Willing Obedience

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John 5:1-18

After this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.…

We do not want to destroy willinghood, but we would have it quickened into entire subservience to the will of the Lord. Like Noah's ark on dry land, the will keeps its place by its own dead weight. Oh! for a flood of grace to move, to lift, to upbeat it; to carry it away by a mighty current! We would be borne before the love of Christ as a tiny piece of wood is drifted by the gulf-stream, or as one of the specks which dance in the sunbeam would be carried by a rushing wind. As the impulse, which begins with Jesus, found the poor man passive because utterly unable to be otherwise, and then impelled him on to active movements as with a rush of power, so may it ever be with us throughout life. May we for ever yield to the Divine impulse. To be passive in the Lord's hands is a good desire, but to be what I would call actively passive, to be cheerfully submissive, willingly to give up our will, this is a higher spiritual mood. We must live, and yet not we, but Christ in us. We must act, and yet we must say, He that made me whole bade me do this holy deed, and I do it because His power moves me thereunto.

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