John 8:29 ...for I do always those things that please him.
1 Cor. 6:19-20 ...and ye are not your own.
As I have meditated during the initial days of the fast, the Lord has been revealing to me a revelation of our human will, its all-too frequent condition, and how His ultimate design for our mind, will, and emotions is for them to be fully renewed and submitted to His purpose.
Previously, our will has been employed, practiced, and disciplined toward the fulfillment of our sentiments, preferences, liens, and desires - many of which come directly from the fall, and from our individual bloodline and generational curses.
For those of us who have acquired an education, whether conventionally or through self-development, we often have a greater leverage and capacity in demonstrating and fulfilling what our will desires. We use the prosperity and well-being that often comes from this as the carnal evidence to prove we are doing 'the right thing.'
One of the purposes of the fast is to reveal to us, through God’s requirement, how our will has been sorely affected against purpose. Through passive or aggressive fits, tantrums, and complaints, we can easily see how our will has been inundated simply by what we want, and little else.
The proof that our will has been taken captive by our own fleshly desires is that the God obedience, the God instruction, suddenly becomes gravely burdensome and grievous. Why is it that we do not find that same pleasure in what the Holy Spirit is requiring of us? Surely while everyone in the infancy of their salvation experiences a reluctance and difficulty in following the dictates of God in the beginning, shouldn't there be a time in our growth and maturity where what He is requiring is met with pleasure, expectation, and ease?
We also see our reluctance to willfully perform God's instructions by our increasingly delayed obedience, our fleshly comparisons, the constant last word, "I already did that," the blame, the extreme entitlement, and ultimately charging God foolishly.
So the question becomes, when our will has been overgrown by the morass of what we want, how then do we get our wills to be made conformable? Phil. 3:10 The answer is both simple, yet complicated for many. Literally nothing can be accessed in God without submitting to a deep humility in the reverential fear of the Lord, an act that leads us to godly sorrow. The godly sorrow leads us to repentance, and through this repentance, we begin to experience a true change in the nature and operation of our human will. True conviction and repentance are the only agencies that can make conformable this very strong function of our humanity.
While many run from this level of conviction, it serves a profound role in our lives. Conviction provides us with the Holy Spirit's sight. When we are convicted, we see our behavior, our interaction in relationships, and our capacity for making poor decisions at the same altitude and vantage that God sees them. And once we see them from God's perspective, we can't help but be filled with godly sorrow. We finally see the error of our way.
Sometimes this repentance is not always immediate; we will step into a season of repentance where God consistently brings things before us, and we now have the same visceral reaction every time. For many of us, if the season is not protracted, our conviction wouldn't be impacting enough, and our behaviors would return to their old nature very quickly. It is the depth of the repentance that gives you the ability to renounce it and remove yourself from the covenant of preferences that your will has erected, into employing your will to steadfastly fulfill the purposes of the Father.
After the season of renouncing and repentance takes place, then you must create a space for your will to function in its renewed capacity: you have to decree and declare the function of the will according to God’s purpose. You must declare to your will, this is what you were meant to do, and this is how you were meant to function. When we actively do this, a progressive and immediate repositioning occurs. Your will hears what you are saying, and because it has been humbled, it responds and conforms to those important, life-giving declarations.
Another facet of the human will the Lord desires to reveal to each of us is just how personal the maintenance of our will is. During this fast, each of us needs to ask God to show us what kind of consecration and lifestyle is needed to maintain a will that is flexible and pliable to the desires of the Holy Spirit. What activities make us more yielded, and what activities make us more carnal and cavalier to dishonor what the Lord has required? Religion, tradition, or following a method will not help you here. You must be sensitive enough to the Holy Spirit when He convicts you about particular activities and priorities. When you respond to those unctions, you will find your will is preserved and serving the Lord is filled with such increased joy. When you ignore those unctions, you begin the process of searing your conscious. You can't hear as clearly, and you won't hear as frequently. Don't do something just because nothing happened the last time you did it. What was fine for today may not work for tomorrow. Are you willing to be fully available to the Lord's discretion as He daily prescribes to you the armament you need for the battle, the requirement, and the assignment?
One important caveat in this discussion is that you cannot successfully 'will' the will! You cannot use your carnal will power to change how your human will operates. It is a supernatural work that makes the will compliant, and one of the keys to truly keeping your will and soulical realm fully submitted to the God requirement is through gratitude. We must truly understand that living for Him is an honor and a privilege, and that it will take strong appetite and desire for the things of God to keep your will submitted. If you find the things of God drudgery and rote, you will find willful compliance to His good pleasure most egregious. If this is your struggle, your appetites are going to have to come under examination, and you will need to really ascertain why you love the things you love more than the things God loves.
Another way to ensure that your will is compatible with the Lord's design for each day is to remove yourself from the liberties and indulgences we have of being, thinking, and doing. Things that just seem 'o.k.' because they are not overtly a sin could be death to your recreated spirit. You are no more your own. You can't successfully develop and maintain a strong, life-changing anointing and just do whatever it is that you want. There are some life-sacrifices that keep us away from that which deteriorates, and enable us to maintain a strength against the carnal strength of our human will.
Your will can be made compatible, where you will no longer face that fight to merely obey God. Utilize this time of fasting and prayer to change the cellular makeup of your human will, and bring it under complete subjection to the Spirit of God. It will completely change the performance of your assignment, and create a fulfillment in purpose you have never known.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20
KJV What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.
AMP Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is within you, whom you have [received as a gift] from God, and that you are not your own [property]? 20 You were bought with a price [you were actually purchased with the precious blood of Jesus and made His own]. So then, honor and glorify God with your body.
MSG Or didn’t you realize that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don’t you see that you can’t live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for? The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you. God owns the whole works. So let people see God in and through your body.