Our Will

Activate God’s Design for Your Success.

Lit­tle known and scarce­ly under­stood truths about our “free will.”

OUR FREE WILL.

Through­out the ages man has been in search for pur­pose.  Philoso­phers such as Pla­to, Aris­to­tle, Augus­tine, Aquinas, Descartes, and many oth­ers spent their entire lives in pur­suit of, sought after, and wrote about their visions of the mean­ing of life and it’s free will.  Books crowd library shelves with man’s philoso­phies of life.  Some authors acknowl­edge that choos­ing, what IS OUR WILL TO CHOOSE is a pow­er­ful gift from God.  I found the KJV of the Bible God uses Choose 63 times, choice is used 23 times.  All are ref­er­ences to the gift from God that is our free will.  A most sig­nif­i­cant choice man has appears in In Deuteron­o­my 30:19 when God says, “This day I call the heav­ens and the earth as wit­ness­es against you that I have set before you life and death, bless­ings and curs­es. Now choose life, so that you and your chil­dren may live.”  This is just one of many exam­ples of God’s illus­tra­tion of the pow­er of choice-our free will.

Vik­tor E. Fran­kl,  in Man’s Search for Mean­ing wrote,  “Every­thing can be tak­en from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s atti­tude in any giv­en set of cir­cum­stances, to choose one’s own way.”  It is as Vik­tor Frankl’s said “…choos­ing one’s atti­tude…” that I write about here today.

The God giv­en pow­er of self con­trol & self dis­ci­pline, our willpow­er, our choic­es directs our lives.  Men and women often tra­di­tion­al­ly referred to mankind as being of body [flesh and bone] and con­tain­ing spir­it and soul to have three parts body, soul, and spir­it. I have noticed the Divine three as part of God’s plan.  I have learned, too, there are three parts of the soul; the will, mind, and emo­tions.  It has been said we have a mind, will, and emo­tions and in this order.  I con­tend that tra­di­tion may have inad­ver­tent­ly placed this order.  The will, mind and emo­tions, seems to me, to be the more appro­pri­ate order because of the pow­er our will holds for our lives.  Ulti­mate­ly the will holds the pow­er over the mind and emo­tions.

I am for­ev­er awed as I con­tin­ue to learn the pur­pos­es of the many parts [mem­bers of the body] of man in which God cre­ative­ly implant­ed our abil­i­ties and pow­ers.  God has cre­at­ed and placed with­in the body of mankind a spir­it, soul, mind, will, and emo­tions:   Our body hous­es our human exis­tence and our life is expressed through these dri­ving forces.   I have come to believe that when God breathed into man’s nos­trils the “breath of life” and man became a “liv­ing soul”, man also was endowed with many pow­ers [dri­ving forces].  Of the body’s many mem­bers, “the will” is the gyro­scope and com­pass direct­ing our life jour­ney.  Through our unwa­ver­ing strength to car­ry out our wish­es, our will pow­er, deter­mines how well we mas­ter our life jour­ney.

We reside in life under the con­trol of our will.   While we must become aware of all the mem­bers of our bod­ies, we must keep our willpow­er at cen­ter.  I once met a per­son who, was expe­ri­enc­ing fail­ure after fail­ure in life.  He actu­al­ly made the state­ment, “What ever will be will be, so why should I even try?”  He did not accept that will pow­er is a gift of God to each and every per­son.  The last I knew, this man died with­out tak­ing con­trol of his life.

The pow­er to choose will super­sede all our body mem­bers, even the mind and emo­tions.  It is the pow­er that tells the mind, “Now, choose what I have willed”.  Oh, be sure, the emo­tions will try at times to take over, but we must “will” our emo­tions to not be in charge.

Influ­ences

One can­not live with­out influ­ences; par­tic­u­lar­ly out­side pres­sures to our will to self con­trol­ling the pow­ers we all have been giv­en.  Through our will we have the abil­i­ty to choose to be influ­enced or not.  Our emo­tions can be influ­enced so pow­er­ful­ly that emo­tions can take con­trol if allowed.  Con­trol­ling our will, our pow­er to choose, is for our mind to rea­son on choic­es, and then, it is our will to act on those choic­es.  My will is me, as I think, as I know, as I feel it is the I in all I do, it is my ego; what my will does, I do.

When I will emo­tions are in charge, then I am emo­tion­al.  Maybe even emo­tion­al­ly out of con­trol.  The will can bring emo­tion­al thoughts into cap­tiv­i­ty and in so doing give your emo­tions some­thing to rejoice about through hap­py emo­tions.

From birth through­out our infor­ma­tive years and beyond, we are being influ­enced.  Hope­ful­ly we learned right from wrong so as adults we can be on guard against bad influ­ences and our emo­tions that can lead us into wrong deci­sions.   Life is full of out­side pres­sures from social, gov­ern­ment, friends, neigh­bors, TV, and even our­selves because of choic­es we make.  Wrong choic­es that lead us into bad habits such as tobac­co, drugs or alco­hol can be cor­rect­ed when we will­ful­ly choose to cor­rect our mis­takes and over­come such habits.

Such habits are dan­ger­ous­ly life threat­en­ing and may require pro­fes­sion­al help.  When we choose to include God in our lives we can go to Him and ask for help.  Ask, Seek, and Knock it says in Matthew 7:7, “Ask and it will be giv­en to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”  We must choose and believe.  God will help.  We can pray for guid­ance on whom and where to seek help from man.  It may involve med­ical and coun­sel­ing.  God can give us the pow­er to accept the help and work through with­draw­ing from such habits.  We must exer­cise our will to choose and believe; then will to act on our choice.

How are you choos­ing to use the dri­ving forces direct­ing your life jour­ney?

Some peo­ple believe they don’t have “enough” willpow­er.  And often say “If only I had more willpow­er…. .”  I don’t believe it is “lack of willpow­er” that is need­ed.  But rather an under­stand­ing of the pow­er we have for self con­trol.  Seems to me it is not lack of will pow­er, but a weak willpow­er that is at fault.  Strength­en your willpow­er in these ways.  First, gain knowl­edge and under­stand­ing, Sec­ond search out prop­er moti­va­tion and estab­lish it, third, set goals, and fourth, learn to mon­i­tor your behav­ior toward your stronger willpow­er, and last, exer­cise your will to improve.  Strength will come through use, whether it be a pos­i­tive, or neg­a­tive.  Strength­en willpow­er to estab­lish your abil­i­ty to resist inap­pro­pri­ate temp­ta­tions in order to reach worth­while goals.  Increased knowl­edge and under­stand­ing, of the forces influ­enc­ing our moti­va­tion can have a pos­i­tive effect on our life.

I am aware that deal­ing with the mind, will, and emo­tions can be dif­fi­cult and even con­fus­ing at times.  Emo­tions can affect our think­ing [mind] in many ways.  Using the pow­er of the will we can direct the mind to choose the way that is best, or worst, for our being.

With each new learn­ing expe­ri­ence, my curios­i­ty has dri­ven me to find more of God’s design for man, that is, His pur­pose.  It could well be said we are designed to be for the Lord and the Lord for us.  This being a vast sub­ject there is much more to be said about our earth­ly exis­tence.

God cre­at­ed man and woman with will pow­er, a unique pow­er, to have domin­ion of all the earth.  This is an inner pow­er to suc­ceed which resides in each of us.  It is a gift of God.  Your will is you, you are your will, so as you will, you do.  Some are say­ing, “If this is so, then why am I fail­ing?  I want to suc­ceed.  So this must not be so!”  As I have stud­ied God’s word over the years and have asked Him con­tin­u­al­ly for knowl­edge, wis­dom, and under­stand­ing I have come to believe in the pow­er placed in all of us as our will and its place in our life’s Jour­ney. 

Where to start?

Your will is your inner Pow­er to choose:  Mak­ing a delib­er­ate choice is your decid­ing pow­er and your being will yield to that pow­er.  The STARTING PLACE for suc­cess­ful life jour­ney starts NOW; and may well be in learn­ing of the pow­er of the will.  Learn to use your mind to con­trol your will and set your sails for a suc­cess­ful life jour­ney.

Use your mind to change aver­age into amaz­ing by learn­ing to make the right choic­es!

As I post this writ­ing, I pray that each of you read­ing this can find the truth of the mat­ter of your will.  It seems to me that our goal should be to align our will with the WILL OF GOD.

Join me next time as I explore how our Mind works with our Will to keep us on a suc­cess­ful life jour­ney.

 

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