Why Willpower
Fails

These verses are the Apostle Paul's confession of a struggle that every believer recognizes. He had the desire to do what is good, but he could not carry it out, and the evil he did not want to do was the very thing he kept doing. Notwithstanding his standing as an apostle, he is very honest in diagnosing the problem. The struggle he describes is not a beginner's problem that mature believers outgrow. It is rather the permanent experience of anyone who attempts God's standard on determination alone.

Israel's history at Sinai shows the same pattern on a national scale. When God first spoke the commandments, the people assented and answered together that they would do everything the LORD had spoken (Exodus 19:8). They may have been sincere and their promise unanimous. But about six weeks later, the same nation that had determined to keep God's commandments was already dancing around a golden calf. The gap between what they promised and what they performed was not due to a lack of earnestness. Something other than resolve was missing.

The earlier failure points to what that something was. On the night of the calf, the people sat down to eat and drink in front of an idol, implying, by their choice of table, that they were not feasting with God (Exodus 32:6). Contrary to our worldly or religious perspective on God, the remedy He prescribed afterward was an arrangement of feasts with Himself (Exodus 34:22–23). God's people keep His words naturally when they have first been filled at His table. Willpower may try to produce the law's output while skipping the feast that empowers it, but it fails miserably. It is like an engine being asked to run with nothing in the tank.

Paul's own argument arrives at the same conclusion. One chapter after his confession, he writes that what the law was powerless to do, God did by sending His own Son (Romans 8:3), and that the law of the Spirit of life set him free from the law of sin and death (Romans 8:2). The sequence here did not move from trying to trying even harder. It moved from self-effort to supply, to grace, a truth confirmed by the book of Philippians, which says, "For it is God who works in you to will and to act on behalf of His good purpose" (Philippians 2:13). Effort still matters, but it comes second. Someone must be working underneath it first.

This changes what we do at the moment of resolve. Most of us respond to a failure by promising to try harder, and we can usually feel the vow forming: never again, starting Monday. The vow itself is a clear signal to us. It tells us we are about to run on determination again, and once we notice this desire for resolve, we should treat it as an invitation to return to the table and eat first instead. Before the next attempt, let us sit down with the Lord, receive His supply in the Word, and as we drink from Him by praying and calling on His name, let our 'trying' grow out of the feeding.

Today's question is one of method: after a failure, what do I usually reach for first, a stronger promise or a meal with the Lord?