But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. -- Galatians 5:16
The more we seek God and seek to have our minds renewed by
the truth and our lives transformed in that renewal, the less power the old
nature has over us.
Sometimes I think my natural, conscious mind, the one I’ve
used so much and, God forgive me, been proud of now and then, is like the
comic-relief sidekick in an old Western serial.
He’s kind of along for the ride, more trouble than he’s worth, and is
prone to take undue credit for his part in a happy ending. We would wonder about a heroine who was more
taken with the empty bluster and bravado of the side-kick than the hero’s selfless
courage, honesty, humility, and competence.
The soul is the heroine.
She can listen to the spirit and love him, or she can be enamored of the
flesh and his banter. The flesh has a
lot on his side in that he and the whole world system are in agreement and
alignment. They share a lot of
values. The flesh’s views get reinforced
by everything in popular culture. We are
inundated with news and information and politics and all the rest telling us
that the flesh is right. All that
matters is what can be experienced by the five senses, and you had better get
it while you can. YOLO. I have to look it up every time I see
it.
If we live to the flesh, we are dead while we live – dead now
in our sins and trespasses. But if our
heroine binds herself instead to the spirit, we enter into life. It’s a good thing to remember that the life
we receive from Christ, the only kind of life He has, is eternal life,
beginning not when we die physically but as we turn and begin walking with and according the
Spirit.
One more thing about not gratifying the desires of the
flesh, most of us have had the unhappy occasion to stumble and go wrong. Even when it works out, even when I’ve gotten
“my way”, I get no satisfaction out of it anymore.
I remember when sin was fun. If
wickedness had been as empty and unfulfilling when I was seventeen or eighteen
as it is now, I would have quit a lot sooner.
Once you start walking in the Spirit, the old thrills start fading. Part of that might be a natural result of the
passing of time, but I see men and women my chronological age and older that
still haven’t gotten the message. It doesn’t
mean that we won’t be tempted or that we won’t fall; we’ll just feel worse
afterward, every time.
