11                                                                                                                Self-Will

Matthew 11:28-30 "Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. "Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you shall find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My load is light."

Christ's yoke is truly easy and unencumbered by anything of the flesh. This is because Christ's yoke is formed and moved by love. The yoke we are all under in this life is truly wearisome and very difficult, because pride is the dictator of our life and makes us keep up a front.

When we are without the Divine presence of God, if we are not led by His Holy Spirit, we can only move in self-love, everything we do has for its motive self. When we do something wrong or despi­cable, pride moves in and tries to make it look like it was someone else's fault, if that fails then pride tries to show the reason why we had to do this wrong and unholy thing. Pride never admits being wrong it never comes into God's light! This is what makes us weary and heavy-laden. Until Christ is formed in us, we have nothing good in us, and yet at times we try to do good things, but always from a selfish motive. That is why Jesus, our Savior said that we can do nothing good, and that only God is good. You now know what makes our yoke so very difficult, it's because we are very self-willed.

You might be tempted to say, “I'm not very self-willed,” and in so doing, you will have told me that you don't know yourself very well, you don't know the inner workings of your own heart; they are a mystery to you! We are all self-willed until we are born again from above, of the Spirit of God. We always secretly want our own way in all things!

Why are we all self-willed? Good question, the answer can be found in the book of Genesis. We are told that Adam was created by God in God's own Image and Likeness, a living reflection of the Divine Nature; God brought forth His very own nature in Adam in a finite (limited) way.

After God created Adam, we are told, “And God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good.” Genesis 1:31. This is how Adam started out, but he then broke the most important commandment that God had given him, he took of the forbidden fruit that Eve had given him. Eve was truly deceived, Adam was not, he knew what he had done was wrong! God had up to this point asked Adam to do, or not do, five things, they can be found in Genesis 1:28 - 1:29 - 2:15 - 2:16-17 – 2:19. The one he broke was actually a commandment, and it was the only one that God had said death would result if he broke it, and, unfortunately he did! Genesis 2:16-17 “And the Lord God command­ed the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die." Notice the reason God gave Adam for not eating of the forbidden tree, it was because that tree would cause him to die to the very presence of God's Divine Spirit, it was not a physical death, but a spiritual death, a death to the indwelling presence of God, and this is exactly what happened to him!

And in that spiritual death Adam and Eve lost all of the fruit of God's Divine Spirit. From this point on, they were incapable of living in the capacity, or for the purpose that God had intended. God is love and because He is the only Good and they had just died to all love and all goodness, you can now truly understand the words of Jesus in John 15:5 Jesus tells us this very important truth, "I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from Me you can do nothing.” Why is this so, it is because they (the father and mother of all human beings) had died to all love, and all goodness, and we were in them as a seed, how can we do anything of value without God's love in us?

Satan made his temptation one that would appeal to them, he was watching and saw that they were curious about the forbidden tree. Satan lied to the woman, he told her what she wanted to hear and this was the result - “When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.”      Genesis 3:6.

Even though God had warned them that they would die if they disobeyed, they did it anyway! By the way, this wasn't just any old sin, this was the granddaddy of all sins, and the reason is this, the greatest part of this sin was not in the taking and eating of the tree, but in placing their “OWN-WILL” over the will of God! Yes, it is sin to disobey God. Yes, touching or eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge was a sin, without doubt; but all of this is insignificant in view of their choosing to deny God's will and doing their own will instead. This was the proof that pride had already entered into their lives, they thought their will to be better than God's will, their reasoning better than God's rea­soning! This is the real fall of mankind and nothing will help but humbling ourselves and with a broken and contrite heart going to God and asking Him for mercy, yes, this and this alone, can fix the fatal disease of mankind, which is pride and exaltation!

What Do The Scriptures Say?

You might ask why they could no longer live for God's intended purpose. The answer is simple, when Adam and Eve disobeyed God they went into self-will for the first time. Self-will is a disease that is easy to catch, but very difficult to get rid of. God set about to redeem them, you see, God had enough devils; He wanted more Angels. He created Adam to bring forth a new people with Heavenly, Not Demonic attributes!

Let us turn ahead now to the beginning of the Church. The great distinguishing trait of the early Church was this "They were all of one mind." This is only possible when each member of the Church is truly born of God, and is submitted to God’s Spirit! This never happens until all pride and exaltation is gone from all of the members. When self-will (carnality) rules in the Church, division and strife will always become evident.

Look At What Self-Will Produces

1. Pride   2. Selfishness   3. Division

4. Self-esteem   5. The self-idolatrous nature

6. Self-seeking   7. Self-exaltation  8. Living for self

In order to make it simple, you might say that self-will causes just about every evil that the human spirit, devoid of God, can bring forth!

With self-will ruling in your life, you will lack any true evidence of actual sainthood and true holiness. This is what causes such a deficiency and feebleness in our Christian service.

Faith in Christ, whose strength is made perfect in our weakness, always gives us the power for all that God calls on us to do. Self-will only goes after that which brings glory or reward to self; be certain that you understand this. It is because self, which can only be expressed by self-will, controls our heart; this is why it is so easy, natural, and pleasing for us to put ourselves first in everything, to be the center of the conversation whenever we can, to be “Right” all of the time, and so on and so forth. When Jesus Christ truly lives in us, it will then become just as easy, natural, and pleasing for us to live wholly for the body of Christ and the people of this world who need God's salvation through Jesus Christ.

 “Let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit” Remember, that God's Word is a seed, a fire, a hammer, a sword; it is bread and light, it is many things. Always allow it to do its work in your life. The man, who allows God’s Word to do its work of reproving, correcting, and instructing in his life, will be complete and entirely furnished for every good work. But how can any of this come about, when self is looking and thinking only of SELF? That's simple, it can't!

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a

merchant seeking fine pearls,” if earthly interests and sensual pleasures are still the desire of your heart, in other words if self-will is still ruling in your life, and only partly hidden under a form of Godliness, you can be assured, that you have not found the pearl of great price. For where Christ is born, and His Spirit rises up

in the soul, there, all self and self-will, is forever denied.

What is all of this bondage and what is its power? The bondage is our self-will. We become proud of ourselves, that is, we are proud of ourselves until some of the fruit of our self-willed doings become evident. Then pride goes to work to cover up our handiwork; we will then lie or blame others, what ever self-will and pride dictate, this is because we are truly under the administration of selfish­ness, or self-will, until we are in truth set free by the Son of God, Jesus Christ!

How Can We Be Set Free?

Romans 6:3: Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death? When we follow the Lord Jesus Christ into baptism, we are giving testimony to the world that we have died to sin (self-will). We are saying to the world "our old self (man)” will not rule us anymore; Jesus is the Lord of our life now! Jesus will now rule us! 

Why do we need to be buried with Jesus? Romans 6:4 “Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

God expects us to walk in newness of life, not to continue in sin! If we follow Jesus in dying to ourselves and not letting our old self (man) rule us anymore we will walk in newness of life. Here is the promise: Romans 6:5 For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection: Now remember I didn't say this, God did. When God promises something He will do It! No longer do we need to be in bondage to sin or anything else. Remember Jesus said - "Whom the Son sets free, is free in deed"

Romans 6:16 “Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for

obedi­ence, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?” Now listen to God very carefully here, if you yield to sin (self-will) you will die. But if you yield to God, you will gain righteousness. Look at the choice that the people at Rome made.

Romans 6:17-18 “But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righ­teousness.”

Jesus said,  “We must be born again”

He said this because we had lost the Divine presence and likeness of God in our lives! When Adam partook of the tree of knowledge of good and evil he went into self-will and out of God's will. Self-will is in reality selfishness, God is love. God's will is always the will of loving others. This is His very makeup because    GOD IS LOVE!

When we are baptized we testify to the world that we have died to self, (self-will), and that our old nature is now reckoned to be dead, powerless. The Lord can now raise us up to newness of life, and from now on we can have victory over sin, the world and the Devil!

How can we become completely sanctified? How do we continue to live a life wholly consecrated to God? Adam was entirely sanctified (consecrated) to God when he was first created, but he went into self-will and out of sanctification when he dis­obeyed God and ate of the fruit of the forbidden tree of knowledge of good and evil. Remember that one third of the Angels fell; they were also God's creation, just as Adam was! When we reverse this process of death, and by God's help we can, we must reverse it; and then we can live for God again and stop forevermore living for self.

Here is the Biblical proof Romans 6:17-18  “But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were com­mitted, and having been freed from sin  you became slaves of righteousness.”

Understand this clearly, you will be a slave, either to your

fallen nature (old man) or to God. The only thing that we can have a choice in, is who we will be enslaved to, who our master will be! To be enslaved to our old man (old nature) is really to be enslaved to Satan, and our flesh!

If you would like to know the evil nature and effects of a worldly spirit, it is this; it always unites you to a worldly, earthly nature, which God hates, because it causes you to become selfish and strongly desirous of the things of this world, that will not and cannot, satisfy you. On the other hand being enslaved to God will unite you with the Holy Spirit and espouse you to Christ. This results in our being content regardless of what is going on around us, regardless of what we have, or don't have!

A Little Secret

God created us to be Holy; this word “Holy” means to be obedient. Galatians 5:22-23 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentle­ness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” This self-control is the opposite of sell-will. Trust me, you really don't want to die before attaining the fruit of God's Spirit in your life, all of It!

Let's Look At God's Word

Hebrews 10:26-30 For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain terrifying expectation of judgment, and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said, "Vengeance is Mine, I will repay." And again, "The Lord will judge

His people."

1 John 2:3-7 And by this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His command­ments. The one who says, "I have come to know Him," and does not keep His command­ments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him: the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.

What light we have here. By the way, do you love light? You are blessed if you do!

1 John 3:6-10 No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him.   Little children, let no one deceive you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, that He might destroy the works of the devil.  No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother.

Most people don't hear these Scriptures preached much, but be sure of this; it is not only the written Word of God,

It Is The Will Of God!