The Problem of Bridging Take-Hold and Let-Go in Personal Empowerment
The Basic Issue
In my private reading, I decided to follow up on two books by a South African Author I had heard recommended over the years but had never read. My guess is that he comes from one of the "horizontal" axis churches, but had somehow been affected by "vertical axis", thought and over his lifetime had worked out some of the details which I had been wanting in order to resolve the bridging of the "take hold" and "let go" outlooks from the horizontal and vertical axis (pl?).Andrew Murray, addressing the matter of "intercessory prayer" "intercessory prayer" (prayer for other people rather than for oneself self) made note of an interesting distinction I had not noticed. He commented on the peculiar phenomenon in Scripture that in the accounts of Jesus work, he is seen to be asking repeatedly of people, "What do you will this I do for you?", when it was perfectly obvious that the man or woman was crippled, blind deaf or whatever. p Murray went on to say that what Jesus was asking was not just for the individual's own perception of what the basic problem was (something we should be asking in rural community development work all the time, of course) but also for exactly how much healing and resultant health the person was willing to live with. That is, was the person willing to live with the consequences of being healed, as shown by active involvement in that new life. For example, a crippled man could no longer beg with any credibility, but would now have to go learn a trade to support himself. Would the person be willing to do that.
When I checked out the insight in the Greek New Testament and Dictionary, I found it was a point of contention between scholars but that the preponderance of evidence did seem to sustain the interpretation . The Greek have two words for wish, (boulesthei) denoting a more general concept of "wish" which included the concept of will, and the more specific term (thelein) , which denoted the more specific concept of intentionality only, that is "will". Jesus' question used the word thelein, to will.
The question might well be raised about the fact that it is a second-hand account, written in a language which Jesus himself did not use originally, but it might be equally argued that when the Greek was used, the author's selection of a term to best express the intent behind Jesus' question, would be reflected in Greek in this way. There is, in fact no way of knowing whether this was the distinction Jesus had in mind, but it certainly served to raise the distinction between the English words "wish" and "will", which I had never considered before.
This insight now serves to provide the question locus for the fourth level of the Wish List instrument. When the person is ready for this level of discussion, it is a simple matter to have the person reflect on levels one to three of his or her wish list and ask, "am I willing to enter into this level of change process, and am I willing to live with the results of change?"
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