Posts Tagged: our desires and will

“GOD —ALWAYS AT WORK IN US”

Here is a slightly revised recent journal entry.

Thursday, December 28, 2017

Good morning, LORD of the universe!  I won’t trouble myself asking how you are, since you are always good!

And thank you so much for always being good!  I wish that I were more like You.

Wish, yes.  Will, no.  I do not will consistency.  Sometimes, I don’t think I’m capable of willing consistency or being consistently willing to be like You.

Yet, I am tremendously comforted by Philippians 2:13.

“For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.”  (New Living Translation)

In the original Greek, all these verbs are in the present tense, which conveys the ongoing, continual nature of what God is doing.  It isn’t about my ability to be good or holy or even human.  It is about God’s continual work in me.

God is working in me, both to will and to do what pleases God—when I feel as if God is working, and when I do not feel that God is working in me.  God is working when I feel a billion light years away from God, just as much as when I am afraid to open my eyes because I do not think it appropriate to see God with the naked eye.

And God is continually at work in you, too.  I know!  It doesn’t feel like it.  It doesn’t make sense.  But God is not the God of our feelings or our logic.  He is the God who is continually working in you and in me.

God, help me, help us, to hang on to this truth.  Or, better yet, may this truth hang on to us.

 

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