Practical conformity to God’s will cannot be attained by our own efforts. We cannot will to will as God wills, but we can turn ourselves to Him and ask Him to put the power within us to subdue the evil conqueror, the rebels, and make us masters of our own troubled spirits. There is only one power that can draw us out of the land of rebellious disobedience where the famine and the rags are, and that is the convicting Spirit of God which is given to all them that desire Him and will lead them in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. If He be my God… and therefore longing to have me obedient, He will not withhold what is needed to make me so.

Alexander Maclaren in Wilbur M. Smith, Peloubet’s Select Notes on the International Bible Lessons for Christian Teaching (Boston: W. A. Wilde Co., 1948), 287.