You know when I look back on my life and I remember. I think of many things that I did in my youth and I have great remorse for not living my life as God would have had me live it. If only I had lived those times in the Spirit and not the Flesh.
I don’t know how you view the flesh but when I speak of the flesh I mean the human body that my soul indwells. The body makes it’s demands felt. It wants to be feed. It wants to be entertained. It wants to reproduce and it doesn’t care how it achieves these purposes. It hates, it lusts and it would murder just to be satiated. The body or the flesh is the antithesis of the Spirit in every way.
The sad thing is that even today I live most of my life in the flesh. There are times when I live in the Spirit but they are few and far between. If only the Lord could bring the surrender of the flesh to be ruled over by Him every moment of the day. Imagine how much better things would be if that were the case for each of us who are redeemed in Christ Jesus.
Romans 8:13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
You know, it’s only in more recent times that I have come to be closer to the Lord and seen how often He answers my prayers specifically. This leads me to have confidence that God is changing my heart and that I am closer to Him and have the power of the Spirit within me.
I’m not always in the Spirit but much more often than in my earlier life. I seek to be closer to the Lord more than I did. May be He has helped me to see how this is possible through Him (Romans 8:28). I’m far from perfect but I can see how it is possible to be made a new creation. The old self buried in baptism in the death of Christ Jesus and raised to the newness of life in His resurrection.
When I was younger the emphasis in much of the biblical teaching was focused on the need to be holy. I found that to be an unassailable challenge that led to personal defeat in my Christian life. No matter how I tried I failed to be holy and surrender to Christ was far away.
In fact, it seemed that the more I tried to be better the more easily the enemy made me pious and judgmental to those around me. I became angry and intolerant and hurt those close to me most of all. It seemed as the apostle Paul wrote in Romans 7:15 "For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I." KJV. So that became my daily life and my Christian life stalled. Don’t get me wrong here. I’m not claiming to be now living in sinless perfection. Far from it but I sense that God is at work in my heart. Bruce in his end will be better than at the start. Of that I am assured in Christ Jesus.
Surprisingly, it is through the input of my reformed Christian friends that I began to make progress again in my spiritual life. I came to see that it is not my ability to make myself holy that is at issue. It is actually Christ in me and the work of the Holy Spirit to change me into a new creation, born of water and the Spirit. As a poor lowly sinner I have nothing to commend me before God and actually His work in me is to present me as the person He has always intended me to be.
2 Peter 1:4 By which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.
So I’m by no means a perfect creature of the Living God yet. I am however, on that path and as I find that God is changing me. I can see in the distance the fruit of the Spirit beginning manifest in my life. I lay hold on that while expressing thanks to God. I seek to feel the joy of the Spirit in my life and to express joy and peace that comes from being in the presence of the Lord.
The flesh still arises and with that comes defeat at times. There are times when God enables me get back up and to apologise to those I have caused pain including myself. However, I know that God is revealing His promises in my heart and expanding His divine nature in me while allowing me more freedom from sinful desires. I’m human though.
So, for me the victory is found in understanding the God is working in my life to make the a new creature. I can’t change myself. It comes from understanding that the work is not my own other than I have a will which God may use to guide me away from sin as He develops me into the person He wants me to be. I am His and He is mine forever. I need fear nothing because I am a child of God in Jesus Christ and as Romans 8:28 says “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
Finally it comes down to understanding that the body or the flesh seeks to take care of itself. It is wholly carnal and continuously in conflict with the edicts of God and the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. We are caught in this conflict until the day we die but throughout this process God is changing and perfecting us through the indwelling Spirit of God. In the end as a preacher once said “The man at the end of the journey will be a different man from the one who began the journey.”
Remember, God will save us through His Son Jesus Christ and sanctify us through the work of the indwelling Holy Spirit. We are His chosen nation, His royal priesthood, and a people for His own possession. A people belonging to God the eternal Bride of Christ. The Church.
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