Galatians 5:16-21 “I say, then: live by the Spirit and you will certainly not gratify the desire of the flesh. For the flesh has desires against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you may not do what you want. But if you are guided by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are obvious: immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions, occasions of envy,* drinking bouts, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” This Episode talks about how we can live by the Spirit. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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The Spirit And Flesh Are Opposed
Galatians 5:16-21 “I say, then: live by the Spirit and you will certainly not gratify the desire of the flesh. For the flesh has desires against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you may not do what you want. But if you are guided by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are obvious: immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions, occasions of envy,* drinking bouts, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”
I like this verse because it is telling us how to solve a problem. I think everyone struggles with the desires of the flesh. Even if we always want to do what is right, it is a struggle. It says in this verse that “the flesh has desires against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you may not do what you want.” This sounds an awful lot like what St. Paul was saying in Romans 7:15, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.”
If you ever wondered why it was so hard to do the right thing and why sometimes, or oftentimes in my case, we do the thing we hate, now we know. It is because the Spirit and the flesh are opposed to each other. They want different things. This is why we feel like no matter how hard we try to do the right things, we come up short a lot of the time. However, in this verse it solves this problem, it gives us the answer. The verse says, “live by the Spirit and you will certainly not gratify the desire of the flesh.” Great! Awesome! Now we have the key to not giving into our desires.
Wouldn’t it be great if it were that easy. Wouldn’t it be great if we knew what to do and we did it. Unfortunately, life is not always that simple. Just because we know how to do something doesn’t mean we always choose to do it. I think that is part of God’s frustration with us. I think He is in Heaven, watching us choose the wrong thing over and over again and wondering what else He could do. I remember one time around Christmas I heard a story about a man that was looking out his window and a bird kept flying into the same window. He tried everything he could to get the bird to stop flying into the window but he was a bird and so he didn’t listen. The man thought if he could only become a bird and teach the bird how to fly away. Then the man thought of God and how He must feel looking down on us and seeing us make the same mistakes again and again. God was able to send His son down to become one of us and teach us how to live. Are we living like He taught us to live?
“Live by the Spirit and you will certainly not gratify the desire of the flesh.” This sounds pretty clear, there is one problem. How does one “live by the Spirit?” This may not be a problem for you. You may already know this. However, when I heard this verse my first thought was, yes, I want to do that. Then my next thought was, wait, how do I do that? In case this is you too, I want to give you what I found when I read a little further down in the chapter. Galatians 5:22-26 says, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us walk in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying one another.
There are two parts to this verse that I think explain how to live in the Spirit. First it describes the fruit of the Spirit. If we want to walk in the Spirit then we need to walk in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. This does not sound simple. When I hear all those things I think that it is impossible for us to walk in the Spirit as it is hard to be all of those things. However, then I remember we are not walking this alone. If we want to walk in the Spirit then God will help us. If we can just focus on choosing the next right step, we will be well on our way. If we choose to say yes to God, Yes to the Spirit and Yes to Jesus, then they will help us will all the rest. If we can remember that everything we do is a choice we might just have a chance to stop making all of our decisions on auto pilot.
This is what the flesh wants. The flesh wants us to not think and just react because if we act without thinking we will do what is easy. That is our default. Do we get up early and go to the gym or do we hit snooze? If we act on instinct we just hit snooze because that is the path of least resistance and because we are not thinking about what we really want. If we don’t take the time to remind ourselves that we have a choice then we will continue to do what the flesh wants us to do. However, if we can take a moment, tell God that we want to live in the Spirit and then do our best to say Yes to all the things that will help us live into the fruits of the Spirit, then we will no long be slaves to the flesh.
The second thing this verse told us was to not become conceited, provoking and envying one another. Wow, those also are not easy things to give up. We live in an age that seems to be full of themselves. People are posting “selfies” of themselves all over their social media pages. It seems so many people feel entitled to things just because they are who they are. In the news over the last few years we have seen a lot more people in power, such as movie stars and politicians that have used their power to get what they wanted at the expense of others. They felt they were so powerful they could get away with anything. Provoking one another seems to be a favorite pastime in this America these days. This country is so divided on so many issues and it seems like instead of having respectful conversations about more and more people are saying things that start a fight. As for envying others, this has always been a problem, and now with social media on the scene it is even worse than even. Everyone wants to post what they are doing and then people who aren’t doing those things get envious that they aren’t doing the thing, or buying the thing.
I think this verse is helpful because it not only tells us what we should do but it tells us what we shouldn’t do. If we want to walk in the Spirit we should try to do more of the good things, and we should work hard to avoid the bad things. I know this may sound hard but remember Matthew 19:26 "Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Our job is to say Yes, to try out best and to ask God to help us. Also, be graceful with ourselves when we mess up because we will mess up. We can do this. We can learn to walk with the Spirit.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to live by the Spirit and we know we need your help to do that. We want to walk in the Spirit and we don’t want to become conceited, provoking, and envious of one another. Help us Lord. Shine a light on any ways of the flesh that we have been living. Show us where in our lives we need to change. We want to be all in with you Lord and we don’t know how to do that. We need your guidance and grace. We know we are weak and you are strong. We know that we can’t do anything without you but with you we can do all things. We love you Lord, you are so amazing. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you are joining me on the 10 week “Be More Like Jesus” challenge and you haven’t gotten an email from me yet, please check your junk folder because the website said they were all accepted by your email accounts. If you haven't signed up yet, it is not too late. You can jump in anytime during these next 10 weeks. I will have the link in the show notes. (Click Here) I look forward to seeing you tomorrow, Have a blessed day!