Day 13: God’s Spirit And Man’s Will

We are going to deal now with the inner mechanics of making the decision we have talked about in the previous chapter. As with repentance, or the other decisions we’ve spoken about earlier, I’m going to speak about the interaction between God’s Spirit and man’s will. And I want to point out to you that the initiative for all right decisions is with God. In his last fallen condition, man cannot do anything right or good purely of himself. The first initiative, the first prompting, must come from God. What’s important in our lives is how we respond to God’s initiative.

This is brought out very clearly in a verse in the Book of Lamentations 5:21 where Jeremiah the prophet cries out to God:

“Turn thou us unto thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old.”

First of all, Jeremiah says, “God, you turn us. Until you turn us, we can’t turn. The initiative is with you, God. But if you turn us, then we will decide to respond and to turn back.” I pointed out that in Hebrew the normal word for repentance is the word for “to turn” or “to turn back” which is used there in two different forms. So, Jeremiah says, “God, it all depends on your mercy. Unless you turn us, we can’t turn. But if you have mercy on us and turn us, then we will respond and turn back to you.”

At such times our response is critical. You see, we do not know how long God will continue to move upon us. And when God ceases to move upon us, then we can no longer make the decision merely by our own human will or effort.

That’s how it was in the days before the flood that came in the days of Noah. The whole earth was wicked and corrupt before God and at a certain time God said this, in Genesis 6:3:

“Then the Lord said, ‘My Spirit will not content with man forever...’”

God said, “My Spirit is there striving with the wicked, pleading with them to repent, to turn back to Me, to change their way of doing things.” And He said, “I’m going to continue pleading with them but not forever. There’ll come a moment when I withdraw My Spirit and then they’ll no longer be able to repent.” How important it is that when God pleads we respond. That we do not trespass on His grace and assume that He’ll go on pleading forever.