Imagine a horizontal line running west to east across the center of your computer screen. This line represents your will in a decision. Now imagine a vertical line running north to south right through the center of your screen. This line represents God’s will in that same decision. The point where those two lines intersect in the middle of the screen is the intersection of death where God wants you to die to your will and do His.

I don’t mean to imply that God’s will is always different than your will. Unless you are a full-blown rebel who bucks God at every turn, His will can oftentimes align with your inner desires. Two proof texts for this are:

Delight yourself also in the Lord, And He shall give you the desires of your heart. (Psalm 37:4, N.K.J.V.)

for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure. (Philippians 2:13, N.K.J.V.)

The problem, however, is that we are all still infected by our inborn nature of sin and this nature is constantly working within us to keep our desires out of alignment with God’s. Isaiah 53:6 describes the chasing of our own desires as going our own way:

All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. (N.K.J.V.)

The “Him” referenced in that verse is none other than Jesus. As Jesus hung on the cross, God the Father laid all the iniquity (sin) of every member of the human race on Him and Jesus died as the substitutionary sacrifice for all those sins. Because of this, anyone who now authentically believes in Jesus as their personal Savior has all their sins forgiven. Still, though, even those of us who have had all our sins forgiven have to continue to struggle with the lingering effects of our inborn nature of sin. We won’t be freed from that nature and those effects until we are freed from these mortal bodies.

This brings us back to the point of my opening illustration. Think of what you want done in a situation as being a horizontal line, and think of what God wants done in that same situation as being a vertical line. Tell me, are you submitted enough to God to put your will to death on the altar of that point of intersection? Frankly, most people aren’t. Here’s hoping that you are the exception to that rule.