The will!

(1Peter 4:2) “That ye no longer should live the rest of your time in flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.”

We are faced with choices on a daily basis acting on many of them without much thought. We brush our teeth; we eat breakfast and we may even take a shower. All these acts are part of a daily routine which requires our minds to process information and then we act upon that information.

Peter reminds us that our minds will often get us to want to process information that will hanker after lustful thoughts that men feed. Greed, self indulgences and the like, these are all by-products of sin and the fall of man. But we have been clearly instructed not to live in that state. Why? It is rather obvious, whatever we feed we become. If we constantly indulge in the “lust of men” we will neglect the will of God, but if we consciously seek out the will of God, we will put to death the deeds of the flesh. We often over analyze this principle and start to look for life changing acknowledgements that will prove to ourselves and others that we mean business with God. However when we get it wrong all it is, is another effort to please man and not the will of God. All we need is to be conscious of the Lord Jesus and His example here on earth. He laid down His life so we could go free; in like manner we need to lay down our lives so that we can also be free.

What will make us free? Well we will be free when we are no longer a slave to sin; if I am still bound by some stronghold then I am not free but bound. The strength on the law is sin, so every time I am compelled through weakness to succumb to a particular sin then I am not free but a slave. This is not a difficult concept to understand, the problem we have, is we often excuse ourselves for the sin. When we live in this state all we do is prove that we are not free but a slave. This can be a very obvious reality for many Christians; Peter appeals to us (God’s Children) “that ye no longer should live the rest of your time in flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.” It is important for him to mention this point and to teach on it, so he does with boldness. But, will we pay attention to his urgency, if we do not then the fruit of our lives will be full of uncertainty and lots of groping in the dark. Maturity will be found when we apply Peter’s teaching to our lives, looking to Jesus the author and finisher of our faith in this area. We must deliberately process what we are on about on a daily basis and examine it against scripture. If we can pray that God would expose the areas in our lives and be truthful with ourselves then we can resolve to find the will of God for our lives. In other words we must now live our lives to the revealed will of the Holy Spirit. I deliberately do not want to break this down in point form, but rather allow ourselves to be honest and examine our own hearts and then find grace to act on the areas that need work. If there are some dark deep secret sins that need addressing then we must attend to it, it cannot be ignored! It must not be no be allowed to flourish under the banner of sin, we must wrestle with it and find grace to deal with it. Do not categorize any lust to the will of man, no matter how small it would appear to be, as something we have permission to overlook, we do not! We must remember the suffering of our Saviour and understand that It was an attitude of “all from Him” so that we could go free, now we must at least start by looking into a mirror which will reflect our lives so that we can begin to find the will of God in the areas were we have neglected His will.

Look at an example of a man when men were being martyred for their faith, they were faced with certain death, what choices did he have? They could have denounced their faith but chose not to. “That he no longer should live - in the flesh - Governed by the base principle of giving up his faith to save his life; to the lusts of men - according to the will of his idolatrous persecutors; but to the will of God; which will of God is, that he should retain the truth, and live according to its dictates, though he should suffer for it.”

Our flesh is the persecutor and our will want us to hanker after the lusts of men, but it is a lie that enslaves us and binds us to the weakness of the flesh and sin. We need only find the will of God for our lives. When we seek out His will we will be freed in our consciences to serve Him without so many stumbling blocks keeping us away from the throne room of grace where many blessings and Godly delicacies are freely available to all His children.

Signing off

Tyrone