Devotional - 2nd July 2026

REVEALING GOD DEVOTIONAL - THE GIFT OF FREEWILL – PART 2

Praise God for another glorious day to share something with you all. I am sure you had a nice night’s rest. I just believe today will be a good one for you. So all you need to do is smile and embrace the gift of life God has given you to see this day. I will just continue on our line of thought today on the gift of freewill. I have said that God’s greatest gift to His creation is the gift of freewill, which is the gift of choice. That would mean even though God was their creator, they can choose not to love or serve Him.

In order for you to better understand how wonderful the gift of freewill is, we must picture mankind without a will — just as servants, or even worse, slaves or prisoners. A person that is locked up in a prison has no option to choose where he wants to go, what he wants to eat, or what he wants to do. So we can better appreciate this liberty God has given us as human beings to choose. However, our choices will determine our future — either eternally with God, or eternally with the devil.

The angels were also created with the gift of freewill, and that was why Satan and about one-third of the angels chose to rebel against God’s Will by their freewill. They have thus been sentenced to be cast out of the presence of God forever in the lake of fire.

However, Satan knowing this, has wickedly fought so that many people will join him in his punishment by working on mankind’s emotion and intellect in order to cause them to unknowingly or knowingly turn their will to him. He started this war from the Garden of Eden when he deceived Eve and put Adam in a position to disobey God. By doing this, he broke man’s relationship with God just as his own relationship with God was broken.

The fact is that even though our will is ours to control, external input can influence how we choose. For example, Eve had been passing by and seeing the tree of the knowledge of good and evil every other day, until one day the devil deceived her intellect and stirred up her emotion to make her feel less than God. This caused her to willingly choose to disobey God. Once this happened, mankind was disconnected spiritually from God, and automatically became easily susceptible to the devil’s will through the desires of the flesh.

That was why even when the Israelites had seen the glory and power of God, they still were willing to serve idols and turn their back on God. Due to the weakness of the flesh, mankind literally became a slave to the devil, because even though they had a will to say no to the devil, the passion of the flesh will always pressure them to disobey God.

This was why God had to send His only Son Jesus Christ to die for us, so that once anyone believes in Him, that spirit that was dead and disconnected from God is restored back (John 3:6). That is what is called being born again (John 3:3). What really happens when a person gets born again is in fact one of the greatest miracles of God in man. This again gives man the power to willingly want to serve God. The scripture says, “Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth” (Psalms 110:3).

However, the fact that you get born again does not mean that the influence of the flesh will immediately go away. In other words, even though we are born again, we are stuck with our flesh until we pass away from this world. Thus we will have to continually deal with its passion, which is susceptible to the will of the devil. Therefore, there will now be two contending forces contending for our will: the first is God through our born-again spirit, and the second is the devil through the flesh. And as long as this goes on, we are most likely not going to obey God. The scripture says, “For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would” (Galatians 5:17).

I really must tell you the truth, the flesh is powerful enough to cause a person to keep disobeying God and remain in sin, even when he is born again. This was the battle Jesus was faced with when He was about to be crucified. His flesh was fighting against His will to do God’s Will, so when He went to pray on the Mount of Olives, He said, “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42).

The fact is that the flesh’s will can never be in line with God’s Will, so what it would desire or want to do will always conflict with God’s Will (Romans 8:7). So the only thing we can actually do is to crucify it, so that its passion and lust are deadened. This is another major area we will need the help of the Holy Spirit, because it is through His help that we can only crucify the flesh, so that our Will can totally submit to God’s Will. The scripture says, “For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live” (Romans 8:13).

I believe you are wondering at this point how a person can get the help of the Holy Spirit. It really looks like something that is going to be a big miraculous task for anyone to do, but you have to believe it. Deadening your flesh can be done through prayer, because when we look at the example of Jesus, when He was facing a battle between His flesh and His will for God’s Will for His destiny, He resorted to prayer to get help. In prayer, the scripture says, “And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him” (Luke 22:43).

Therefore, we must see prayer not only as a tool for requesting things from God, but more importantly, as a tool for fellowship with God. When we spend time with God, God fellowships with us by His Spirit. It is the time we spend in the presence of the Holy Spirit that deadens our fleshly desires and lust. That is why Peter, who was ready to lie and curse in order to deny Jesus and preserve his own life, was now ready to die — and indeed he died for Christ — when the Holy Spirit was available in his life. The scripture says, “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41).

Once we are spending sufficient time with the Holy Spirit, God will easily be able to cause us to do His will and do His purpose. This makes living the Christian life easier. So I encourage you to spend more time praying in the Spirit or praying just to worship God, and you will find out how easily your Will aligns with God’s Will. The scripture says, “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13).

Have a blessed day.

Today’s Reading:

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Nevertheless, if you are not born again you can do so today by saying this simple prayer below out with your mouth in faith, believing that Jesus Christ died and rose again for your sins.