08/2004                   
A Prayer of Jesus
I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes; yea, Father, for such was thy gracious will

YOUR QUESTION (No. 49)
Nobody can come to Jesus unless God draws him.  I think that is the way it reads, so what does God draw us to? A conscious decision to walk on the narrow road, a conscious decision to learn what Jesus wants and do it?

MY ANSWER

You ask: To what does God draw us?

He draws us to himself, and to our Lord and Good Shepherd, through the Resurrection at the Last Day.

Here is the Lord's answer to the question:
John 12
32 And if I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself. 33 But he was saying this signifying by what sort of death he was about to be dying.
The following explains how this takes place:
John 6
44 No one is able to come to me except the father having sent me draw him, and I will raise him up in the last day. 45 It is written in the prophets4,
And they will all be taught of God.
Everyone having heard the father and having learned comes toward me.
The Father, and the Son draw us to Jesus and to himself -- toward me.  It is an indrawing that finds its completion at the Resurrection: I will raise him up in the last day.

By having heard the father we understand that one has listened to the utterances of Jesus, for he only repeated what he heard from the Father:
John 12
48 The one rejecting me and not receiving my words has one judging him: the word which I spoke, that will judge him in the last day. 49 Because I have not spoken from myself, but the one having sent me, the father himself has given to me commandment what I should say and what I should speak. 50 And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What therefore I speak, just as the father has spoken to me, thusly I speak.
This explains the seemingly curious saying here:
John 5
24 Truly truly I say to you that the one hearing my word and believing the one having sent me has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but is moved out of death into life.
So, hearing my word is to hear and believe the one who sent him, the Father.  The Father speaks through Jesus, and the Holy Spirit draws us to him through the Word.  When we love the Father and the Son, that love draws us to Him.  Yes, this results in conscious decisions, in this world, to walk on the narrow road, for that is the road one must walk to go to Jesus; and, yes, it is a conscious decision to learn what Jesus and the Father want and to do it.  Remember, Jesus is in heaven with the Father, and to be drawn to him means, first, to be drawn to the Word that is his personification in the world, then through being thus "taught by God" we will more and more have one desire, which is to go to the Father -- being drawn to Him -- as Jesus went to the Father, through compliance with his Great Principle.  So, it is through the medium of the Word that The Father teaches us and draws us to himself.

This is not a teaching of universal salvation.  Everyone is drawn to him through hearing the Word as it is sown in the world, but the multitudes who are of the world are stuck too tightly to it to let go and yield to the indrawing of the Word. 
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