The Will of God

My intention in these teachings is to talk about the reality and the act of abiding. There is much in Scripture on this subject. We read of abiding in Christ, abiding in the vine, abiding in the light, abiding in the Word, abiding in love, and also, abiding in darkness, abiding in death, etc. And yet, in no place in Scripture is the term, or the act, clearly defined for us. It is often like that in Scripture. God gives us words in the Bible, but He leaves the defining of those words to the Spirit of Truth. The experience of the work of God in the heart is the only real way to know the meaning of the Words. Words do not really define spiritual things. Growth, live, and experience in the Spirit is what really gives meaning or definition to words. 

Because of this, I realize that I am limited in what I can teach or share with you. But what I would like to do is at least describe some things that have become very real and important to me, with the hope, and with the expectation that the Lord will teach all of us the realities that are behind the words. But before I get into that specifically, I need to say some preliminary things.

From one point of view, I think you could say that there are only two things that exist in the created universe. There is God’s will; and then there is that which is not God’s will. I mean, there are those things, creatures, words, desires, expressions, actions, manifestations, works, etc. that spring up from the fountain of God’s will, are according to His will, abide in His will, and glorify His will. And then there are other things, other creatures, other words, desires, actions, manifestations, and works that have departed from God’s will, and now work in self-will, against the glory of God.

Satan and his demons are creatures that have gone out from the will of God. Nothing that they do is intentionally God’s will. Their thoughts, their desires, their actions, their words—God’s will is not in any of it. On the other hand, there are creatures that have not departed from the will of God, and cannot help but glorify Him in what they are and what they do. Birds, trees, whales, flowers, etc. these, and many other creatures, just by living every day in His will, glorify God as far as their nature is capable of doing so. And then there are humans, who have the choice of two wills. I will say more about this later. 

I think of these two things—God’s will, and all that is contrary to it—as something like two rivers, with two currents, flowing in two different directions. One river is the will of God, it is what God wants, and loves, and does and is, flowing, moving, creating as it goes, bringing everything that abides in it into a state of glory, beauty, truth; causing everything created (by abiding in His will) to grow into the greatest manifestation of God’s glory that its nature is capable of. 

And the only thing that a creature has to do to grow in life, purpose, goodness, into a state of glory, is to remain where God has created it. It only has to remain, to ABIDE in His will. There, in this will, its destiny is certain. The plants and animals of this world naturally glorify their Creator, to some degree. It is true that the earth was cursed because man brought sin into it, and so it does not bear the same image and glory that it did in the beginning. But still, the plants and animals glorify various aspects of God’s nature and goodness, and they do it without striving, because they find no free will in them that can turn against the will of God. But there are other creatures that have found in themselves an ability to turn against His will, and have done so.

Let me say again: It is important that you understand God’s will to be like a living, moving river, that creates as it goes. God’s will is His living, active, power that turns all things that abide in it into their greatest form of perfection and glory. Christians sometimes think of God’s will as a list of things, or a bunch of tasks that He would like to see people do. When they ask what God’s will is for their lives, they immediately think about God wanting them to go somewhere, or do something, to learn something, to get this job or buy that car. And while it is true that His will can lead into all sorts of actions and decisions, these things are never the greatest or truest manifestations of His will. Because His will is not primarily an instruction about how you should live YOUR life. His will is His own life living and reigning in His creation. His will is His own nature, glory, goodness, love, power, truth, purity, etc. manifesting itself in and through a creation. 

His will is His life living and expressing itself. His will is His love, His righteousness, His truth and purity, His nature filling everything, moving everything, reigning in all of creation. His will is that all of creation would receive His goodness, and manifest His goodness to the fullest degree that it can. And God can’t just tell a person how to DO that, or give a person a list of tasks that will get that done. Do you see? You can’t do His will without His life, His power, His nature. He doesn’t just want creatures who will do tasks for Him, obey rules, follow requirements. He wants a creation that will be filled with Him, live in Him and by Him, and express true goodness in all that is done. This is His will. It is a kingdom, where everything, in whatever measure that it can, receives goodness from God until it is bursting with His image, and gives back to Him an increased expression of all the goodness that it can contain. 

Everything in creation has this same purpose, in different ways and degrees. Creation came out from the will of God, was born of His will, and was meant to abide in His will, in His current of life, where it could not miss His blessing. But again, some things in creation have gone OUT of this purpose. They have turned from God’s will into self-will. And so now there are two things in this creation: There are those things which have kept their proper domain, and stayed in their rightful abode in the will of God. And there are those things, as Jude says, which have not “kept their proper domain, but left their own abode.” In the context of Jude, he is referring to Angels that long ago left their abode in the will of God, and went out, not to another place, but to another will, to another river, that flows in another direction. Man has done the same thing. He went out from the good, perfect, and acceptable will of God, because he was deceived by a serpent into following his own independent will. 

This is how sin entered the world. It entered the world because man used his freedom to depart from the will of God, and this brought all of the natural, physical creation into a fall from the glory of God. Creation could no longer—not in the same way or degree—manifest the glory of God now that the elements, properties, and creatures in it had been infected with sin.

What is sin? Sin is the presence, power, and growth of something else in creation that is not the will of God. Sin is something that is here in creation, but that wasn’t created by God. God is not the creator of sin. Sin was born when the creation departed from the will of God. Sin was born when suddenly something was found in the creation of God that was not abiding in His will, but rather was using the creation for self-will, for personal, private purposes and pleasures. 

Sin is generally conceived as bad things, wrong things, and this is certainly true. But the only REASON why things are bad, or sinful, is because they have gone out from God’s will, to live in a private, personal, selfish will. Here is their badness. And here is why everything that is not of faith is sin. Everything that is not done in and by the light and life of God, is necessarily done in another light and life, and so is contrary to God. And so when you think of sin, please don’t think primarily of rules, laws, and lists of unaccepted behavior. Think of something that is living, moving, and growing in this creation that has another will besides God’s. Think of something that is living, moving, growing, and motivating in YOU that is not God’s will. Because just as sure as the will of God is a power that moves, lives, works, and creates as it goes, so too sin is a power that moves, lives, works, and creates as it goes. It creates distortion, destruction, and death. It creates an image, an image that is contrary to God’s image and likeness. Sin, over time, makes things into a false image, a distorted image. 

So, having said all of this, I hope you can understand with a little more clarity that to abide in the will of God, is to abide in a living, moving, growing power that will constantly work in your life and heart in the same way that the sun constantly works on a young plant. It will give you light and life and power to grow up into the fullness of God, the fullness of goodness, the fullness of true life and fruitfulness. But, plants need to abide in the sun. Even plants turn their leaves and flowers towards the sun. And if you do not turn to and abide in the will of God, but abide in a different will, in self-will, then you are abiding in a living, moving, growing power that will daily fill you with a contrary image. And listen to me carefully when I tell you that you will not inherit another image after this life, besides the one that grew in you during this life. 

We must understand that the work of sin in the creation of God is exactly like a disease, an infection, a cancer. It takes something good, distorts it, deforms it, and uses it to feed the wrong kind of growth. It takes a healthy human body, and uses its energy, its blood, its life, to grow something that changes the image and kills the life. This is what sin does. This is what sin is. It is a contrary will, that lives and grows and forms a contrary image in the creation of God. 

Now I ask again, where did this horrible cancer of sin come from? How did it get here in the creation of a perfect and good God? It got here when part of creation departed from the will of God, and went into self-will. It began to live and abide in self-will. God’s will, as Scripture says, is good, perfect and acceptable. But if you take just one step outside of that will, outside of that river of life and power and goodness, then you step into badness. And if you keep walking and living in self-will, then you abide in badness, you abide in sin, and you meet with the law of sin and death. This is an unbreakable law for those who live outside of the will of God.

So I want to get a little closer to our subject, and ask the question: HOW is it that a man abides in sin, in darkness, in death? How does he do it? If we consider this question seriously, I think we all know the answer to it. Man abides in sin with his will. He chooses it. He doesn’t do it accidentally. He is not forced into it by something or someone else. No, he does it by turning away from God, looking away from God, and then willfully and constantly following a desire that leads outside of God’s nature, life, righteousness. 

This is what happened in the beginning. This was the cause of man’s fall, the reason why he died to the life of God. We all know that he sinned, that he ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But the REASON why this was wrong, and dangerous, and sinful, was because it was a choice to stop living in, and abiding in, the will of God. It was a choice to step outside of God’s will and to begin to live in self-will, a different river, going a different direction. 

And again, this was an act on man’s part. He did it actively, with his will, with his heart, with his eyes, with his time, with his mind, with his strength. He began to follow his own will as his leader in all things. He thought continually about how he could please himself with the things of time, the things of the world. He turned to the world for the purposes of self, for the lusts of his eyes, the lusts of his flesh, and pride of his own life. Every day, every hour, every waking minute, he listened to, he reached for, and he followed the voice of his own desire. He loved himself in the world. And he loved the world for himself. It was an active thing. 

Perhaps you can see where I am going with this. Because abiding in Christ is also a very active thing, and I will get to that. But first I would like us to understand that this is what it means to abide in self-will. It means an active looking, turning and following, with our inward ground, with the faculties and resources of our inward man—all of our will and heart and attention and time and mind and strength—a turning to live in and to follow the desires of self. And this has become so natural for the natural man, that we don’t even notice that we are doing it. We don’t even notice that there is another option, another Leader, another voice, another place to abide. 

Man is so fallen, so broken, so lost in self love, that he does not even realize that from the moment that he wakes up, to the moment that he goes to bed, he does almost nothing but turn to and follow the desires of self. The decisions we make, the words we speak, the relationship we pursue, the reason why we work, the reason we take classes, the things we do on our phones, the things we do to entertain ourselves, the foods we choose to eat, the goals and dreams that we have, ALL OF IT is a continual, active, abiding in self-will. We work hard at it. We are faithful seekers and abiders in self-will, and this is 100% normal in the world that we live in. 

Nobody questions it, nobody complains about it, unless YOUR seeking of self interferes with my seeking of self. That is the only problem that the natural man has with this way of living. Man doesn’t care that this is a selfish, proud, covetous, envious, and shameful way to live. He only cares when your self-love interferes with my self-love. Then you have gone too far!

Oh it’s so ugly, and yet so common. Self-will is the energy that makes this world go around. Me, my, mine! It moves presidents and kings, congresses and parliaments. It is the motor in our relationships, and our businesses and our education. James asks, “Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war.” (James 4:1) Elsewhere he says: “Each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.” 

Do you see what James is saying here? He is telling us that the will turned from God, the desire of man turned from God, is the mother of sin, and the mother of war. Man looks outside of the will of God, sees a way to love self in the world, or a way to love the world for himself, and he is drawn away. And when his will unites with something outside of the will of God, then there is a conception, a baby is born, and that baby is called sin.  This is how the natural man lives in the world. He abides in self-will, pursuing the passing vanities of time, and would be entirely powerless to do anything else unless God intervened. 

But God has intervened. He has done something on our behalf to help us. He has given us something else that we can learn to abide in. 

Well, to be more exact, He has come in our nature. God became flesh, and in our fallen nature (though without ever committing sin) He overcame every power of evil, darkness, and death that held man in his fallen condition. God joined Himself to man and then made a way for man to join to His Spirit. He was born of our flesh, so that we could be born of His Spirit, and leave our fallen condition. He gave Himself as a sacrifice for sins past, He opened the door to a new and living way to come out of slavery to self and Satan, and He shared His overcoming Spirit with all mankind.  He did something outwardly—coming as a man to overcome all obstacles to our redemption. And He did something inwardly, sowing a seed of His own grace, life and light into the ground of the human heart, giving man a talent, a pearl, a seed of growing grace, and implanted Word, which if not overlooked and trampled upon, is both willing and able to save the soul. 

But wait, there is a condition! The gift doesn’t automatically and instantaneously save the soul (as many wrongly teach). No, we must learn to ABIDE in it, in order to be made free by it. We have received a Spirit, and now we must learn to live in the Spirit. We have received a new light, and now we must walk in the light. We have received an implanted Word, and now we must abide in that Word. And this is what Jesus tells us very plainly in the following words: 

Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” They answered Him, “We are Abraham's descendants, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can You say, ‘You will be made free’?” Jesus answered them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin.”

The next time I share, I want to talk specifically about this verse, because this isn’t just a new way of believing. This is a new way of living. This is something new to abide in.