From the Minister's Desk ...

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Greetings and Salutations,  

Let me share a story with you...

A man once traveled the same road to work every morning. Halfway there, he would encounter a deep hole in the sidewalk. Each day, distracted by his thoughts, he stepped into the hole. He complained about the darkness, blamed the city, criticized the people who failed to warn him, and struggled to climb out.

Eventually, he learned to recognize the hole—but he continued walking toward it. He told himself, “This is simply the road I have always traveled.” One morning, he finally stopped before reaching it. He looked carefully at the familiar path and asked a life-changing question:

“Why do I keep choosing a road that leads me into the same hole?”

The next day, he walked down another street.

That simple story presents every one of us with a spiritual challenge. How long will we continue traveling roads that repeatedly lead to frustration, disappointment, conflict, limitation, and pain? How often will we ask God to change our circumstances while refusing to change our choices?

Transformation begins when we stop blaming the hole, examine the road, and exercise the spiritual power of Will.

Will is more than determination, stubbornness, or forcing life to obey us. Spiritual Will is our God-given capacity to choose our direction, govern our attention, and align our lives with a higher understanding. It is the inner power that says, “I no longer consent to remain unconscious. I choose to awaken.”

Carl Jung taught that what remains unconscious within us often appears in our lives as fate. In other words, when we do not examine our hidden fears, wounds, habits, and projections, we may continue recreating the same experiences while believing that life is simply happening to us.

Jung invites us to turn inward and meet the parts of ourselves we have avoided. This requires courage. It is easier to criticize another person than to examine what their behavior awakens within us. It is easier to repeat an old story than to question whether that story is still true.

Spiritual Will declares: “I am willing to see myself honestly—not to condemn myself, but to free myself.”

Neville Goddard taught that imagination and assumption shape our experience. He challenged us to stop rehearsing what has been and begin occupying the inner state of what we desire to become. From Neville’s perspective, Will is the disciplined decision to remain faithful to a transformed inner identity.

You cannot continually imagine defeat and expect to experience victory. You cannot repeatedly affirm rejection and expect to feel loved. You cannot live mentally in yesterday and expect tomorrow to produce something entirely new.

At some point, we must decide: Which inner story will receive our loyalty?

Joel Goldsmith taught that true spiritual power does not come from personal force. It emerges through surrender to the divine Presence within. Goldsmith reminds us that we do not transform our lives by struggling against every external condition. We become still enough to recognize that the presence of God is already within us as wisdom, peace, direction, and sufficiency.

There is a form of willfulness that says, “I must control everything.”

But spiritual Will says, “I release my need to control everything, and I align myself with divine guidance.”

Alan Watts often challenged the illusion that life can be mastered through constant tension and control. He reminded us that transformation sometimes requires letting go rather than gripping more tightly. A clenched hand cannot receive. A mind filled with yesterday’s conclusions cannot recognize today’s possibilities.

Spiritual Will is therefore not merely the power to push. It is also the wisdom to pause, release, listen, and flow.

Charles Fillmore, cofounder of Unity, identified Will as one of the Twelve Powers of humanity. He associated it with the disciple Matthew, representing the ability to choose, direct, and establish ourselves in spiritual consciousness. Fillmore taught that Will must be guided by Understanding. Will without wisdom becomes stubbornness. Will without love can become domination. Will without discernment may cause us to move quickly in the wrong direction.

But Will aligned with divine wisdom becomes a powerful instrument of transformation.

Ernest Holmes taught that we are always using spiritual law, whether consciously or unconsciously. Emmet Fox emphasized the importance of directing thought toward God rather than magnifying the problem. Wallace Wattles reminded us that we can choose too.

Together, these teachers present a unified message: Our lives begin to change when our inner agreement changes.

The question is not whether you possess Will. You use it every day. You use it when you choose what thoughts to entertain, what conversations to continue, what environments to enter, what habits to repeat, and what beliefs to protect.

The deeper question is: Where is your Will taking you?

Are you using it to defend your limitations or develop your possibilities?

Are you using it to repeat your pain or rewrite your inner story?

Are you remaining inside a loop of spiritual insanity—thinking the same thoughts, making the same choices, and expecting different results? Or are you willing to embrace the path of transformation?

Today, you can choose another street.

You can interrupt the old reaction. You can forgive yourself. You can establish a new boundary. You can begin the work you have delayed. You can stop giving permanent authority to a temporary experience. You can listen to the still, small voice within and take one courageous step in a new direction.

You do not have to transform everything in one moment. Begin with the next choice.

Your happy ending is not waiting somewhere in the distant future. It begins whenever you decide that the old story will no longer write the next chapter.