A Gracious Invasion

"If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth ... Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief" (Mark 9:23-24)

The Holy Spirit, when He effects His gracious invasion of the believing heart, must win that heart to glad and voluntary obedience to the hole will of God. The cure must be wrought from within; no outward conformity will do.

Until the will is sanctified the man is still a rebel just as an outlaw is still an outlaw at heart even though he may be yielding grudging obedience to the sheriff who is taking him to prison. The Holy Spirit achieves this inward cure by merging the will of the redeemed man with His own. This is not accomplished at one stroke.

There must be, it is true, some kind of overall surrender of the will to Christ before any work of grace can be done, but the full emergence of every part of life with the life of God in the Spirit is likely to be a longer process than we in our creature impatience would wish.

No sin is so sweet that the sanctified person is not willing and resolved to forsake. he takes up the Cross at the hazard of everything.

~A. W. Tozer~

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Willing the Will of God

"If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God" (John 7:17)

The most advanced soul may be shocked and chagrined to discover some private area within his life where he had been, unknown to himself, acting as lord and proprietor of that which he thought he had given to God. It is the work of the in-living Spirit to point out these moral discrepancies and correct them. He does not ..."break" the human will, but He does invade it and bring it gently to a joyous union with the will of God.

To will the will of God is to do more than give unprotesting consent to it; it is rather to choose God's will with positive determination. As the work of God advances, the Christian finds himself free to choose whatever he will, and he gladly chooses the will of God as his highest conceivable good. Such a man has found life's highest goal. He has been placed beyond the little disappointments that plague the rest of men. Whatever happens to him is the will of God for him and that is just what he most ardently desires.

Can you renounce everything which is inconsistent with the glory of God and the highest good of your fellowmen? Are these the natural breathings of your heart, "Thy kingdom come; thy will be done?" 

~A. W. Tozer~