Why acting from God's will makes you a real individual with real liberty

When people are told that they have to give up their self-will and act from God's will the natural reaction is to think that that means becoming less free. Atheists, for instance, freak out at this point.

The illusion involved in this is thinking you have freedom now. You're controlled by your vanity, your worldly pride, and your fear of man, none of which has anything to do with your real essential self, and you think you're free nevertheless. All your words, thoughts, and deeds are controlled by things and forces that aren't the essential you, yet that is what is taken as freedom.

On the other side of it to be able to act from God's will requires a level of internal development that all said literally makes one into a real individual. Of course it requires regeneration and the Holy Spirit. Our problem is we're ignorant and we're weak. We need real knowledge (Word of God and the Spirit of Truth and Discernment, not to mention the initial awakening regeneration is all about) and we need strength (a King to first save us from what has us enslaved and then to provide the strength and protection of His Kingdom within us to conquer and keep at bay those same forces that had us truly enslaved). This all is given by God and can only be given by God.

Human beings aren't God, so we will never be totally autonomous with no need to rely on anything; so in this sense we are always dependent on something (I hate to do this, but: you gotta serve somebody; it may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you gotta serve somebody); but consider the remarkable revelation that we are created in the image of God. This means that acting from God's will is what is most natural to us to begin with.

Acting from God's will (actually, in a real sense, once God's will is what our very heart is, it is more our being God's will) doesn't make us automatons; it makes us real individuals. Real individuals with real liberty.

Note: vanity and worldly pride and the world and the devil will now whisper in your ear how everything written above is a lie.

You will hear that counsel all the way to hell, if you want to. Some people want to.

See Part 2 and Part 3.