We’ve been talking about the power of the human will and the fact that it is a gate, which opens when you say yes and closes when you say no. The Bible describes the perfectly functioning will gate this way:
Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. –James 4:7, NKJV
Today, we are going to discuss several misalignments of the human will that cause us to struggle with saying yes: self-will and the rebellious will.
Self-Will
Children are self-focused by Divine design, so that their lives can easily be imprinted with truth and their souls can be calibrated for love and blessing. In a healthy development process, they mature and expand until they embody the greatest commandment: to love God wholeheartedly and to love others as they love themselves. Often, however, less-than-perfect life experiences will cause someone to become stuck and imbalanced somewhere along the way. The self-willed person has not yet learned to love God and to love others fully.
Now, those who are mature in their faith can easily be recognized, for they don’t live to please themselves but have learned to patiently embrace others in their immaturity. Our goal must be to empower others to do what is right and good for them, and to bring them into spiritual maturity. –Romans 15:1-2, TPT
In my years of working with children, teens and families, I discovered something that surprised me. I found that the angriest young people were not the ones who were horribly abused, but instead were the ones who were just plain selfish, the ones whose parents never set boundaries and never taught them they didn’t always have to get what they wanted. The wills of these disgruntled young people were, for various reasons, refusing to shift from childish selfishness and to maturity in a healthy way. Those with a self-centered will struggle with saying no to the flesh. They struggle in their relationship with God because He always deals with the selfish nature of His children. They struggle in their relationship with others, because their selfishness sabotages their relationships.
A more subtle manifestation of self-will is an orphan mindset. Thanks to Adam’s choice to become his own life source, we inherited the DNA of his self-imposed orphanhood. If that predisposition was reinforced by life experiences where your trust was broken or where you had to rely on yourself prematurely, self-effort may occupy the place in your will gate where trust in God is meant to be. You may not be seeing the manifestation of your miracle because you are still trying to do it on your own. Your life, instead of being a dance with God, may feel like a burden too heavy to carry.
To live a victorious, fulfilled life of destiny, the will must turn from self and enter into rest as it comes under the government of God. Simply choose with your will to trust your perfect Father, even if you do not yet feel the feelings of trust. Remember, your will is a gate. Opening this gate by choosing trust will allow the healing to begin, and will ultimately bring every part of your soul into perfect alignment. And you know that miracles flow when you’re in alignment!
The Rebellious Will
Often, the will becomes calibrated to rebellion when trust is broken by some type of injustice. Rather than trusting God and receiving His strategy for victory, the one with the rebellious will has chosen to judge and to rebel against the perpetrator of the injustice, the system keeping that injustice in place or the injustice itself. This makes submission to God and to proper authority very difficult. Of course, we are not to tolerate injustice. But actions motivated by love and submission to God will produce totally different fruit than the very same actions motivated by false judgment and rebellion. Using one demon to combat another may seem to solve the problem, but in the end, it only creates a deeper entanglement. Someone who has chosen rebellion is often angry at the world, especially authority, and takes an oppositional stance at every opportunity.
Since we are made one spirit with God at salvation and are one body with other believers, the rebellious will is especially destructive, as rebelling against Him and others (whether consciously or unconsciously) is basically an attack against oneself. It will result in destruction of soul, body, success and destiny. If your will is calibrated to rebellion, you may struggle to manifest your miracle because you are unknowingly fighting against God, against yourself, against those He has sent to help you or against your destiny itself. Rebellion against the will of God may cause you to fight for something He is withholding from you simply because it is too small.
Besides lucifer, the Biblical character best known for his rebellion is King Saul. Saul was given clear instructions to defeat and destroy the Amalekites completely, but he spared the life of the king and kept the best of the livestock for himself. When confronted by Samuel, he tried to justify his disobedience by saying that he planned to sacrifice the livestock as an offering to God, and he even went as far as to say, “The people made me do it!” Samuel responded with these insightful and familiar words of correction.
For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He also has rejected you from being king.”
–I Samuel 15:23, NKJV
This tragic story of potential unfulfilled perfectly illustrates the self-destructive nature of rebellion and the way that it robbed Saul of his destiny and his position of authority as king of Israel.
Psalm 2 is another classic case study of the rebellious will, one in which God Himself provides the solution.
How dare the nations plan a rebellion. Their foolish plots are futile! Look at how the power brokers of the world rise up to hold their summit as the rulers scheme and confer together against Yahweh and his Anointed King, saying: “Let’s come together and break away from the Creator. Once and for all let’s cast off these controlling chains of God and his Christ!” God-Enthroned merely laughs at them; the Sovereign One mocks their madness! Then with the fierceness of his fiery anger he settles the issue and terrifies them to death with these words: “I myself have poured out my King on Zion, my holy mountain. I will reveal the eternal purpose of God. For he has de- creed over me, ‘You are my favored Son. And as your Father I have crowned you as my King Eter- nal. Today I became your Father. Ask me to give you the nations and I will do it, and they shall become your legacy. Your domain will stretch to the ends of the earth. And you will shepherd them with unlimited authority, crushing their rebellion as an iron rod smashes jars of clay!’ Listen to me, all you rebel-kings and all you upstart judges of the earth. Learn your lesson while there’s still time. Serve and worship the awe-inspiring God. Recognize his greatness and bow before him, trembling with reverence in his presence. Fall facedown before him and kiss the Son before his anger is roused against you. Remember that his wrath can be quickly kindled! But many blessings are waiting for all who turn aside to hide themselves in him! –Psalm 2, TPT
In this passage, we see earthly rulers rebelling against God. The Father merely laughs at their plans, settling the issue with a reminder that Christ has been given absolute power to crush their rebellion. God then provides the obvious solution for the rebellious will: submission. As always, the loving heart of God is revealed in the fact that His desire to pour out many blessings is His motivation for urging these rebellious ones to kiss the Son. The Passion Translation explains:
The Hebrew word for “kiss” is “nashaq” and can also mean “to be ruled by” or “be in subjection to” (the Son).
I believe this choice of words is very intentional on the part of the Father. Voluntary submission of the will is the only way out of the demonic trap of rebellion. You must choose to trust your perfect Father, knowing that your submission to Him will bring the alignment necessary to birth heaven on earth and to manifest your miracle. Our Father, of course, understands our human condition and recognizes that often rebellion is a response to sins committed against us. The submission He is inviting the rebellious will into is not military. It is the submission motivated by the greatest of all loves. The rebellious will must turn away from self and must submit to the government of God. And that is best done with a kiss…
Self-will and the rebellious will both make it difficult to say yes and are both manifestations of a struggle to trust God. The weak or broken will and the passive will, both make it difficult to say no and are manifestations of a struggle to trust God in you! We’ll discuss these in detail next week. So stay tuned.
I hope you have been blessed by this excerpt from my book, Miracles Are Normal: Co-Creating Through Oneness With God. You can purchase paperback or digital copies from my website here: Miracles Are Normal. And you can purchase from Amazon here: Miracles Are Normal on Amazon
Until next time…
Virginia