Where the Battle Is Won or Lost

If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority (John 7:17).

Think about your car. It is composed of an amazing variety of parts: engine, wheels, brakes, windshield wipers, etc. Now let me ask you a question. Which part is most important? I’d love to hear your answer. But since I’m the one writing this article, I’ll tell you what I think: the steering wheel!

You are free to disagree, of course, but I think you can understand the point I want to make. What ultimately matters when you get in a car is that it takes you where you want to go. Whether the trip is fast or slow, smooth or bumpy, high-tech or old-fashioned, is of secondary importance. Where are you going? That is the only question that really matters when you drive a car, and the steering wheel is what determines whether you reach your destination or not.

Now, I have another question. Think about the amazing variety of parts that make you a human person. Which one is the most important? Your heart? Your eyes? Your mind? Your emotions? I want to suggest that, among all the incredible components that make you you, the most important is the will. The will is to the person what a steering wheel is to a car. The ultimate issues of life have little to do with comfort, speed, or technology. The only question that really matters is your destination. Where are you going? The will determines how this question is answered.

The Bible tells us that we are created in the image of God. One of the things this means is that we are free moral agents, and that God will hold us responsible for the choices we make. Our path in life is not predetermined by cosmic fate. No, God has placed us in the driver’s seat with the steering wheel squarely in our own hands. We are responsible to determine the direction our life’s journey will take. This means that setting our will to do God’s will is the single most important decision we will ever make. Permit me to try to summarize what the Bible says about the will in four broad statements:

The will is the only thing I really possess.

We like to imagine that we own our homes, our health, our careers, etc. But it takes only a moment of honest reflection to realize that one day all of these will be taken from us. “We brought nothing with us when we came into the world, and we can’t take anything with us when we leave it” (1 Tim. 6:7 NLT). I’ve never seen a hearse pulling a U-Haul trailer. Ultimately, the only thing that we truly possess is our will; the power to determine where our “car” is headed. This is what the Bible is talking about when it says, “You are gods” (Ps. 82:6).

The will is the only thing God really wants.

It is terrifying to discover that the only thing God really wants is the only thing I really possess. He is marginally interested in my money, my time, my talents, and my health. What God really wants is the one thing I am most reluctant to give up: the steering wheel! The thought of “losing control” causes a panic attack in the depths of my soul. Over three hundred years ago, Francois Fenelon put it this way:

The one thing truly ours is our will. And it is of this which God is jealous, because he has given it to us, not for us to keep, and to stay in charge of, but really to give it back wholly to him…  (Christian Perfection, p. 77).

My will is fixed on the wrong things!

Ah, here’s the rub. My will is really messed up. It is twisted and fickle. You might say the wheels are out of alignment. My will is to do my will, not God’s!  And even when I want to do what is right, I don’t have the power to make it happen. When I try to do God’s will, I discover that I can’t. “I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out” (Rom. 7:18). Although I am a free moral agent, it seems I am free only to do what I want. And that is precisely the problem. My “want-to” wants the wrong things. I want to steer my life in directions I know it shouldn’t go. Wretched man that I am!

Can I tell you a secret? When you reach this place in your spiritual journey, you are not far from the kingdom of God!

Victory and freedom come when I surrender my will to God’s will, when my will becomes his.

Even Jesus struggled with surrendering his will to the will of his heavenly Father. Letting go of the steering wheel was, for the Son of God, a crisis of cosmic proportions. But victory came through surrender, when he raised the white flag and humbly said, “Not my will, but your will be done” (see Matt. 26:36-46).

Dear friend, no battle in life is greater than this: surrendering control to King Jesus, making his will your will. But this is precisely what you can’t do… without divine help. Paul was describing this reality when he encouraged the believers in Philippi to work out their salvation with fear and trembling because God was working in them “both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12-13). In other words, we can will God’s will only when God enables us to do so. And this is precisely what he is most willing to do! All we need to do is ask. Then our job is to work out what he works in.

When I was a student in college, I reached the place when I felt I was ready to become a disciple of Jesus. But I kept vacillating back and forth. One day, as I walked across campus, I expressed my frustration to God. It was the first real prayer I ever prayed: “Lord, I’m not quite sure if I honestly want you as my Lord – but I want to want to.” I felt I heard God say, “I hear that prayer. Changing a person’s want-to is what I do best!”

What about you? Is your will to do God’s will? Do you want to want to? Ask God for help. Changing your want-to is what he does best!

The battle is lost or won in the secret places of the will before God, never first in the external world…. The battle may take one minute or a year, that will depend on me, not on God…. Nothing has any power over the man who has fought out the battle before God and won there. (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest. p. 362). 

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