As children of God, we have access to our heavenly Father through Jesus. WE have available to us all that God the Father offers His Son- Jesus. In John 6: 36, Jesus said, 'all the Father gives me will come to me; and him who comes to me I will not cast out.' and John 8: 31 He says, 'If you continue in my word, you are truely my disciples, and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.'
We are to 'be imitators of God and walk in love', Ephesians 5: 1&2.
We need to walk in the fear of God, knowing that He is all powerful, and in control, and that He knows our heart, and that we will have to answer to Him. In Galatians 5: 16-24, Paul tells us to 'live the way the Spirit leads you. Then you will not do the evil things your sinful self wants. The sinful self wants what is against the Spirit, and the Spirit wants
what is against the sinful self. They are always fighting against each
other, so that you don’t do what you really want to do. But if you let the Spirit lead you, you are not under law. The wrong things the sinful self does are clear: committing sexual sin, being morally bad, doing all kinds of shameful things, worshiping false gods, taking part in witchcraft, hating people,
causing trouble, being jealous, angry or selfish, causing people to
argue and divide into separate groups, being filled with envy, getting drunk, having wild parties, and doing
other things like this. I warn you now as I warned you before: The
people who do these things will not have a part in God’s kingdom. But the fruit that the Spirit produces in a person’s life is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these kinds of things. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified their sinful self. They
have given up their old selfish feelings and the evil things they
wanted to do.
What fleshly/sinful/selfish desire you are currently trying to avoid? Right now my challenge is to always speak God's truth, instead of the lie that nags me or the dougt that I feel. Live by the Spirit.
I read a story, and in it this woman, who is a Christian, was having a hard time controlling the cutting remarks she usually allowed to role of her tongue, because of having to work with this man who is a irritating character to say the least. She had to decide if she would to allow her flesh/sinful self to keep manifesting itself and just say the cutting remarks, (after all, the dude was being deliberate in his irritating ways) or proclaim God's truth and walk according to the Spirit. Every time we are faced with the situation of walking according to our sinful self, we need to immediately take a step back, put things in perspective, tell ourselves the truth, change our thinking to the truth, and live accordingly. The more we choose to live by the Spirit, the easier it will be to crucify/kill our sinful self.
Let us then walk by the Spirit.
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