GOD’S
WORK IN YOU

“It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”

Philippians 2:13 kjv

Have you not found it hard to be good? hard to keep from saying something naughty that you wanted to say? Very hard to keep down the angry feeling, even if you did not say the angry word? Hard to do a right thing, because you did not at all like doing it, and quite impossible to make yourself wish to do it? You asked God to help you to do it, and He did help you; but did you ever think of asking Him to make you like to do it?

Now, this is just what is meant by God’s “working in you to will.” It means that He can and will undertake the very thing which you can not manage. He can and will “take your will, and work it for you;” making you want to do just what He wants you to do; making you like the very things that He likes, and hate just what He hates.

It is always easy to do what we like doing; so, when we have given up our will to Him, and asked Him to work it for us, it makes every thing easy. For then we shall want to “do according to his good pleasure,” and we shall be very happy in it; because trying to please Him will not be fighting against our own wills, when God has taken them and is working them for us.

Do you not see what happy days are before you if you will only take God at His word about this? Only try Him, and you will see! Tell Him that you have found you can not manage your will yourself, and that now you will give it up to Him, and trust Him, from now, not only to work in you to do, but to work in you to will also, “according to his good pleasure.”

Take my will, and make it Thine;

It shall be no longer mine.

Take my heart, it is Thine own;

It shall be Thy royal throne.

Frances Ridley Havergal