I Appeal to You
... through Bertha Dudde  - 19.11.1951 

5257   Not inclination but love determines the will ....

It is left up to all of you in which direction you turn your will, even though you are indeed advised by My Word what end result you will achieve by any direction of will. Yet My Word does not force you either, since you can also accept or reject it again depending on your mentality and your love. For love determines your will .... You will always love whatever it is you strive for, irrespective of whether it is good or bad; your desire is directed towards it, and this is how your will is .... good or bad. You will always feel love for what you desire, but whether this love is rightly or wrongly directed is determined by your spiritual development. Now you can certainly raise the objection that love has been placed into the human being, that even love for evil arises from the heart and that the human being is thus a victim of dormant cravings within himself. And up to a point this objection is justified .... that all instincts and cravings which during the individual preliminary stages in the law of compulsion had not yet been overcome are latent in the human being, that the human being therefore brings them into his earthly life in order to then defeat and completely discard them. These characteristics are thus present in the human being and therefore also arouse the cravings. They want fulfilment and often become so powerful in a person that they completely control him. The fight against such cravings is often difficult, but this is why I endowed the human being with intellect, so that he can think about his feelings in order to take appropriate action against them.

It is wrong to say that the human being must act in accordance with his inclination .... admittedly, if he had been created without intellect and felt instinctively impelled. But since he is offered ample opportunity in earthly life to acquire knowledge, since he has a guiding principle in My commandments of love, since he has a still, small voice within himself which admonishes and warns him, which always draws his attention to My will, and since he is now able to think about everything, it is solely up to his will to wage battle against himself when necessary, when his cravings resist what he, according to his inner realisation, should do .... The fact that he is unable to do so is not applicable, for a sincere will also guarantees him a gift of strength, nevertheless, a weak will is unsuccessful .... And only one thing is necessary again in order to strengthen a weak will .... faith in Jesus Christ .... It is true that especially people who are still badly afflicted by characteristics from their preliminary stages don’t believe in Jesus Christ, however, by merely rationally thinking about it they already express their will to ascertain the truth, and they will be helped to find a correct solution .... However, where the question about Jesus Christ is unhesitatingly dismissed, where no effort is made to find an answer, that is where the will is obviously turned downwards, and that is where the human being indeed falls prey to the forces from below, yet it is his own will and not the fault of his inclination. For the human being can direct his will in both directions or one could not speak of free will. And every person can and should sooner or later question his task in earthly life .... This is why he was given his intellect ....

Amen