Do I really really really have the power to say to these muscles, get out of the bed. Can I really do that? Well God is sovereign and if he

wants me to have devotions he'll lift me out of this bill.

But then it says in Philippians 212,

work out your salvation, so I'm supposed to do it.

Yet it's God who's going to do it. Yet it's God who's going to do it.

I do this. I used to do this a lot.

What's the relationship between God's Providence and man's will?

Does God's work within history negate our agency?

In this episode of Light and Truth,

John Piper returns to Philippians 2, 12 and 13

to show how God's sovereignty actually enables our willing.

The seminar was originally given at Bethlehem Baptist Church on January 10th,

1996. Father, I think it's so important that we understand your word concerning the proper place of the human will in relationship to history, conversion, prayer, evangelism, worship.

And so I ask, Father, that you would be our teacher tonight,

that you would guide us, strengthen our minds to think biblically. I pray that you would guard us from the devil, that he would be banished

right now in the name of Jesus from our thought processes so that his age old work of

deception would not hold sway but that we would be free men and women to think truth and to embrace truth and not to be hostile to truth.

Help us to be open to mystery where we have to concede our limitations.

And so glorify yourself and your sovereignty and your mercy and your goodness to us tonight I pray and make this a useful

lesson for our courage in prayer and evangelism and risk-taking obedience.

In Jesus' name, I pray it, amen.

The question I'll begin with is, does God have ultimate influence over the

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