'able to do _everything'?_ We have asked this great thing many a time, without, perhaps, realizing how great a petition we were singing, in the old morning hymn, 'Guard my first springs of thought and will!' That goes to the root of the matter, only it implies that the will has been already surrendered to Him, that it may be wholly kept and guarded. It may be that we have not sufficiently realized the sin of the only alternative. Our wills belong either to self or to God. It may seem a small and rather excusable sin in man's sight to be self-willed, but see in what a category of iniquity God puts it! (2 Pet. ii. 10). And certainly we are without excuse when we have such a promise to go upon as, 'It is God that worketh in you both to _will_ and to do of His pleasure.' How splendidly this meets our very deepest helplessness,--'worketh in you to _will!_' Oh, let us pray for ourselves and for each other, that we may know 'what is the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe.' It does not say, 'to usward who fear and doubt;' for if we will not believe, neither shall we be established. If we will not believe what God says He can do, we shall see it with our eyes, but we shall not eat thereof. 'They _could_ not enter in because of unbelief.' It is most comforting to remember that the grand promise, 'Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power,' is made by the Father to Christ Himself. The Lord Jesus holds this promise, and God will fulfil it to Him. He will make us willing because He has promised Jesus that He will do so. And what is being made willing, but having our will taken and kept? All true surrender of the will is based upon love and knowledge of, and confidence in, the one to whom it is surrendered. We have the human analogy so often before our eyes, that it is the more strange we should be so slow to own even the possibility of it as to God. Is it thought anything so very extraordinary and high-flown, when a bride deliberately _prefers_ wearing a colour which was not her own taste or choice, because her husband likes to see her in it? Is it very unnatural that it is no distress to her to do what he asks her to do, or to go with him where he asks her to come, even without question or explanation, instead of doing what or going where she would undoubtedly have preferred if she did not know and love him? Is it very surprising if this lasts beyond the wedding day, and if year after year she still finds it her greatest pleasure to please him, quite irrespective of what _used_ to be her own ways and likings? Yet in this case she is not helped by any promise or power on his part to make her wish what he wishes. But He who so wonderfully condescends to call Himself the Bridegroom of His church, and who claims our fullest love and trust, has promised and has power to work in us to will. Shall we not claim His promise and rely on His mighty power, and say, not self-confidently, but looking only unto Jesus--