In this sermon, the speaker discusses the importance of not allowing our feelings and will to govern our lives. He emphasizes that those who are controlled by their emotions and will often struggle to accomplish much in life, both spiritually and naturally. The speaker also highlights the need for emotional and willful breakthroughs, where we can freely express ourselves and cooperate with God in delivering us from our locked-up emotions. Lastly, the sermon focuses on the breaking of the will, explaining that it does not mean destroying it, but rather making it useful and aligned with God's purposes. The speaker references Romans 12:1 to support the idea of surrendering our will to God.

In the book of Romans, the subject of breakings tonight, breakings. Last night we spoke on the breaking of the soul, of the emotions, how necessary it is, how God looks to it, how God takes note and blesses those whose hearts will be receptive and their souls receptive, their emotions open, they're not all bound up within themselves. They can express. God made us creatures to express ourselves. Creatures of expression. Many of us have locked ourselves up. We cannot express. We cannot express ourselves, even to people that are close to us. We can't get it out. It's been locked up. For such, it needs a delivering work. It needs an act of deliverance of God. It needs for us to cooperate with God in delivering. We start doing the little things, at least. At least we can move our hands and clap our hands. Oh, that will cost you a mighty thing if you'd never done it before. And each step along the way of what we're doing is casting off the bonds that have closed us in, locked us up, until no longer we can be free to express ourselves, even to one another, and especially unto God. But tonight we're going to look at another area that needs the breaking of God. The breaking of the will. That the will might be broken. Now, when we say broken, we're not thinking of the word destroyed. You take a colt. In my younger days I broke some of those animals, and that doesn't mean you kill it. That doesn't mean you take a hammer and break it back. That doesn't mean you destroy it for any good. It means you break that will until it is useful. We're speaking of breaking. Turn with me to Romans 12, and the first verse. Therefore brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your body a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. Now again, when we say the broken will, we don't mean that you become willless. We don't mean you become a blah, or nothing. It doesn't mean that you just lose all voluntary operation. You just wait for God to do it. Some people try to get into that nothing state, trying to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit. They're waiting for God to do it, and somehow it never happens, because that's not what it means. It means something completely different from that. First of all, let's look at some examples from the life of Jesus. Matthew 26, 39, in that wonderful prayer in Gethsemane, we read where he ends up saying, Not my will but thine be done. Not my will but thy will be done. Thy will be done. A tremendous moment it was. A moment when he could have chosen for himself. A moment when he could have exercised the right of his own will. The moment when he could have said, No, I'm going my way. And there was a breaking. There was an example of the breaking of his will when he said, No, not my will, but thine be done. In Revelation 3, 14, you find one of his names, the Amen, the true and faithful witness. The Amen. You find that illustrated in the scripture we just mentioned in Matthew 26. Not my will, but thine be done. Amen means, So be it. Let it be so. What he said in the Garden of Gethsemane, Let it be done what you want. Let it be so what you desire. Let it come to pass. That's what I want. I want what you want. I want what you desire. Then in John 5, 30, we read, I seek not my own will, but the will of the Father that sent me. I seek not my own will, but I seek, I look for the will of my Father, that his will be done. In other words, he was looking for the way that he could fulfill the will of God. Then we have the Lord's Prayer. Matthew 6, 10, Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. Thy will be done. And that we're taught to pray, aren't we? Man is made in the image of God. God gave man the power of self-motion, which we call will. The power of self-motion. It's a sacred trust. It's something very special. It's something that's given to you, and you can't give it away, things that may seem. You cannot give your will away. You can do what other people want you to do, but it's still your choice to do it, isn't it? You can do what others desire. You can surrender your rights of choice, but you're still responsible for choice, aren't you? You're still responsible for the choice that you made. 2 Corinthians 5, 10. Let us get a look at this one. Corinthians 5, 10. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that everyone may receive the things done in the body according to what he has done, whether it be good or bad. It doesn't say we're going to be judged for someone else's. We're not going to be judged. I'm not going to judge what you do. Hallelujah. And you won't be judged for what I've done, and you better thank God for that one. But don't worry, you have another view, and regardless of who told you to do it, you did it. You can blame them if you want to, but the power of choice was yours. It's a sacred trust, and no one can take it away, and even when you give it over, you cannot give over responsibility. You still did it. We had a very interesting illustration, I think I've given to you before, I'll repeat. Several years ago, Nellie, who was in charge of the children's home in Argentina, asked one of the young lads to drive her downtown, and he did. And the place where she was difficult finding the parking, and the place where she wanted to go, had a prohibited parking zone right in front of it. Now, Nellie had some pretty good, through the children's home and so on, she had some pretty good rapport with the officials of the city. So she said, well, just go ahead and park here. He said, but it's prohibited. She said, well, that doesn't make any difference. She said, look, but I'll get a ticket. He said, I'll take responsibility for it. So he parked there. She went in, sure enough, took him to the police office. He was given a ticket. They appeared in court. She said, I'll go with you. So when it came time, they stood before the judge, and they both came up. He was a little bit surprised that two drivers should come up. Well, he said, well, which one of you was driving? Well, first he asked, which one of you gave the name of the young lad? He said, well, I am. Well, which one of you are driving the car? He said, well, I was. Oh, he said, and he started talking, but she interrupted. He said, but your honor, she said, I was the one that told him to do it. She said, he said, well, but were you driving, madam? No, no, I wasn't driving. Well, then who parked the car there? Well, he did, but I told him to. That went on for four or five interruptions, and finally she said, madam, will you please keep quiet and go and sit down? You were not driving that car. He was. I'll talk with him. And he stayed the fine. If in the human courts it's that way, how much more in the divine court? We can't come out, well, he told me to. Well, I wouldn't have done it if they hadn't told me. But you're the one that did it. That's the trouble. You know what I mean? You take responsibility for what you do. Whether your friends tell you to do it, whether all your friends tell you to do it, all your peers, and it still displeases God, you are the one that did it, aren't you? Somehow we have the idea that even if it's wrong, if everybody says it's right, and I know it's wrong, well, I'm justified because everyone says it's right. But I'm not. I'm still making the choice. Sad enough, many, many people go wrong because of their peers. Many people go wrong because of wrong advice. Nevertheless, the going was they that did it, wasn't it? They are the ones that made the choices. Because it's that sovereign gift of God, that will of ours, that stands and controls actions. It monitors them. It permits them or does not permit them. It controls them. It is never weak, mind you. Some people, we've talked this before about people saying they're weak-willed. They are not. No one is weak-willed. They can be weak-motivated. They cannot have the character to stand up against the opinions of others, but their will is plenty strong. As we've mentioned before, it's always strong enough to do what God doesn't want to resist God Himself. So that's always pretty strong, isn't it? When a man can resist the Almighty, he didn't tell me he's weak. His strength is just misdirected. That's all. My will decides heaven or hell. My will decides my place in God. We were created and intended to do the will of God. That will from an all-wise Creator, that will from He who knows from beginning to ending our very character, everything about us, if we did His will, we would come into the joy and happiness that God expected us to live in. That was God's intention when He created and gave us the will. That's what He intended when He gave the angels the will. All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are in Christ. They're you could just follow your own will perfectly. But if you did have all those treasures, you'd end up following the will of God, wouldn't you? He made the angels that way. And to this day, the angels in light are in great joy and great happiness because they're fulfilling the will of God. When I fulfill and will fulfill the will of God, when my will is set to do what pleases God, I will come into a place of peace. I will come into joy. I will come into the releases, the benefits of God. The problem is my will is so accustomed not to do what is necessarily right, but to do what my feelings want, to do what I feel like. Oh, I know I ought to, but I just don't feel like it until feelings become one of my strongest motivating forces. I just don't feel like it. Now, it doesn't mean you can't do it. I just don't feel like doing it. I have been out at a picnic. I've eaten a nice picnic lunch. My stomach is full. The day is empty. The shade is nice. The sun is hot. I lean back and relax. My friend sitting there with me suddenly says, Come on, let's get out of here. Oh, no. Come on, let's go. No, I don't feel like it. Well, I'm going. Well, what for? You see what's coming over there? There's Farmer Brown's Bull coming right up there. You know, my feelings will change suddenly. I find my will can get me right up out of that situation in amazing speed. I find that not feeling like it disappears in an instant. I feel just like it. But you see, I've customed myself to let my will be drug around by my feelings. Always in this world, the people that are more governed by their feelings and by their will are the people that sell them accomplishments in God or out of God. The people that take that wonderful gift of God and use it as it should be used will be those that accomplish in life and the natural and life and the spiritual. They will be the producer people because they will not let themselves be drugged into situations of non-productivity just because they don't feel like it. We are not to be governed by our feelings. We are to be governed by our will, by our intelligence, and most of all, by the will of God. The more I can come to the place God wants me to do it, I do it. And I do it gladly. The quicker and the easier I can come there, where I begin to make my body a living sacrifice. It's not doing what it pleases. It's doing what pleases the one that made it. It's doing the will of Him, my Creator, my God. That will then becomes aligned with His will. It doesn't weaken. It just changes its alignment. You know, let me put it this way. Here's the will of God perpendicular. Here's the will of man cutting right across it, and we have a cross. You know, the more you can get lined up with His will, the more the cross disappears. I find that Jesus said, I delight to do the will of God. That doesn't sound like a cross, does it? That doesn't sound so heavy, does it? The more I'm in conflict with the will of God, the more my Christianity is a heavy weight and a misery. The harder it is to enjoy Christianity when my will is hankering, and all of my flesh is hankering after the things of the world, and I'm afraid to go there, and I'm certainly not enjoying God. That's a misery place, isn't it? Half in and half out. Present thy body a living sacrifice, or my body, which carries out the actions of my mind and my soul and my heart and my spirit, my body has come under the direction of the will that chooses the will of God. When my will is aligned with the will of God, my will is broken. In other words, I'm not fighting God any longer. I will to do the will of God. I want to do the will of God. I choose to do the will of God. It's what He wants, then that's what I want. And then the amen comes into your spirit. Let it be so. Let it be what you want, John. We do the will of God. Remember the story that Jesus brought forth about the two lads that the father went to one and said, go work in the vineyard today? He certainly didn't feel like it. He said, yes, Daddy, I'll go. Just to get him off my back. As soon as Daddy was gone, he didn't do it. He went to the other land. Go and work on my vineyard today. No, I don't want to. But then afterwards, he repented and went and did it. And Jesus asked the question, who, which one of the two did the will of God? The one that didn't feel like it, but did it? Or the one that said, yes, yes, yes, and didn't do it. Now, God moves in our emotions. We were on that last night. But through our emotions, He wants to reach the will. Because my will is accustomed to doing what I feel like. And so He wants to raise my feelings. He wants to stir my desires. He wants to stir my love. He wants to stir my heart. So I want to do His will. He wants to reach my will through my emotions. But I fear all too often we find ourselves in the place of that young lad when our emotions are flowing and when we're in the presence of the Spirit of God and all of this sweet and lovely, we'll say, yes, yes, yes. I'll say, yes, yes, yes. Shall I get home? Hopefully it waits till you get home. Sometimes it's not even that long until down another trail we're going. Sometimes you'll even get out of the building till you're fussing with somebody. Will we come back tomorrow night? God does it all again. And again I say, yes, yes, yes. And here's some poor little fellow. He tried his best to even get a blessing. Not a motion stir. Nothing happened. Goes home disappointed. Didn't meet with the Lord that night. But he's up five o'clock the next morning spending his time with the Lord. Anyway, now which one's doing the will of the Father after all? You see what I mean? It's not enough to have our emotions broken. It must go farther. It must go deeper. It can start there. And as we said last night, it's not enough to keep on doing and never have an expression. Both are needed. But one is not a substitute for another. Now, there's another reason that is so. Turn with me in Romans 7. And in Romans 7, a strange thing. For I know that in me, that is my fling, dwelleth no good thing. For to will is present with me. But how to perform that which is good, I find not. Because the things I want to do, I don't do. And the things I don't want to do, I find myself doing. And so a battle is on. I am brought into conflict. I find that the will of man is definitely in conflict with the will of God. I recognize it. I admit it. And because I do not fulfill the will of God, I'm going to stand judged for it. And thank God there's a place of judgment that doesn't have to wait till I stand before the throne, but the cross. And so as we are being developed into those who fulfill the will of God, you'll find a lot of repentance going on. Because we don't win all the battles. Because we don't win all the temptations of life, overcoming. Some of them overcome us. And so back to the cross, back to get a new start, back to get a renewal. But I am set that direction. The will of God is what I must come into. Can you imagine heaven where everybody does what he feels like, and not the will of God? I just wonder how long it would be heaven. I wonder just about how long the angels could stand it. It didn't take us very long to wreck things down here. First he ate an apple. A few years later they had a murder on their hands. Didn't take very long, did it? I don't think it would take very long if we, everyone did what he felt like. Until there is that following the will of God. Even in heaven the angels that didn't follow the will of God, they couldn't stay up there, could they? They couldn't stay there. See the will of God is what takes me to all happiness and joy. I get into misery. I get into heartache. I get into trouble. How many of you look back in a time in your life to great misery just because you followed what you wanted to do? Just because it was your will that was operating. It's the will of God that brings us into that wondrous, victorious, overcoming life of joy as we do what he wants. And right now we're in the process of learning to get our wills broken. It's a doer of the word, isn't it? Then with me to Matthew 7, a word of Jesus when he was speaking about workers even. Verse 21, Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Now when we say Lord, we're actually saying master. We're actually saying my owner. We're actually saying the one that I obey. But he says just because you say it doesn't mean you do it. It isn't the saying of it. It isn't the singing, He is Lord. He is Lord. And don't go home and have a good fight with your husband. No, he says it's not the one that says he is Lord. It's the one that doeth. It's the one that doeth. It's the doers what it is. The one that's going to be doing what God says. Turn with me to James. Read it once more. Book of James and the first chapter. Second verse, Be ye doers of the word and not hearers only. Look at that next word. Deceiving your own self. Deceiving your own self. As long as I'm going to hear it, say amen. Sing a song to it if you please. But do not fulfill it. Do not become a doer. I am in self-deception. I think I'm religious because I've sung this right song at the right place, clapped my hands, did everything everybody else did, listened to the word of God and said amen when it was over. Doesn't mean. That's where it lays. It lays in doing. Doing. And when I become a doer, I move out of self-deception. That terrible state where I think I'm so religious, I think I'm spiritual, but I'm not because I'm not doing that which God has said in my life. I've got much to learn on that. There is no Savior as we mentioned before. There can't be a Savior without a Lord. He's got to be Lord of my life. It has to be. This is why many people turn back when they begin a Christian life. They turn away from God because they begin to say, but I want you to do this. I want you to do that. And so they're brought into a strong area of conflict. God says, I want you to forgive. I can't forgive that person. Look what he did. God says, love your enemies. What do you mean love you? Look what he did. If he does that to you. And on and on we go multiplying where we don't want to do. And we come into self-deception. That will is broken when first of all we recognize if God's right to rule, he made my body, it is not mine. I cannot say I'm going here or going there. I cannot say I'm going to do this and going to do that. But James tells us, if the Lord will, I will. The Lord has a right to rule over me. I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice. This body is where I carry out the actions. This body is where my will is fulfilled. It can start with thoughts. It can start with emotion. It can start with desires. But will brings it out into my body. There is my field of action. This body must be surrendered. I do not have the right. Someone can come up and chew up my ear if they want to. But I do not have the right to turn around and chew theirs out. That's another story. That will, Jesus said to Peter, put your sword up and then turn around and heal the ear, didn't he? Put your sword up. Peter takes the sword and will perish by it. He did not give him the right to rise up as a great defender at that moment. He said put it up. Second of all, my decision to accept Christ as King. My decision. Now that doesn't mean it's always going to work out. Don't misunderstand me. But the basic decision, Christ has the right to rule my life. And I decide to let him do it. I accept his lordship over me. I accept his right to rule over me. So my decision. And then third, I join the great battle of righteousness. I join the conflict against the flesh, the desires of the flesh, against the devil, against myself, against the world, against all that's against God. I make my decision. That's where I'm going, and I start to fight. Mind you, you don't win all the battles. But win or lose, you don't abandon the fight. This is where I'm going. I've made up my mind. And last of all, you'll find because you don't win all the battles, you're going to live a life of much repentance as you establish the rulership of Christ. As that will gets broken and aligned up with the will of God. And it's no longer in conflict. It's no longer saying, I want what I want. I don't care. And how often I've heard Christians say that when they were in a choice. I don't care. I'm gonna do. So on they go. I've seen many lives destroyed by those kinds of decisions. Some decisions we don't go back on. I've seen many lives destroyed in the decision of marriage. I've seen lives destroyed in the decision of career. I've seen lives destroyed in the decision of education. I've seen lives destroyed sometimes with one decision can be lifelong. Because that will is set. I am going my way. And for the true follower of Jesus Christ, that will must be broken. Not only by emotion, there must be that decision to accept the rulership of Christ and the joining the forces of righteousness against the forces of evil. And we start fighting. And we recognize when we fail, when we come back in repentance. We realize there again I blew it. I don't try to cover and say, well it's his fault. I wouldn't have done it if he hadn't told me. No, it was my fault. And I come to the judge and say, I did it. And I ask your mercy. And as I do, stop putting the blame on others. One of the nice things about the 51st Psalm, the repentance of David, everyone knows the story, but he made not one mention of Bathsheba. Not one breath mentioned her life, mentioned her temptation, mentioned what she did. Nothing. It wasn't like Adam in the Garden of Eden. She did it. Here he says, I did it. Before thee and thee only have I sinned. And God granted him repentance, didn't he? God let him come back beautifully, wonderfully. Because he came the right way. He said, no, it was my choice. I did. And back we go into repentance. Because we've determined that we are going to be those that learn the ways of God. And we're going to be those that follow the Lamb with us wherever he goes. We're going to be those who allow the Spirit of God to break us and melt us. Until both our emotions and our will. And we'll see later about our mind and our heart. They're broken and surrendered and yielded. And we become what a true Christian should be. I think people are so disillusioned because they keep hunting, trying to find a good Christian. They're hard to find. The reason it's not hard to come by. And if you're one of those looking for a good Christian, I'll tell you one place never to look to find one. Never look in a mirror. As we walk our ways of God and let him bring the breaking until there's a surrendering of our will in conflict with his. And that surrendering means I surrender the conflict against God. And I join the conflict against the world and the flesh and the devil. Father, I pray tonight you do not leave us with just an emotional touch. But Lord, the Spirit of the living God come to us and break us and melt us. Do not let us just have a nice time of praising and blessing or a nice time of worship. But Lord, teach us we must be doers. We must carry it farther. We must, it must go deeper than that. It must be the doers of those that do that which God desires. Of those which do that which the Holy Spirit is asking for. Father, I pray in Jesus' name, cause us to be doers of the will of God. Let thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Break us, Lord. Break us, Lord. Break us, Lord. Let that prayer be in our hearts. Thy will be done. Spirit of the living God, come and melt me. Bring my will into conformity with thy will. Oh, how far off we are. How much we work in our own will, our own feelings. How seldom we even bother to consult with God. We make up our minds to do this and do that or go here or go there or by this or by that. Without even bothering to consult, without even bothering to think if it pleases God. I can get a state of emotion I couldn't care less what God thinks. My bitterness is my hurt, my self-pity is my anger, and I slight the will of God as if it was nothing and do what I want. But we'll never become those that walk in the presence of God until we've learned to bring our bodies a living sacrifice. Have you ever done it? Have you ever really accepted the right of God to rule and accepted his rulership over your life? Has he even gone that far? Spirit of the living God, break me, melt me. You bought me, you made me, you created me, you bought me. Oh, let our rebellions be over, oh God. Take us out. We've lived too long in our rebellions. They brought us heartache and mercy and trouble and sorrow. Too long we've gone our way, and they have not produced life and joy and peace and love. Let there be a cry in our hearts, oh God, teach me thy way. Break me, let my will be broken. Let my will be set to walk the ways of God. Teach me thy way. Cause me to seek the will of the Father. Even as you, Lord Jesus, sought the will of the Father, not your own will. Not what pleases me, what pleases you. Spirit of the living God. Oh, pray, oh, spirit of the living God. But if you've never accepted the lordship of Christ, the right of Christ to rule your life, don't put it off to another day. Don't put it off to another time. Bow your stubborn will before him. Lay down those supposed rights. Get away from self-deception, not being governed by feelings. But I will, thy will. I will to do thy will. I accept thy right to rule over me. Oh, if you haven't done it before, don't wait. And if you have done it before, renew it. Reaffirm it, confirm it before God. He's got the right. And I don't want to go on living in rebellion. I don't want to go on living my own ways and following my own appetite, following my own pleasure, following my own ways, following my own emotions, motivated by the lust of the flesh, motivated by the desires of covetousness or greed or appetite or gluttony or whatever. Spirit of the living God, break me, break me, break me, so my delight is to do thy will. And if the Holy Spirit is dealing with your heart tonight, then it's one more rebellion if you say no. One more rebellion if you say it's tomorrow, some other day, some other time. One more rebellion in the list of rebellions that you choose your way and your will and reject the will of God. Can you say tonight, break me, break me. The living God. We have so walked in our own way, rebels in your kingdom. And even when we have been washed and birthed into your family, still those rebellions have ruled in our hearts. Still we have not wanted to lay our bodies down to serve you, to please you. We reserve the rights to ourselves. And oh, what defenders of our rights we are. How we say you others have the right to this. They've encroached upon my rights. Oh, how we burn, Lord, in the slightest infringement on the rights we don't have, because we have not laid them down. But, Holy Spirit, move upon us, break us. Let us not be in self-deception. Let our emotions be broken. Let our will be broken. I will go the ways of God. I will go what, do what God tells me, regardless of what people say or think or laugh, regardless of how much man may come against me, regardless of my fears, regardless of devils in hell. I must surrender my life to God. Give over my life. I must become the habitation of God. I must be that one that He can live in and move in, for I was born to be. Not the dwelling place of myself, not the dwelling place of the great ego, but the dwelling place of God. And you'll never dwell in a rebellious ego, but only when that is surrendered. God, make us do it. Make us do it. Make us do it. Move in our heart, move in our life, move in our spirit. Let us join that battle of righteousness against evil. Let us join that battle against our own selves, against the flesh and the lusts of the flesh, against the ways of the world. Separate us, O God. Sanctify us. Separate us. Separate us completely. We might be separated unto Thee. Work in our hearts, Lord. We might be more and more separated.