My great Father and King how great is thy faithfulness and your mercies beyond searching out. To get a taste of your sweet grace is almost uncontainable. The body is not sure how to react but the soul finds absolute delight as it causes wells of living water to gush forth, and for this I am thankful. To be quickened in the Spirit is beyond containment in the flesh! The Spiritual realm is higher than the natural realm and God is the Father of spirits, in fact He is the Father of all. Even the evil entities in this universe have been ordained by God, yes they are responsible, yes they are guilty as charged but God has a specific place for them in helping us work out our salvation. We know that all things worked together for the good of those called by God. We sometimes forget to end off that sentence when we quote it to ourselves; it ends like this; according to His purpose!
Let no one convince you that God has nothing to do with all that is evil; He has allowed it to work its trickery but only for time. It is part of His ingenious plan and yet all had been subjected to His governing authority. But before I am misunderstood let me reiterate that God is good and that no evil thought is capable of ever contaminating God, He is perfect! Satan tried to achieve that when God the man, the Lord Jesus in the flesh was led away into the Wilderness to be tempted of the devil. He was led, or instructed if you prefer; get the idea?
And yet God has allowed evil to exist and run its course. Now what the carnal man looks to do is blame others and excuse himself, it is a byproduct of sin. However where we must not make our mistake is to misunderstand the role evil plays in the believer’s life. It is a tool used to conform us into the image of Christ. Not that we are to be evil but because of the evil we see and witness it is a reminder of how great God actually is, how holy, how righteous! It reminds us of our objective and that is to be more Christ minded. It is a reminder of what Christ overcame whilst on earth; He never once yielded to even one of those taunting temptations. He overcame sin and all its lures perfectly, praise His name! It is the enemy and we are at war!
It would be good for us to understand our enemy and where he likes to attack; every great leader always seemed to study his enemy, let us do the same. Who then is the enemy? Satan and all his demonic forces have their role to play but never forget this important truth, we in ourselves are the enemy, our flesh is corrupt and it is dead because of sin, and can never be anything different; “Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am being tempted by God," for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers.”(James 1:13-16): - Some like to imagine that now because we have been saved our bodies which are decaying will somehow be patched up and begin to act in a different manner, it is impossible to please God in the flesh! For this very reason we need to be born again and that is a Spiritual birth, it has nothing to do with anything corrupt. It is impossible for you to sin in the Spirit, when we sin we sin through the flesh.
I have personally wrestled with this frustration for many years and it has eaten at me with great ferocity, the flesh can never attain to perfection, this does not however excuse our sin, we must strive for perfection just as our great heavenly Father is perfect; “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48)
The key to living in faith is not how many times we fall but rather when we fall we dust the dirt from our knees and we march on.
We need to arrive at this understanding and the Apostle Paul gives us great insight into the war between the flesh and the Spirit. It is impossible for the two to be reconciled no differently as if one was to try and integrate light with darkness; they cannot coexist in the same sphere. Flip a light switch and the darkness must flee! If we try and use the flesh with all its corruption and to try achieve spiritual height we will always fail. This then was my great dilemma for so many years; I was led to believe a lie! The truth is this we carry with us a body of death, our carnal natures remain with us even after salvation but we like to pretend that is no longer has any hold on us, which is a lie!
Ask yourself this question, after being saved have you ever sinned or had a thought that was unwelcome, the answer is obvious! The reason for this is the body of death! This is how Paul explains it; “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.” (Romans 7:21-25): - He is not speaking of the man prior to salvation but refers to his dilemma after understanding salvation.
Our natural capabilities will always fall short of the glory of God. For this very reason God sent His son to die for sinners. If it could be any other way, then Christ would have died in vain and yet He has set the captives free. Therefore we must now walk in the Spirit and we with not succumb to the trapping of sins and be slaves to it. We will fall, but faith then demands that we look heavenward as we call out for help to the only one who is capable of helping us, our great Saviour, our great God, praise the holy name of Jesus now and forever more!
If we purposely chose to reason with any other mindset we make God a liar and we know that there is no lie in our great God; “Let God be true and every man a liar!”
We must learn to depend on the finished work of Calvary and nothing else! Anything outside of that will lead us down into a dark ditch. God help us to always remember to put on the full armour of God and never to forget that this is done thru the Spirit and not the flesh.
Signing off
Tyrone
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