March 3. Good works through good resolves.

To this end, we always pray for you that our God may make you worthy of His calling

and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by His power.

2. Thessalonians 1.11. Seeking the power of God to fulfill our good resolves

does not mean that we don't really resolve or that we don't really use willpower.

The engagement of God's power never takes the place of the engagement of our will.

The power of God in sanctification never makes us passive.

The power of God engages itself beneath or behind and within our will, not in place of our will.

The evidence of God's power in our lives is not the absence of

our willing, but the strength of our willing, the joy of our willing. Anyone who says,

well, I believe in the sovereignty of God, and so I will just sit back and do nothing.

Does not really believe in the sovereignty of God, for why would someone who believes in God's sovereignty

so blatantly disobey him?

When you sit back to do nothing, you are not doing nothing.

You are actively engaging your will in a decision to sit back.

And if that is the way you handle sin or temptation in your life, it is blatant disobedience, because we are commanded to wage a good

warfare, 1.18, and to resist the devil, James 4.7, and strive for holiness, Hebrews 1214,

and put to death the sinful acts of the body.

Romans 8.13.

2. Thessalonians 1.11 says that it is by the power of God that we will fulfill our good

resolves and works of faith.

But this does not nullify the meaning of the word resolve and the word

...