“This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.” – Galatians 5:16
The 2014 World Cup is almost over in Brazil. There have been some really amazing matches played, with dazzling victories, and also rather mortifying losses (Germany vs. Brazil comes to mind). In life, as in the World Cup, everyone can’t win all the time. Every conflict since the beginning of time, whether it be a friendly game of soccer or a war between rival nations, has resulted in winners and losers. In fact, the entire history of humanity is a history of conflict, a story of struggle. And although the World Cup is a relatively peaceful example of battles between uniformed athletes with painted balls and referees, violent fighting has torn up the globe ever since Cain killed Abel so many thousands of years ago. But clubs and boards, swords and shields, and guns and bombs have never really been the cause or solution to these wars. Truth be told, even the “War to end all wars,” otherwise known as World War One, only served to introduce a much more brutal worldwide bloodbath hardly two decades later. Why then do we as humans fight so much? Why can’t we just get along?
The answer is simple. External physical conflict is nothing more than a mirror of internal spiritual struggle. We cannot seem to find peace with our fellow humans on planet Earth because we cannot seem to find peace between our flesh and our spirit.
Verse 17 of Galatians 5 explains this: For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.” There is a battle raging in every single person’s heart, and the outcome of that war is far more important than any physical fight we can engage in. Indeed, the battle between the flesh and the spirit is the penultimate human struggle.
So how can we win this battle? God makes it very simple. “Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.” If we walk in the Spirit, we WON’T be run by the flesh. Quite literally, if we walk in the Spirit, we win. So how do we walk in the Spirit? Each of us who are born again Christians have the Holy Spirit living inside of us. He will always be there, but we don’t have to let Him run our lives. The Bible says we can grieve or even quench the Spirit of God (I Thess. 5:19, Eph. 4:30), and we do this by our life choices. Does the Spirit of God approve of the movie I’m watching? If not, I’m grieving the Spirit. He’s not running my life, because I’ve essentially made it clear that a movie is more important to me than His Presence. The same goes for music and conversation and the internet, anything basically that is in any way contrary to the Holy Spirit of God.
I’m convinced that the primary reason we often struggle to find victory in areas of our lives is because we want to keep living the way we want to live, entertaining ourselves the way we want to be entertained, and still somehow expect the Spirit of God to empower us and give us victory over the “bad stuff.” According to the Bible, that’s just not the way it works. God can give victory over alcoholism, for example, and He wants to, but only if we let Him by walking in the Spirit and keeping our lives free from things that would grieve or quench Him.
Your team might not have made it to the World Cup Final, and we’ll probably never see any substantial world-wide peace until God reigns directly during the Millennial Kingdom, but we CAN have victory and peace in our personal lives by intentionally walking in the Spirit.
“If the Holy Spirit can take over the subconscious with our consent and cooperation, then we have almighty Power working at the basis of our lives, then we can do anything we ought to do, go anywhere we ought to go, and be anything we ought to be.” – E. Stanley Jones
Liberty Over Death 