Desiring God's Will - Benner

The following are excerpts from David Benner’s book, Desiring God’s Will: Aligning Our Hearts with the Heart of God.

Surrendering to God’s will makes little sense if we are not first convinced of the depths of God’s love for us. (14)

The problem is that when we approach the task of choosing anything other than our own self and its immediate gratification, most of us automatically turn to willpower and resolve. Choosing God then becomes more a matter of grim determination than joyful surrender – closer to deciding to cut back on eating enjoyable foods than to following our heart to the Source of abundant life. (14)

. . . We fail to recognize that our problem is not so much knowing God’s way as being utterly convinced that choosing God is choosing life.

While the choices we make can be very important in our spiritual journey, we shall see . . . that how we decide can often be as important as what we decide. Willpower, determination and discipline are not enough in Christ-following. The close interconnection of will and desire means that if Christ is to have our will, he must first have our heart. (15)

Discipline, spiritual or otherwise, is a good servant but a bad master. It is not the summum bonum – the supreme good. When it is valued in and of itself, the disciplined life easily leads to rigidity and pride. (25)

Jesus showed nothing of this rigidity. Although the strength of his resolve and consistency of his spiritual disciplines are striking, he lived a life characterized by flexibility, not predictability. He was constantly surprising people – always capable of spontaneously embracing opportunities of the moment, never compulsively grasping the safety of the habitual. His discipline served to align his will and his spirit with God’s will and God’s Spirit. But this discipline was not dependent on external rigidity. It sprang from a heart that was aflame with the love of God, not a will striving for self-control. (27)

Discipline was, for Jesus as it should be for us, grounded in relationship and shaped by desire.

Spiritual disciplines should always be means to spiritual ends, never ends in themselves. They are places of meeting God that do not have value in and of themselves. To treat them as if they did is to develop a spirituality that is external, self-energized, and legalistic. (30)

The life that Jesus came to bring is a life that does not depend on willpower. It flows out of the Spirit of God, energizing and transforming our spirit. It’s a life based on transfusion – God’s Spirit transfusing my spirit, God’s deepest desires, longings and dreams becoming mine. This is the way – and the only way – to the freedom and fulfillment of preferring God’s will to mine. (31)