“ I can do nothing from Myself; ...I do not seek My own will but the will of Him Who sent Me.” John 5:30

Among the more advance Christian circles, we often hear of our need to surrender our will to God. Yet what God wants is not only our surrendered will, but our whole being accompanied by a glad obedience. Christ Himself was such an example to us as the Lamb, Who willingly offered Himself according to God's will to be slained on the cross. As the Bride of the Lamb, we too have to be slained by carrying our cross daily (Matt 16:24) if we are to be united to the Lamb, our Bridegroom.We may have previously thought that a surrendered will is sufficient to bring us into a life of victory, but that is not enough. There must be also a broken spirit which will enable us to accept and obey God’s will joyfully, because a surrendered will alone does not bring victory.

We see that God called out His people Israel and delivered them by His great power and mighty hand. Oftentimes, the children of Israel stood awestruck and were dumb-founded, as at Sinai, before His lightning and thunders. When face to face with God’s power, they were very penitent, and said, “All that God had said, we will do,” but as soon as the trial was over, thirst quenched, or hunger appeased, they fell to murmuring and complaining against God and His ways of working; thus exposing the fact that though the will surrendered and said, “We will do,” their spirit was unbroken and wanted its own way, which led them to rebel against God repeatedly. The children of Israel, though following on outwardly for forty years, complain against and questioned God and His appointed leading ones, until all except two perished in the wilderness. Praise the Lord that we have a clear record that shows us the secret of their victory. They had “another spirit,” an obedient, broken spirit (Please read Num 14:24; 32:11,12; Deut 1:36). The unbrokenness of spirit was the cause of many difficulties and failures in our Christian life and experience.

The purpose of God is that our spirit as well as our will may yield to Him, and thus the whole nature be brought under His reign and be responsive to Him. The reason that we see so many Christians living a life of self-assertion, self-will, failure, and the inability to coordinate with other brothers in the Body of Christ is because they refused to be exercised by, and yielded to, the way of the cross in dying to themselves. They are wholly unbroken in spirit.

The apostle Paul is an example of one who had experience the brokenness of spirit. In the ninth chapter of Acts we have his conversion, where with one masterly stroke of God, the formerly notorious, riotous, persecuting Saul is changed to the ever-obedient, broken-spirited Paul. What happened to Paul in that hour must happen sometime to every living man and woman who would know a life of victory over the flesh.We have in Acts 9:5,6—“And he said, Who are You, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting: it is hard for you to kick against the pricks. And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what will You have me to do?” Saul found what was wrong with what he was doing; he had been kicking against God and failed to see the Indwelling Christ in and among the Christians he was persecuting. However as soon as he saw this, he surrendered his all to God and God took the kick out of him. Paul willingly yielded and said, “Lord what will You have me to do?” not as the terrified keeper of the prison, who yielded because of fear, and said, “What must I do?” (Act 16:30). After Paul had surrendered to the Lord, he not only lost his self-will as indicated by his saying “what will You have me to do?” but he was rendered powerless to act on his own since he was also temporarily blinded; therefore, he had to act in full obedience to the Lord's will. Thus, it is a surrender not only of his will, but also his whole being.

The will of the unyielded man is always saying: “What must I do?” But a broken spirit ever says. “What will You have me to do?” Here is where many dear Christians fail. They are perfectly sure God is speaking, and they do not actually intend to disobey. Like the children of Israel at the foot of Mount Sinai said, “We will do,” but they do it in their own self-will and were thus stumbled and failed repeatedly. In other words, we could be even willing to even do God's will, yet do so with a wholly unbroken spirit, which is utterly at variance with the Lord Jesus Who said, “Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God.” And whether it was success or bitterest persecution, it was all the same, “My meat is to do the will of Him Who sent me and to finish His work” (Jn 4:34) and “I delight to do Thy will” – without any resistance, murmuring, or questioning, but with an absolute brokenness of spirit (Psa 40:7,8). Had it been otherwise, the Lord's mission on earth would have been a failure. It is not just His utter surrender of will that we need to learn to follow, but it is the consciousness that His whole being went with the will in glad obedience, and thus we see why the Lord was liken to a “Lamb” and not some other animals, because a lamb is utterly helpless and entirely surrendered to the will of the Master to do with him as He sees fit. For this reason, the Lord Jesus said, “I can do nothing from Myself; ...I do not seek My own will but the will of Him Who sent Me.”(Jn 5:30, 19, 6:38). Note: it is not only the seeking of the will of Him Who sent me, but also accompanied by the absolute surrender of His entire being : “I can do nothing from Myself.”

Much has been spoken and written on the subject of death to the self-life, and much honest effort has been put forth on the part of those seeking an overcoming life, yet all our efforts have not left us dead, but more like the prophets of Baal on Carmel, only hewed and hacked until our body, soul and spirit are bruised, sore and aching.What then is the way of deliverance for us? If sincere desire and self-effort do not bring victory, what are we to do? As we have seen – the root of the problem lies in our not being entirely surrendered to the Lord in both our will and action. Praise the Lord! We are told in Ezekiel 36:26: “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you.” May we daily allow the “new spirit” to displace the old, a broken and a contrite heart to replace the unbroken and self-willed one. In Ezekiel 36:37 He also tells us how this natural heart of stone, this hard unbroken spirit will be taken away. Praise the Lord! We have a “new spirit” and a “new heart” that we can live by that finds its delight in doing the will of God and in being utterly and completely surrendered to Him.