When you feel the tug of war inside…

I said yesterday you were freed from the flesh. 

I know, I can hear you: Freed from the flesh, huh? Is that what you’re saying? Freed from the propensity to sin? Freed from envy? Fear? Worry? Freed, once and for all?  Fat chance!

I know, I know, it’s true: As long as we have bodies of flesh we will have battles with flesh. We will never perfectly “arrive” to never face another battle of the flesh. We won’t be 100% freed from this battle until we wake up in glory, but the key here is that we can walk in victory in the midst of the battle.

And how are we victorious? By walking by the Spirit. “Walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16). There is the “how.” I want to stop sinning! I want to be freed from this bondage to sin! This is the primary hindrance in the Christian life, and the answer is Walk by the Spirit. Why? The Spirit is what “drives out” the flesh.

Erasmus said it and Ann Voskamp reminded us of it: A nail must be driven out by another nail. Habit is driven out by habit. We cannot just remove something, we must drive it out by a greater force. Sin must be displaced in our lives. We fight sin with superior pleasure. NOT by focusing on it. Like being on a diet and focusing on “no sugar, no sugar, no sugar!” If we do that, then what do you want?? Sugar, of course.

We don’t fight sin by focusing on it, we fight sin by replacing it with something of superior value.

Galatians 5:17 says the desires of the flesh oppose the Spirit and vise versa. They never agree. They are at war and and this battle is very real, because the flesh and the Spirit are literally at work in your body. And they both manifest themselves through: DESIRES.

Notice that both the compelling force of the flesh is referred to as “desire” and the compelling force of the Spirit is referred to as “desire.”

James 4:1:1 says, “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you.”

We have a battle going on in our bodies because we have a Spirit that wants to follow God and a flesh that wants to do its own thing.

Have you felt it?  

Me too.

Romans 7:21-25 says it like this:

 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

Anybody ever been there? Can you feel the tug of war? How can you displace sin by superior pleasure today? How can you ENJOY God today? He is the greatest pleasure that trumps all else. 

{Battling alongside you … Thanks for reading.}