“... the tree [of the knowledge of
good and evil] was to be desired to make one wise...”
— Genesis 3:6 (NRSV)
“There is but one good; that is
God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from
Him.”
— C.S. Lewis (1898–1963)
There is a very simple answer to
the question of the title: we want to
be God. We want
to be gods over all our circumstances, relationships, problems, and encounters.
We relish control. And we do not
want to surrender to something that is better for us. After all, we feel we
know better than God what is best for us. We reason that our desires are good
enough to gauge what is needed. Only when we go the wrong way, having been
swayed by our desires, do we reconcile the fact that mistakes are regrettable.
We resist God—whether we are saved
or not—when we allow our sinful nature to rule us. But those of us who are born-again
have the awareness, inspiration, and wherewithal to accept God—in saying “yes” to Jesus—moment by
moment, day by day, every day.
Accepting God in Our Day-To-Day
This may sound simple, but, we
should know, the humility required in consistently surrendering before God, is
much harder than it seems.
The moment we take the time to
consider the abovementioned truth, we recognise the impossibility of sustaining
change without the power of God.
This is where God’s grace combines
with our obedient will, for, the moment we accept God, and stop our efforts of
resistance, is the moment a flourishing miracle occurs.
Accepting God in our day-to-day
has about it the method for redeeming God’s power in order that we could live
in a way that would please God.
Another way of thinking about this
is, when we resist God—by being our own gods—power for life is removed from our
possession. God withdraws. All power we could otherwise know vanishes, yet we
may still be fooled by the possession of some alluring worldly power.
Being Actively Blessed
We can only be blessed in everyday
life through the execution of our obedient will.
Rejecting the temptation to be our
own god, we place God where God belongs.
God needs no raising in actuality,
only in our estimation. God is already Sovereign, but we must make the Lord sovereign over our hearts—that God
would not only be our Saviour, but our Lord and King also.
We might all wish to be actively
blessed. The only way to consistent blessing is through the execution of our
obedient will.
***
We resist God because we want to
be God, or it least be our own gods. But that is the way to death. True life
only comes via the application of the obedient will—to allow God to be God; to
direct all our ways. This can only be managed one moment at a time. That is our
sole Spiritual directive.
© 2013 S. J. Wickham.
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