WILLPOWER
As your alarm clock goes off, do you ever lean over, turn it off and
continue to lie there, even though you purposed to get up at a certain
time? When you finally do get up, you
ask yourself, “Why don’t I have more willpower?”
Or have you ever passed a candy machine or ice cream shop, purchased
and eaten the sweets, and then asked yourself, “Why did I do that? I’m already overweight, and it’s 500 more
calories that I don’t need. I sure wish
I had more willpower!”
Everybody is interested in willpower, whether Christian or not. The approach Weight-Watchers take to losing
weight is to stimulate your willpower to eat the right things so that you don’t
gain weight, or you lose what you’ve already gained. Those who jog need a lot of willpower to go
out jogging. Getting up 6 or
In this article, I’d like to narrow our focus to that which has
spiritual overtones because our basic objective in life is to glorify God
through loving obedience and trust. Whatever
we do, the Bible says we should do to the glory of God – 1 Cor. 10:31.
In 1 Cor. 9, Paul states that athletes discipline themselves so that
they might receive a temporal reward, but that we do it so we might receive an
eternal reward – we discipline ourselves to the glory of God.
Basically, the will is the
faculty of choice or determination – it’s the immediate cause of all our
actions. It’s an important element in
our makeup. But the choice we make – the
choice the will makes – is affected by influences that are brought to bear upon
it. The choice is determined by the strongest motive power that is brought
to bear upon our will in each particular situation.
What the motive power is varies in different situations. It might be the logic of reason in some
situations. For example, you have
thought something out and you think, “Well, I should do this” – and so you do
it. On the other hand, it might be the
voice of conscience that keeps prying away until it forces you to make
something right that you’ve done wrong in the past. Or, it might be the impulse of emotion. (Stores play on this when they use displays
and ads that appeal to our feelings.)
However, it might be the desires of our sinful nature – or it may be the
Holy Spirit’s promptings – or it could be the temptation of Satan. Any number of things/people can influence our
wills. Whichever of these presents the
strongest motive power (and thus exerts the greatest influence) impels the will
and causes it to make a particular selection/choice.
So, asking the question, “How can I get more willpower?” is
really asking the wrong
question. If the will is merely the
faculty of choice that responds to influences, the right question is, “How can I bring the right influences to bear
upon my will, so that it will be impelled to make the right choices?”
Very little is said about the will in the Bible. But a lot is said about the heart. The heart is the innermost core of our beings
– the real us – that consists of our intellects, emotions, and wills. When Eve took and ate of the forbidden fruit,
it was because her will responded to her emotions and to Satan’s influence –
Genesis 3:4-6.
The heart is both our
conscious and subconscious mind – Eph. 1:18; Col. 3:2; Psa. 40:8; Deut. 6:6;
Psa. 119:11; Prov. 4:23. So our heart
consists of our intellect, will, and emotions.
Every motivating influence that comes to our wills comes through our
minds, whether it comes from within us (our conscience) or through some
external influence.
The non-Christian/natural person’s heart is corrupt/deceitful (Gen.
6:5; Jer. 17:9) and blind. A child’s
will is totally dominated by self-gratification (Gen. 8:21). At conversions, God gives us a new heart (2
Cor.
The person who becomes a Christian after a life given over to
immorality may stop his immoral actions immediately, but the immoral thoughts
will probably persist for a long time because of all the past years of immoral
programming. Or, the person with a hot
temper, after conversion, may still struggle with anger because of all the years
of feeding the sin nature in that area.
And the person who had a problem with lying as a non-Christian will
wrestle with that tendency after conversion because of building a habit pattern
over a period of time. These things can
change but it takes time because the old mind/nature has had years of the wrong
value system influencing it and is still present.
This creates the conflict Christians experience within themselves. We have
the new nature, and we begin to realize what our lives should be like as
Christians. So, the battle rages as to which
nature controls your life – Gal. 5:16, 17.
And which ever nature controls your life then influences your will and
your will then makes the choice according to the nature dominating your will –
either evil or good. So on the bad side, our will can be influenced by our sin nature that
we’re born with, the world’s evil values, or demonic forces. On the good side, our will can be influenced
by our new righteous nature acquired at conversion, the Holy Spirit, or biblical
values.
With this as a background, I’d like to suggest some ways that our will
can be influenced in the right direction.
First, we must live/walk by the Spirit (so that we won’t gratify the
desires of the sinful nature – Gal.
If the Holy Spirit is to influence our minds, and the Bible is the way
the Spirit speaks to us, then we need to saturate our minds with God’s Word
(reading, rereading, and meditating upon it daily over and over again and again
until we see things from God’s perspective, and think the way God would think,
and feel the way God would feel). That’s
why God tells the Israelites in Deut. 6:6-9, “These commandments that I give
you today are to be upon your hearts.
Impress them on your children.
Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road,
when you lie down and when you get up.
Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses
and on your gates.”
The Word of God is to be constantly in
our minds regardless of what we’re doing. Joshua 1:8 and Psalm 1:2
reinforce this idea, as does Col. 3:2, 16.
If you’ve been asking, “How can I get more willpower?”, then this is
how. There is no shortcut to a stronger
will because there is no such thing as a stronger will. It’s just a matter of bringing to bear the
right influences on your will. It’s
getting to the place where the Bible is a stronger motivating factor influencing
your will than the other bad influences.
It’s also an important motivating factor to understand the value of
influencing your will with the right factors.
To be controlled by the Holy Spirit and have our minds set on the
desires of the Spirit brings life and peace (
A habit can be defined as
“the prevailing disposition or character of a person’s thoughts and feelings;
his mental makeup. Habits are nothing
more than thoughts or emotional patterns which have been engraved on our minds, that can be recorded over. 1 Tim. 4:7 says to “train yourself
to be godly.” Establish godly habit
patterns.
For example, a successful businessman accidentally hits a child while
driving home. Since the child had darted
out from behind a car, it wasn’t the man’s fault. Instead of stopping and calling an ambulance
(which would have ended the man’s responsibility), the man drove from the scene
of the accident and ultimately ended up in jail. The reason the
businessman left the scene went way back into his childhood where he had done
something wrong and had lied his way out of it.
Lying his way out of problems had been a
pattern all his life, so in time of crisis, this habit came into focus and
influenced his will. Though he knew that
he shouldn’t drive away, he was a prisoner of his habit. Because the will responds to the strongest
influence brought to bear upon it at that particular time – in this case the
habit of lying – he was unable to overcome it.
Solution: Sit down and ask yourself, “What are the
habits that I want to break? Which ones
do God want eliminated? And what good
habits do I want to acquire?” Maybe it’s
to meditate on the Word of God. One
missionary, instead of listening to his car radio, meditated on Bible verses. Set attainable goals when trying to acquire a
new habit. Habits are acquired by
repetition, so do often whatever new habit you are trying to establish. For example, if it’s memorizing verses from
the Bible, then meditate on them daily for best retention over a long period of
time. Or, if you decide to have a daily
Quiet Time (Bible reading & meditation & prayer) it’s best to have it
at the same time everyday. Repetition
reinforces the establishment of a new habit.
And do not make exceptions, as exceptions only reinforce your old habit
patterns. Your old value system of
laziness, procrastination, rationalization, or indulgence is just
strengthened. When you let the exception
occur, it reinforces that old value system and digs that groove in your mind a
little bit deeper. And do not reward
yourself with the same thing you’re trying to break. Don’t say, “I’ll sleep in tomorrow because
I’ve successfully gotten up everyday for a week now.” Or, “I’ll pig out because I’ve lost 10 lbs on
my diet.” Or, “I can drink one beer
because I’ve completely stopped drinking.”
Or, “I can smoke one cigarette because I’ve quit smoking.” Or, “I can pass by a porn store, or an ‘X’ –
rated movie because I’ve quit looking at pornography.”
Recognize that one choice affects another. If there are two things you’re working on and
you’ve given in on one, you’ll be weakened toward the other because you are
trying to acquire a basic overall habit of saying “no” to the indulgences of
the flesh/sin nature. This is the basic
habit we’re seeking to acquire, that of saying “no” to self, not just some specific thing that is a bad habit.
For example, if I’m a slave to eating ice cream (though ice cream is
amoral), and I give in to eating it when I already decided to stop eating, then
I’ll have difficulty with my will in some other areas of my life, such as my
thought life. If I open the gate to
indulge myself with ice cream, it’ll open the attitude-of-indulgence gate to
other bad habits, like impure thoughts. (So, don’t give in at all!)