Yielding the Volition

The truth is that a human may chose to follow any decision they want to make. This privilege was gained when the first two humans ate of the tree of knowledge. Along with the knowledge of good and evil came our privilege of choosing which one we wanted to follow. Of course, we normally choose whichever suits our circumstances and is convenient at the time. The problem is that every choice we make without God’s approval is evil because it is disobedience to God. Most of us have learned that Jesus came to earth in order to save us from our bad decisions. The obvious question is “How does this happen?” The decision behind our choice is called our volition. The way Jesus saves us is to gain control of our volition after we yield our spirit to Him.

We have been taught for years that one decision is all we need for salvation. This is not fully explained to most people. The “one” choice of Salvation is to yield all our decisions. Paul says that you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness. Rom 6:16 Who will control our choices as we walk through this life? When we originally received the right to make our choices; we did not receive the power to make all our choices good ones. This leaves us with only one choice that can save us from ourselves. We must yield our volition to someone who can always make the right decisions for us. That is the Spirit of Jesus Christ living in us.

No one wants to be a slave on earth. Unhappily, we have all been born a slave because, oddly enough, it is the price for our free choices. As seen in the verse above, our eternal obedience is a necessary choice if we want a life which leads to righteousness. This is very frustrating to many people. They want to chose a life of fun and parties because a godly life seems to dull to them. However, the righteous life is necessary if we want to live with God. Paul also said that we must; know that our old self was crucified with Him. Rom6:6  It is necessary to accept this fact and then apply it to our life. It is a strange thing to say but we must live every day doing our best to make our own death to this world a reality.

Some church-goers like to say, “We believe, therefore we will live with God”.  But many of these same people do not want to say, “We believe, therefore we must die to this world”. One of these statements is just as true as the other. The scripture says it this way, “Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him”. Rom 6:8 Here we see that these two beliefs do not stand alone; they are part of each other. We must accept them both or the Spirit cannot lead in our new life. Our baptism was actually a public statement of these two things; We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that…we too may live a new life. Rom 6:4 Christians must accept this truth into their life.

The fact that we are dead to sin only applies when we are living in Christ. When we fail to yield our decisions to the Spirit and make our own choices, we are no longer dead to sin. The remedy is to immediately confess our sin and Jesus will forgive us because we are repentant. Remember that the old life is nothing like the new life. Making our own choices leads to being buried in the old life but yielding to the choices of the Spirit leads to being resurrected into a new life. We must learn to say “no” to people around us. Do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Rom 6:12 There will always be temptations but we can beat them by asking the Spirit to show us the righteous way to go.

So many believers are struggling to live for God. The truth is that when we are doing it correctly it is very easy. The Scripture tells us that; It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Gal 5:1 For several reasons, the Church will place burdens upon a believer. Some have said that it is necessary to give work to people in order to keep them from wandering back into the world. This is actually a lack of faith because we should trust the Holy Spirit. We should be teaching people to rely on the Spirit rather than the Church. The Spirit will remind Christians when they wander from the truth and they must respond to Him properly. Jesus said that his burden is light. When the Spirit is motivating a person to fulfill a task, it can be done with joy and gratitude which makes the job light.

Trusting God is the secret to a successful Christian life. Faith is what makes this verse true; All things work together for good to those who love God. Rom 8:28 This verse does not apply to people who only claim to love God. It does apply to those that are walking in the light by yielding their volition to the Spirit. We could say that people who give their life to the Savior have placed all their eggs in one basket. Our goal is to make only the decisions that Jesus gives for our direction. Our Lord does not want us to have a “back-up plan”. Give everything in your life over to Him, no matter how much it hurts to do it. The sooner we get started trusting Jesus with our entire life; the sooner we will enjoy God’s rest.