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Thank you so very much for sharing your insights, dear brother in Christ!

However, don’t most of us willfully sin . . . whether it’s an unfitting piece of pie, speeding on the highway, being resentful, . . . whatever.

I perceive the kind of willfulness which applies here is the desire to separate from God. Or to put it another way, God's assurance is absolute but He will not keep someone against his will.

For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. - Colossians 3:3

For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.

For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.

The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with [him], that we may be also glorified together. - Romans 8:14-17

If the child, like Esau, wants to squander his inheritance, God will let him.

Lest there [be] any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears. - Hebrews 12:16-17

Likewise in the Book of Enoch, the angels who were appointed as watchers of Adamic men, bound themselves together willfully against God as if there were strength in numbers before God. And they ended up chained in darkness til the judgment. And like Esau, they found no place of repentance, though they sought it carefully with tears.

Ditto for nations:

Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, [saying], Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.

He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. - Psalms 2:1-5

God's Name is I AM.

VERY BLESSED BY YOUR ELABORATION, DEAR SISTER,

THANKS TONS.

I am sure not . . . I don’t think any of us are good at keeping myself/ ourselves in any sense of the word.

He has to keep me in His Faithful hands.

I persistently crawl off the operating table and into all sorts of troubles. Sigh.

I earnestly endeavor to cooperate with Him in being conformed to the image of His Son.

Yet, my heart, too is deceitfully wicked . . . in need of moment by moment application of His Blood and Mercy.

Praise Him that His Mercies are new every morning.

I perceive the kind of willfulness which applies here is the desire to separate from God. Or to put it another way, God's assurance is absolute but He will not keep someone against his will.

Amen to that, dearest sister in Christ!

But the mysterious question remains: Why this "desire to separate from God?"

That's the part I never seem to get....

Thank you so very much, dearest sister in Christ, for your eloquent, insightful essay/post!

Truly, God's Name is I AM.