19 Mar The Surrender of Your Will
One of the challenges for all believers is the surrender of their will to God. This in fact is the challenge for all humans. Occasionally we meet someone who declares that they are an atheist, but it often seems to be the case that they don’t want to give in to God. The old saying “there are no atheists in fox holes” demonstrates that when people suddenly need God, they believe in Him. But there are a certain subset of humans who won’t believe in God conveniently as a way of avoiding any obligation to what God wants.
But among those who do believe in God, the struggle to surrender the will doesn’t go away.
There are those who like children called for dinner, need ‘five more minutes’ before coming. They will do what they are asked, but when they want to do it. Or there are those who will pretend to obey, but never have any intention of doing it. And there are those who obey but in the way they want to obey. Most of us, almost all of us, struggle with the surrender of the will.
Jesus sets us an example in that he was led by the Spirit into the wilderness for forty days of testing. It was God’s will that he undergo these tests, which he passed with the help of God. Scripture says (Luke 4) that he returned in the power of the Spirit.
At this time of year (Lent) many of us are in some way replicating the forty days of trial that Jesus experienced. For some it was denying themselves youtube or facebook. For others it was the giving up of food, one meal per day. For myself (David Alley) it is giving up snacks and sugar for forty days. No matter what the case, the temptations still come. Just yesterday the temptation was to drink a ‘no sugar’ iced tea drink. Surely no sugar means I can drink it, went the mental reasoning. But I managed to avoid reminding myself of Jesus.
Jesus overcome similar temptations with scripture. ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word out of the mouth of God.’
It would seem that fasting, as hard as it is, has something to teach us with helping us to surrender our wills to the Lord.