Faith Forum: What Does
It Mean to Be Spiritual?
Part 3a: Desiring God’s Will
Overview
• This series is based on the writings of David G. Benner, Emeritus
Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Spirituality at Richmont
Graduate University in Atlanta, Georgia
• Benner is psychologist, therapist, spiritual guide and retreat leader.
He can be found on-line at www.drdavidgbenner.ca/
• This three month series will focus on Benner’s
trilogy of books:
 Surrender to Love (October 18)
The Gift of Being Yourself (November 15)
Desiring God’s Will (December 13, 20)
The Choice: Surrender to God’s Will or Assert
Our Own Will? The Focus is Misplaced
• At the heart of the spiritual journey is a decision we make to prefer
God’s ways to our ways, and to discover our identity and fulfillment in
God’s kingdom way.
• The problem is that when we approach the task of choosing anything
other than our own self and it’s immediate gratification, most of us
automatically turn to willpower and resolve.
• Choosing God becomes more a matter of grim
determination than joyful surrender.
• Also, when we think of God’s will, we assume
that the challenge is how to know God’s will
rather than to choose God’s will.
The Dark Side of Willfulness and
the Downside of Discipline
• What is the downside when we lump choosing God in with things that
are not naturally attractive, like losing weight, or getting physically fit, or
learning to be more disciplined?
• All of us have something of Captain Ahab inside of us: our personal
motto becomes “What I’ve dared, I’ve willed: and what I’ve willed, I’ll
do!”
• Learning to assert our will is essential for normal
psychological development.
• But when does willfulness become rigid and “soul
damaging?”
Examples of Willfulnes Gone Sour
• Jesus clearly held the promise of being “king of the Jews”
• This hope became the focus of Judas Escariot’s willfulness.
• If Judas hadn’t been stubbornly determined to pursue his own agenda, he
could have traded his disappointment in his plan for the deeper hope of
the will of God.
• The willful, stubborn pursuit of his own agenda
was likely behind his betrayal of Jesus. He hoped
that Jesus would be a political messiah.
• As a naked force of self-propulsion, willfulness is
both spiritually and psychologically destructive.
• This is not to be confused with acting on conviction
or following through on difficult things that need to
be done.
How Do We Know When We
Are Being Rigidly Willful?
• What is “unchecked” self-control?
• Soul-damaging rigidity is seen in a stubborn, inflexible determination
to live my life my way (ala Frank Sinatra!)
• It is seen in an inability to every choose the
unexpected, the spontaneous or the
interruption – to ever simply go with the flow.
• Patterns and habits become obsessions and
compulsions of a life of stifling over-control.
• This is saying yes to death not life.
When Pride Becomes Contempt
• Pride in our own willfulness easily leads to a contempt for anyone who
seems to lack discipline. This includes people who are overweight,
disheveled in appearance, poor, inarticulate, lacking in intelligence or in
any way lacking in competence and success.
• Pride alienates us from others. It also spawns an illusory sense of selfsufficiency and superiority.
• Willfulness and pride can become a defense against
longing for intimacy and dependence. Vulnerability
and dependence on others is seen as weakness.
• Jesus came to bring a life that does not depend on
willpower.
• What patterns of willfulness and pride do you see in
your life?
The Lord’s Prayer: A Model of Spiritual Surrender
• The meaning of “our Father”
• God, who is a community of love, wants
to expand the community of love.
• To truly receive Love – to become love –
we must be prepared to surrender the
keys to the kingdom of self.
• The God we address as “our Father” is the God who freely gives
the one thing that can release us from the tyranny of selfassertion and an autonomous ego: perfect love.
• How do we align ourselves with Christ’s call to develop a deep,
personal knowing of God’s love for us?
• Once we truly encounter Perfect Love and the kingdom plan to
make God’s love the rule not only of heaven but also of earth,
surrender is less an act of volition than an impulse of love.
The Challenge of Surrender
•
•
•
•
•
We have a deeply ingrained tendency to rely on ourselves.
Finding our self by first losing our self simply seems too risky.
Story of the man hanging onto the edge of a cliff: “Is anyone up there?”
We would rather make a bargain with God.
We have believed the lie of the serpent –
that freedom comes from the exercise of our
autonomy.
• But true autonomy lies in the choice to give
ourselves to others in love.
• Grasping destroys. Surrender restores and
transforms.
The Freedom to Surrender: Mary
• Louis Evely: “Mary was the first to accept that redemption should take
place in the way we do not want it to take place, ruining all our plans, all
our expectations, causing them to fail.”
• Mary agreed to allow God to deprive her of the
one thing we count most basic among our natural
rights – the right of self-control.
• God doesn’t ask for resignation based on
acquiescence in the absence of a better option
(blind faith?). Nor does God ask for reluctant,
grudging submission.
• This freedom to surrender is what we see in the life
of Jesus and in the life of Mary.
Comparison of the Kingdom of Self
and the Kingdom of God
The Kingdom of Self
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Ruled by self-interest
Grasping
Achievement
Effort
Independence
Holding
Willful
Clenched fists and closed heart
Hard and brittle
Determination
The Kingdom of God
- Ruled by love
- Releasing
- Gift
- Consent
- Interdependence
- Releasing
- Willing
- Open hands and heart
- Soft and malleable
- Transformation
Love and Will
• We can’t will love, but we can be open to love
• Discipline and self-control hold out an illusory promise of making us
the master of our fate and the captain of our soul.
• Ultimately, will cannot genuinely connect us to life. We can’t will love.
• Love and will are never separate for Jesus
• What God desires is external actions that
spring from inner longings for relationship
and intimacy, for this is his desire for us.
• Willfulness is living a stubborn yes. Willingness
is living a loving yes.
• How much of your willing is motivated by love
and how much by obligation?