If you were to stand before an audience of one thousand typical Evangelicals drawn from a hundred different churches and open your remarks by emphatically stating this simple phrase, "the will of God," would the phrase produce a warming or a chilling effect? I think the latter, and for the simple reason that most of us have long been victimized by powerful and destructive myths. The first myth is that God’s "will" is something unpleasant. The pulpit hasn’t helped us much here. As a matter of fact, the pulpit, generally, has been more a part of the problem than a part of the solution, if not its major cause. How many sermons have you and I heard on the subject of "surrender"? Many of them came from what were purportedly expositions of Romans 12:1, even though this text enjoins us to "present [our] bodies a living sacrifice," something quite different than surrendering. "Surrender" is a very negative word; "present" a very positive one.

A friend of mine was a Marine gunnery sergeant on Bataan in the Philippines when it fell to the Japanese early in World War Two. The Japanese army considered surrender a disgrace so great that it could only be atoned for by suicide. They considered those who surrendered, their own soldiers as well as the enemy, as little more than animals and frequently treated them accordingly, feeling that, in surrendering, they had sacrificed human dignity. Out of ammunition, food, and medicine the brave defenders of Bataan were overwhelmed by superior numbers with abundant supplies. The Marine detachment was forced to stack arms, strip themselves naked and, at bayonet point march backward in the direction of a nearby cliff. These weary, but faithful Americans were only saved from certain death by the arrival of a high-ranking Japanese officer who angrily denounced and firmly forbad the genocide. When I asked my friend for more details on the "surrender," he stiffened, drew himself up to his full height, and, with shoulders back and chest out informed me in no uncertain terms that, while he and his comrades had been captured, they had not surrendered!

To surrender is to do something that one does not wish to do. To present oneself is to do something that one wants to do. How often my friend and his companions in the Corps had gladly obeyed the command, "Present arms." By standing at attention with rifles held vertically "at the ready," they were signifying that not only the rifle, but the rifleman were voluntarily at the disposal of their country. The Grace Message of God and Paul enjoins us to present, not to surrender! Evangelical preachers often tell us how much God loves us, but then implore us to surrender or else!...painting God as the heavenly Count Dracula in the process. The very expression "will of God" becomes a buzz word, chilling to the soul. Given this present reality, the word "will" might well be rendered "plan," or even "desire," as either is equally acceptable as a translation of the original Greek.

God never desires anything that is not for His glory and man’s good! For that reason, the plan, or desire, of God in Romans 12:1 is said to be "good, and well-pleasing (literal translation), and perfect" in verse 2. That this Plan centers in God’s giving His own life for us on the cross of Calvary is the greatest, and only necessary refutation of the "Count Dracula" caricature. I do not care to surrender myself to Dracula; I can delight in presenting myself to the risen Christ of Calvary!

A second destructive myth is that the "will" of God is hard to discover. Perhaps a few of the most spiritual Christians might discover it after much fasting, strong crying, and long nights of prayer! But the desire of God concerning your life and ministry and mine is clearly set forth on every page of the Pauline Epistles. It cannot be hard to find for God has revealed it and is more desirous of acquainting us with it than we are of finding it out. After all, it is His Plan, His desire, not ours. It was He Himself Who drew it up in eternity past, and would He now conceal it from us, making it difficult to implement? I think this second myth owes its existence, in part, to the belief that God has individualized His will to the degree that He decides if and whom we should marry, where we should live, and what vocation we should follow. That God’s will is spiritual and not physical and geographical should be evident from Scripture. Believers are told in 1 Corinthians 7 that God has left to us the choice of marriage or singlehood. He even allows us to pick our own mates in that chapter, quite consistent with His treatment of us as adults. If the Father has left such important decisions to us, is it not reasonable to infer that lesser decisions are left to us as well? Of course, we are to make all our decisions on the basis of Scriptural principles. Wasn’t the widow told to make her choice of a second husband from those who are "in the Lord"? How many times do we hear a Believer claim Divine guidance in some such matter as the selection of a house, only to learn afterward that the first rain left eight feet of water in the basement. Diehards will insist that the flooded basement also was God’s will...His method of making the new owners better Christians. If we flooded the basements of our adult children while they were at work, would that make them better sons and daughters? Hmmmmmm!

God’s will includes such desires as the study of His Word, rightly dividing it; submitting, as a member of the Body of Christ, to the Headship of Christ, and the Stewardship of Paul; that I build my life and ministry upon the foundation laid in the Pauline Epistles; that I love, support, forgive, and minister to other believers, placing the same value upon them that God accords them in His Word. Frankly, I don’t believe it matters much to the security of God’s Plan if I do these things as a brain surgeon, or a stacker-of-meadow-muffins, while married to the blonde or the brunette, living in the little green house or the big white one, in Minnesota or in Maryland. Let’s quit perpetuating man’s traditions and devote ourselves to studying God’s revelation. The will of God, His desire for our lives, is pleasant, easily found, spiritual rather than physical; and it is His desire that each of us be constantly demonstrating this to the world around us. Godspeed!