will have nothing to hide, nothing to manage. Up to that point you will be troubled, changing in your views and your tastes, easily discontented with others, ill content with your own self, full of reserve and distrust. Your good mind until it has become humble and simple, will only torment you. Your devotion, although sincere, will give you less support and less comfort than the reproaches within. If, on the contrary, you abandon your heart to God, you will be serene, and full of the joy of the Holy Spirit.”[2]
Francis Fenelon, Christian Perfection, trans. Mildred Stillman (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1975), 90-91. (We highly recommend this book to all. Fenelon had an unusual gift for penetrating hearts with words.)
