THE WILL OF HIM WHO SENT ME

A Sermon Delivered by ANN JONES, at Redcross Street Meeting, Tuesday, November 27, 1832.
Addresses Delivered by Messrs. Allen, Bates, Gurney, Tuke, Wheeler; Mrs. Braithwaite, Grubb, Jones, and Other Ministers, of the Society of Friends. London: Hamilton Adams, & Co.; E. Fry; Bristol: J. Wright, 1834, pages 11-12.

This is The Quaker Homiletics Online Anthology, Part Three: The 19th Century.

"I came not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me," was the declaration of our blessed and holy Redeemer, whom we profess to believe on as our leader and way. I came not to do mine own will but the will of him that sent me, and must we not believe my friends that it is our indispensable duty, as frail, finite, dependent beings, so to strive to be made like unto our holy pattern as that we can, in true resignation of will and of soul to the divine will, thus feel that it is indeed our duty to be made conformable to the will of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, not seeking to do our own will, not seeking to gratify our natural inclinations or living unto ourselves, to please ourselves, but seeking through the transforming power of the Holy Spirit to be quickened, created anew in Christ Jesus unto good works, being made in all things subject unto him whose will is our sanctification, and as we thus seek to come unto him in the simplicity of little children, and in the obedience of faith, with a humble and resigned mind desiring to do his will, and not our own, we shall not be left in the dark concerning the great truths of the christian religion, we shall not be at a loss to understand the meaning, and to feel the force of the very important scripture passage which has been so instructively set forth and opened in this meeting, we shall be humbled under the feeling that whilst we are indeed called on to work out our salvation with fear and trembling before God, it must be in the obedience of faith, in the simplicity of little children, we must resign ourselves to his transforming power so as that we may indeed be favoured to know of a truth, from living heartfelt experience, that it is God that worketh in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure, that he may be in all things glorified.