To Will and To Do

Three things came together a couple mornings ago to give me a new revelation of an old knowledge. When I was reading a devotional the verse that says “the Spirit works in us to will and do God's pleasure” stuck in my mind. The second was the verse “his mercies are new every morning”. The third was a more carnal item -a sweepstakes entry- with a spiritual interpretation and it was very effective.

Every morning I get 2 chances in my email to enter a sweepstakes to win an $800,000 Lake retreat. I used to always enter these (you cant win if you don't enter), but I got to the place where I just said to myself “what's the use? I don't ever win these and I am very blessed anyway.” But somehow the sweepstakes caught my mind and I signed up for daily reminders. Putting the entries in costs me nothing except a minute of my time. There are days when I get busy and I just don't do it, but there are days when I do it and it's done and I'll go on with my life. It hasn't meant much to me but I've felt I should, until that morning when the Spirit awakened these other two witnesses in my mind and spoke to my spirit.

Each day, each moment God's Spirit gives us the will and the ability to do his good pleasure. It's a good pleasure.

First he gives the will. This is a gift, he's always working to give us something we need, something we don't have: the will to do God's good pleasure. On my own, desire to do what is best can be iffy. If I think of it, I concede that I should always want God's good, but the world is such a distraction and many other things are offered to the human want basket. They get thrown in before I accept the gift from the Spirit.

Also he gives the ability to do God's good pleasure. There are many things that I want to do, want to be, want to give, learn, attempt and so forth but I don't always have the ability to do them. Yet here is the gift: the 'to do' God's good pleasure. It is good pleasure and I have the 'to do' through the Holy Spirit and yet sometimes I ignore that beautiful fact. That awesome chance goes by without my thought.

As I went through my e-mail that morning, I saw it had been 4 days since I'd looked, 4 days that I didn't enter the sweepstakes. I realized that on those days when I didn't do anything with it, it was gone. Yes for the life of the sweepstakes there will be another chance tomorrow but then that day if I don't see it or use it I don't get to go back the next day and use it. The sweepstakes isn't a big deal to me, but I would hope that the “to will and to do” is.

Each day has its good and evil; each day has things to avoid and to accomplish. The Holy Spirit is there to bring it to life. He wants to give me the will to do what I should and the power to accomplish what I must -two entries, if you will. It's an opportunity that I take or I don't that moment, that day.

God's offering does not end. His Spirit stays and does his job daily but if I don't accept that will and power, that thing I have to face is vulnerable to my flesh and to my enemy. And it gets easier to forget that the opportunity is fresh and new the next day. After a bunch of those build up, we start asking “Where are you God?” “Why have you left me so weak and open to the enemy?” For me he sends his witnesses, in this case two verses and a sweepstakes.

This is not a new concept, but it became enlightened within me that morning. “This is the day that the Lord has made.” “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.”