A few months ago, as I was praying and confessing the sin of my wicked heart, God spoke to me about character, His will, and my will. He was specifically speaking to me about manhood, and how broken men are today outside of Christ. This is however, addressed to all genders.
- God's will in strong.
- God's will is definite, intentional, and determined.
- God's will is grounded in absolute, perfect, infinite, and unconditional love.
If God's will was weak, indefinite, unintentional, I think our salvation would have never happened. Our existence and being would be left to chance. The amazing thing is, God never gets confused about his plan/will, it's perfect and concretely grounded in Himself, but expressed towards us, in perfect and patient love.
The opposite is true of us. Outside of God, and when left to and with ourselves, our wills are weak! Our character being so shallow, will topple over at the smallest budge of sin. We cave in at the slightest wind of opposition and resistance. We are quick to change our minds at the sight of sin and temptation. We are quick to break vows we recently made. We are quick to go along with popular or convenient course of sinful actions due to self-consciousness instead of God-consciousness, and self or peer-worship instead of God-worship. We are quick to lie. Quick to fornicate, masturbate, watch porn. Quick to cheat, lie, get angry for the smallest things. Quick to exaggerate our strengths, and minimize our weaknesses while minimizing others' strengths and exaggerating their weaknesses. Quick to judge others. Quick to jealousy, envy, hate, gossip. Quick to pride instead of humility and submission to others, even if they are wrong. Quick to self-righteousness. And even quicker to claiming our love for God and commitment to being Christians. This is how our natural wills look like. It makes the world and everything in it about us.
Let us align our wills and character according to the will of God and only then will we have such definite, intentional, and strong wills, enduring through time and circumstances.
This blog post, is a result of a sin that I willfully committed, after I had made up my mind about what is moral, right, loving, and true and was pursuing the perfect will of God. But because of my weak character and will, and outright disobedience, I took an emotional/sinful approach at listening to the plea and will of someone else, someone that I do care about. This was the problem in the Garden of Eden. Adam, having a weak will and separated from the will of God, was similarly led into sin, not by Eve, but by his own sinful will. And today, we are continually led into deception, each time we decide to pursue our own wills instead of the will of God.
As Paul says in Romans 7:24, "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?" Then says, "Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! (v25)"
To men: we need to lead with such strong but loving character. You need to will as God wills. You need make up your mind how your will is going to affect the woman you are leading, the family you are leading, the friendships you are leading, the company or organization you are leading, and how you are living out your own walk of faith.