Life-altering decisions call for action.
Once I choose to lay aside poor patterns of living in favor of speech and conduct that better reflect God’s life in Christ, I must engage my will. I take action. I come to terms that I am shifting from spectator mode. I’m in the game for real.
Thinking will play an important part in moving into a better kind of living. But mental pondering alone over a crossroad lying before a traveler fails to get them a centimeter onto the new direction.
The fork has appeared in the road ahead, and I know I must act on my decision. Taking “the road less travelled”, I engage a powerful thing known as the will. My will.
Willpower alone lacks the necessary energy to bring about spiritual transformation. Nevertheless, the long journey of change into Christlikeness will never occur apart from my will – and my ongoing actions of choice stemming from it as I pursue him. And my pursuit of him marks the terrain where my will and the Lord’s companioning presence merge. I have willed to begin letting him be in charge.
Jesus supplies his powerful presence, but even so, he avoids seizing the steering wheel of my personal volition – my will. He offers his presence and his power right along with his offer of partnering with me throughout our good and marvelous life-altering adventure together.
It is so with all his disciples – each one a work in progress – God’s beloved children. We engage. We yield. Shifting our posture, we set our feet in motion alongside his companioning presence. It is when this happens that the load becomes light.
When the economic crisis of 2008 descended on the United States, several industries were broadsided. Among those profoundly impacted by the financial earthquake was the oil industry. Several of our international friends who had been majoring in Petroleum Engineering at our city’s university were swept into an academic crisis. Career-altering decisions were made in a matter of days. At a major crossroad, their futures felt at stake
Almost overnight graduate students at the PhD and Masters levels found themselves redirecting their attention to very new fields of research. Fresh learning curves met them at every turn, sharp and steep!
While these scholars were endowed with very keen minds, to shift from their petroleum engineering specialty to another demanded of them not only a new focus but a new set of disciplines. The students could not make the daunting change by merely wishing for it or by thinking it into being. Learning of and then entering into a new set of practices had to be embraced. Whole careers rested on this proposition.
In a similar way, when a Christian proceeds past something called their profession of faith, and embraces their actual identity as disciple-of-Jesus, they have embarked upon a life-altering path. Profession of faith becomes Practice of the faith. Humbly and decidedly with both will and their yieldedness in place, they strike out on the new path. A decision has been made – one of many lying ahead of them.. They have chosen the with-God life.
©2025 Jerry Lout