Willpower

Today’s Reading – Ezekiel 14 – 16

How weak is thine heart, saith the Lord GOD, seeing thou doest all these things, the work of an imperious whorish woman; (Ezekiel 16:30)

Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. (Matthew 26:41)

I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: (Galatians 1:6)

In today’s reading from Ezekiel 14 – 16, God is pronouncing judgment upon His people for turning their back completely on Him. He reminds them in chapter 16 how that He blessed them more than any other nation on the face of the earth. He took them from nothing and gave them everything. Yet, they soon bit the hand that fed them: they forsook God and turned to the idols that were worshipped by the Heathen nations that surrounded them, even going as far as sacrificing their own children (burning them). In the midst of chapter 16, God says, “How weak is thine heart…seeing thou doest all these things…”.

I got to thinking about my own weakness. God blessed me above anything that I could have asked for; and He has convinced me over and over again regarding surrendering my life to Him completely. However, I continue to forsake His principles and do things (or not do things) that I have committed to do. Why is it that we have no willpower to resist evil. The other verses listed above share the same principle: the disciples were too weak to stay awake at a prayer meeting; and the Galatians were easily swayed from the doctrine of Grace. Our flesh indeed is weak. Our hearts are desperately wicked.

I don’t think the solution to this problem, however, is an increase in our fleshly will power. Paul gives us the solution in Galatians 5: “walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh”. Do you want to have more spiritual willpower? Walk with God: walk in His word; spend time communing with Him in prayer; gather with His children; and serve Him with all of your heart. I can look back at my life and clearly see that the times that I struggled the most with my thoughts and actions were times that I was not walking with God as I should have been. The closer I get to God, the farther away goes the desire to sin.

By the way, notice what it says about the cause of Sodom’s fall:

Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. (Ezekiel 16:49)

We can see here that Sodom had the same problem that Israel (and America) has. They are too proud to acknowledge that God is the source of their blessing; they have too much free time on their hands and they are not using this time to serve God; and they are very prosperous, yet they will not share their wealth.