January 27
“For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.” Galatians 5:17
I have been amazed by how strong my fleshly desires can be at times and how the new man, my right mind, can lose control and give in to fleshly desires. I am ashamed to say this, but I have even had times when I was experiencing close times of fellowship with the Lord and then made the conscious decision to end that fellowship and expose my mind to foolish and impure things on the Internet! Amazing presumptuousness on my part! Amazing taking advantage of the Holy Spirit, offending Him to His face!
When I think deeper about this Spirit-quenching behavior, I realize several things about myself. First, I want to do what I want to do when I want to do it. Period. I want to be in control. Most of the time I don’t choose bad things that necessarily are offensive to the Lord or evil, although sometimes I do, but how many, many times have I had a thought come to mind along the lines of “why not spend time studying the scripture?” or “why not give so and so a call?” or “this would be a good time to take care of such and such a thing that needs to be done” or “I really should get to bed now” or a myriad of other good, sound, thoughtful, helpful, wise ideas that come to mind, and I don’t do them. And often I will instead waste the time, watching something on TV or the Internet or wasting the time in some unproductive way. I have developed over the years habits of saying no to wise behavior, even the Spirit’s promptings, and saying yes to foolish behavior. And I really wasn’t conscious of this.
In addition to not listening to the Spirit on a minute by minute basis to walk in better, more profitable ways, I have not listened to the Spirit’s warnings when I have been doing or about to do sinful things, and I have proceeded to pay a very great price for my folly. I have sowed to the flesh and have become accustomed to taking the easy, self-indulging way instead of the more difficult way of godliness, wisdom, and discipline. I frequently will choose to entertain myself or indulge myself rather than control myself and deny myself. When I really examine my life under a microscope, I find that a lot of the time I am not Spirit led or Spirit-controlled.
There was a time several years ago when I went to India to teach on Overcoming Temptation and other topics. I had people praying for us, and for about ten days I felt closer to the Lord than I had ever been for an extended period of time. Then I asked the Lord to enable me to be close to Him like that all the time. I think he is answering that request, but first He brought a time of adversity and trials that I could never have imagined. And this made me realize that it is much more difficult to overcome temptation during times of trials and difficulty, when we are dismayed and feel abandoned by the Lord and others. I believe the Lord was disciplining me and scourging me and saying to me, “You know all the bad, self-centered habits you have had, and some of your deepest temptations that you wondered if you would ever be free from? Well, it is time for them to go. I am going to deal with them once and for all.” Praise God! I hope that is what He is doing in my life; it seems so. We will say more about this tomorrow.