Therefore, Jesus answered and was saying to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless [it is] something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner. [John 5:19 NASB95]
For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. [Romans 8:14 NASB95]
Have you ever wondered what and how, your pet thinks? I have. My cat will be sitting on my lap when he suddenly begins looking around, and I’ve learned that means he’s formulating a plan, i.e., he’s thinking. And if I pay attention to what he looks at, I can usually guess what he’s thinking about…usually it involves his food or water bowl. It’s comical to see him enter the room and stop in front of my chair. He sits and looks around, and I know he’s trying to make up his mind to proceed to my lap or choose first to eat. These important decisions usually take a lot of time for him, and it’s fun to watch him mulling over his options! Thankfully, the process I use as I think is faster, and much more detailed than my cat, but I’ve learned we both form habits in the way we think, and what we think about. Also thankfully, my mind is not prone to get stuck in one dimension, and can naturally be multi-dimensional, (although like my cat, I often think about my food bowl!).
In John 5:19, Jesus said to His disciples that (He) could ‘do nothing of Himself’. Either this meant that He did not possess free will, as we were created with, or He chose to ‘do nothing of Himself’. Which was it? If we say He did not have the free will to choose what to do and how to do it, He could not have been our substitute sacrifice, because He would not have been fully human. If we say He had learned to choose to ‘do nothing of Himself’, He was showing by example that it is possible for human beings to use their God-given free will to purposely choose to be led by the Spirit of God, as Romans 8:14 verifies. But to do so would take a bit of work on our part as we would have to alter our habits of thinking away from that which is natural for us.
From our births, we quite naturally begin to think for ourselves. It’s how we think, but we fail to realize it is how we think as a fallen race. It is natural human nature to put God on hold as long as we feel fully competent and in control, and we only pull Him out of our mental closets when we find ourselves overwhelmed or in perilous situations we cannot control. In other words, our habits of thinking do not normally involve the active participation of God as long as we feel able to remain in control of our destiny. But that doesn’t work all the time, does it?
In prayer this morning, I began to wonder what it would be like to let God take full and complete, minute-by-minute control of my mind, and by extension, my body? Is that even possible? Well, it seems it was possible for Jesus, and look what power He moved in, both mentally and physically, in the three short years He was in ministry. Imagine what He alone could have accomplished in seventy years!
As some have said, “We are what we eat.”, and I would add to that, “We do what we think.” If Jesus could do it, and He did, we should be able to follow His dynamic example and walk as He did. That’s my theory anyway. Notice I did not say it would be easy. It would take discipline and hard work, but I have come to believe it is possible…if we want it to be.
God created the human race to have free will, and as long as we have that, we have the ability to choose to be controlled by the Spirit of God, not just when we are overwhelmed by circumstances, but also during the routine portions of our days. Our free will was to be the mechanism we were to use to choose to serve God; to be controlled by Him – every day. Sadly, Adam chose instead to do things his own way.
I believe Jesus came into our dimension to offer us a way back to God, as well as a way to let God be in control of His creation through us. He created us to serve Him as His servants and Kingdom administrators on earth. But in our fallenness, we chose to be God…
I pray we can experience allowing Him to be God while we serve Him as His Spirit-empowered servants on the earth He created. That should be our place, and our unique niche in Creation.
John Miltenberger
Photo: wamiz.co.uk
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