Zac Poonen preaches on the importance of living and laboring in the will of God, emphasizing the need for believers to be like Jesus, who was perpetually poor in spirit and lived in complete dependence on the Father. Jesus exemplified waiting on God's timing and direction, never acting out of His own soul but always in alignment with the Father's will. By prioritizing prayer, obedience, and discerning God's voice, Jesus demonstrated a life of perfect rest and fulfillment in doing the Father's will.

From Him are all things" (Romans 11:36). Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven belonged to the poor in spirit (Matthew 5:3). He also said that only those who do the will of the Father would enter that kingdom (Matthew 7:21). The kingdom of heaven is eternal, and only that which has been done in the will of God will be found there. The poor in spirit are those who are conscious of their human insufficiency and who therefore submit to the will of God completely. In this sense, Jesus was perpetually poor in spirit. He lived as God intended man to live - in perpetual dependence on God, refusing to exercise the powers of His mind apart from God. Consider His words: The Son can do nothing of (out from) Himself.... do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak as the Father taught Me.... have not come on My own initiative, but He sent Me.... did not speak on My own initiative, but the Father Himself Who sent Me has given Me commandment, what to say and what to speak.... The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His work (John 5:19, 30; 8:28, 42; 12:49; 14:10). Jesus never acted merely because He saw a need. He saw the need, was concerned about it, but acted only when His Father told Him to. He waited at least four thousand years in Heaven, while the world lay desperately in need of a Saviour, and then came to earth when His Father sent Him (John 8:42). "When the right time came, the time God decided on, He sent His Son" (Galatians 4:4 - TLB). God has appointed a right time for everything (Ecclesiastes 3:1). God alone knows that time, and so we won't go wrong if we seek the Father's will in everything, as Jesus did. And when Jesus came to earth, He did not just go around doing whatever He felt was good. Even though His mind was perfectly pure, yet He never acted on any bright idea that came to mind. No. He made His mind a servant of the Holy Spirit. Although He knew the Scriptures thoroughly by the age of twelve, yet He spent the next eighteen years as a carpenter, staying with His mother, making tables and chairs, etc. He had the very message that dying men around Him needed, and yet He would not go out into the preaching ministry. Why? Because the Father's time had not yet come. Jesus was not afraid to wait. He who believes will not be in a hurry (Isaiah 28:16). And when His Father's time came, He went out of His carpenter's shop and began to preach. Often thereafter, He would say concerning some course of action, "My hour has not yet come" (John 2:4; 7:6). Everything in Jesus' life was regulated by the timing and the will of the Father. The need of men, by itself, never constituted the call to action for Jesus, for that would have been acting out from Himself - out of His soul. The need of men was to be taken into account, but it was the will of God that was to be done. Jesus made that very clear in John 4:34, 35. The need (verse 35): Look around you! Vast fields of human souls are ripening all around us, and are ready now for reaping.... The principle of action (verse 34): My nourishment comes from doing the will of God Who sent Me, and from finishing His work. (TLB) Jesus did not do the many good things that His friends suggested, because He knew that if He listened to men and did the apparently good, He would miss the best that His Father had for Him. Once, when men begged Him to stay in a particular place, He said He could not, because He had heard His Father's voice calling Him to go elsewhere. Humanly speaking there were very good reasons for staying where He was, because of the unusual responsiveness of the people to His message. But God's thoughts are not as man's thoughts and God's ways are not as man's ways (Isaiah 55:8). Early that morning, Jesus had gone out alone and prayed, and He had heard His Father's voice (Mark 1:35-39), before He heard Peter and the others with their suggestions. Jesus did not rely on human reasoning. He obeyed the Word which said, Do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths (Proverbs 3:5, 6). He leaned upon His Father for guidance in every matter. In a prophetic reference to the Lord Jesus in Isaiah 50:4, we read, "Morning by morning, He (the Father) wakens Me and opens My understanding to His will." That was Jesus' habit. He listened to His Father's voice from early morning and throughout the day, and did exactly what His Father told Him to do. He did not have discussions with men, to decide on what to do, but had prayer-meetings with His Father. Soulish Christians plan through discussions with men. Spiritual Christians wait to hear from God. Jesus lived by His Father (John 6:57). To Jesus, God's Word was more important than food (Matthew 4:4). He had to receive it many times a day, straight from the Father. Having received it, He obeyed it. Obedience too was more important than His daily food (John 4:34). Jesus, lived in dependence on the Father. His attitude throughout the day was, "Speak, Father, I am listening." Consider His chasing the money-changers out of the temple. There must have been many occasions when Jesus was in the temple with the money-changers there, when He did not chase them out. He did so, only when led to do so by His Father. The soulish Christian would rather chase out the money-changers perpetually or never at all. He who is led by God however, knows when, where and how to act. There were many good things that Jesus could have been done, that He never did, because they were outside the scope of His Father's will for Him. He was always busy doing the very best things. And those were enough. He had not come to earth to do good things, but to do the will of His Father. "Did you not know that I had to be in the things of My Father," He asked Joseph and Mary, at the age of twelve (Luke 2:49 - YLT). Those were the only things that He was interested in accomplishing. When He came to the end of 33½ years on earth, He could say, with real satisfaction, "Father, I have done everything YOU told Me to do" (John 17:4). He had not travelled around the world, He had not written any book, His followers were few, there were still many unmet needs in many parts of the world, etc., etc. But He had finished the work that the Father had appointed for Him. That, and that alone, matters ultimately. Jesus was a servant of the Lord Jehovah. And "the most important thing about a servant is that he does just what his master tells him to" (1 Corinthians 4:2 - TLB). He spent His life listening to His Father, and thus accomplished all His Father's will, without exhaustion or frustrated 'busyness.' He put His own human interests to death. He was not soulish. He was spiritual. Jesus gave high priority to prayer in His life. He would often slip away into the wilderness and pray (Luke 5:16). Once He spent a whole night in prayer to know the Father's will concerning the choice of the twelve disciples (Luke 6:12, 13). The soulish Christian considers time spent in waiting on God, as wasted time, and prays only to ease his conscience. Prayer is not a desperate necessity in his life, because he is confident of himself. The spiritual man, however is dependent on God perpetually for everything, and is thus driven, out of sheer necessity, to prayer. Jesus said that the one thing needful was to hear His Word (Luke 10:42). Mary of Bethany was an example of this. Martha, on the other hand, though busy in unselfish service was restless and critical of Mary. In those two sisters, we see the contrast between spiritual and soulish activity. Martha was not committing any sin in serving the Lord and His disciples. Yet she was restless and critical of Mary. This is a clear picture of soulish service. The soulish Christian is restless and irritable. He has not ceased from his "own works," and has not entered into God's rest (Hebrews 4:10). His intentions are good, but he has not realised that his own works however good they may be, are still "filthy rags" in God's eyes, even after conversion (Isaiah 64:6). The good sheep of Amalek (the flesh) are as unacceptable to God as the bad ones (1 Samuel 15:3, 9-19). But human reasoning cannot understand this. It appears foolish to throw away the good sheep, when they could be given to God. But God requires obedience, NOT sacrifice. "To obey is better than sacrifice" (1 Samuel 15:22). But how can we obey if we do not hear what God has to say? Hearing has to precede obedience. Hence Jesus said that the one thing needful was to hear His voice. Everything else was dependent on that. Those who 'serve' like Martha, however sincere, are really only serving themselves. They cannot be called servants of the Lord, for a servant waits to hear what his master tells him to do, before serving. If we are emptied of self-sufficiency, we shall pray like Solomon did, "O Lord my God, give Thy servant a listening heart to discern between good and evil" (1 Kings 3:7, 9 - margin). Jesus knew that He had to listen to His Father, if He was to discern between what was good (in its highest sense) and what was not good - between what was His Father's will and what was not. Outside the Beautiful Gate of the temple in Jerusalem, Jesus often saw a lame man begging for alms. But He did not heal him, because He had no leading from His Father to do so. Later, after He had ascended to Heaven, Peter and John brought healing to that man - in the Father's perfect time - and that resulted in many people turning to the Lord (Acts 3:1-4:4). That was the Father's time to heal that man, not earlier. Jesus would have hindered the Father's will if He had healed that man earlier. He knew that the Father's timing was perfect, and so He was never impatient to do anything. Jesus' life was a life of perfect rest. He had enough time in 24 hours every day to do all His Father's will. But if He had decided to do what appeared good to Him, then 24 hours a day would not have been enough and he would have ended up in unrest on most days. Jesus could rejoice in every interruption that came to Him, because He accepted the fact that a sovereign Father in Heaven was planning His daily schedule. And so He was never annoyed with interruptions. The life of Jesus will bring our inner beings into perfect rest too. This does not mean that we will do nothing, but that we will do only what is in the Father's plan for our lives. Then we shall be more eager to finish the Father's will than our own pre-determined programme. Soulish Christians are so intent on doing 'their own thing' that they are frequently irritable and restless. Some of them end up having a nervous or a physical breakdown finally. It was impossible for Jesus to have a nervous breakdown, because He was in perfect rest in His inner man. He says to us, Take My yoke upon you and learn from My example, and you too will find rest in your souls (Matthew 11:29). This is the glory of Jesus that the Spirit of God shows us in the Word and that He desires to impart to us and to manifest through us. The Lord is our Shepherd and He leads His sheep into pastures of rest. Sheep do not plan their own programme or decide which pasture to go to next. They just follow their Shepherd. But one has to be emptied of self-confidence and self-sufficiency to follow the Shepherd like that. Jesus meekly followed His Father. But soulish Christians do not want to be sheep, and are therefore led astray by their intellects. Our intellect is a marvellous and most useful gift of God, but it can become the most dangerous of all gifts if exalted to the place of lordship in our life. The Lord taught His disciples to pray, "Father, Thy will be done on earth as it is done in Heaven." How is God's will done in Heaven? The angels there do not run around trying to do 'something for God.' There would be confusion in Heaven if they did that. What do they do? They wait in God's presence to hear what He commands, and then do exactly what they are individually told to do. Listen to the words of the angel Gabriel to Zacharias, "I am Gabriel who stands in the presence of God; and I have been sent to speak to you.... (Luke 1:19). This is the position that the Lord Jesus took as well - waiting in His Father's presence, hearing His voice and doing His will. Soulish Christians may labour hard and sacrifice much, but the clearer light of eternity will reveal that "they toiled all night and caught nothing." But those who took up their cross daily (denied their soul-life and put it to death) and obeyed the Lord, will have nets full of fish in that day (John 21:1-6). "Anyone who lets himself be distracted from the work that I plan for Him," said Jesus, "is not fit for the kingdom of God" (Luke 9:62 - TLB). "Take heed to the ministry which you have received in the Lord, that you fulfil that" (Colossians 4:17). Every plant which our Heavenly Father did not plant will be rooted up (Matthew 15:13). The question is not whether the plant is good, but who planted it. God is the only legitimate Originator of anything. The Bible begins with the words, "In the beginning God." So must it be with all our actions: They must have originated in God, and not in our minds, if they are to last forever. He who does the will of God will abide forever (1 John 2:17). All the rest will perish. So, let us ask ourselves this question: AM I LIVING AND LABOURING IN THE WILL OF GOD?