But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. (Gal 5:16)
Father, you call me to walk by your Spirit. I see this is right, and I see the simplicity of it, but it is hard. Be gracious to me and grant me to rest in your Spirit and to allow Him to fill me as I walk through life.
Once upon a time, many, many years ago, a man sent a car to his son who lived in a remote village. The father had a friend deliver the car, and he drove in late one night and parked just outside the son’s house. He placed a note on the windshield and then left in the night to make his way to a neighboring village. The note read, “Son, a gift for you. Dad.” At that time, cars were a new thing. They were not everywhere like today. In addition, the son was a teenager who had never left his village. He had never seen a car before, so he wasn’t sure exactly how to use it. He saw that the car had wheels, however, so he knew it could roll, and he spent his time getting around in the most unusual ways. Sometimes he hooked his car to a pair of oxen and let them pull it. Sometimes he used horses, and once he even got several men to help him push it. Now this parable is rather silly on the surface, but it does illustrate something. This car owner did not understand what he had.
And neither does the church. Too often we are just like that son. We are busy exerting great efforts to accomplish something that would better be accomplished by turning on the engine. The Holy Spirit is the engine for living the life of God. In one sense living for Jesus is as simple as using the engine and letting it carry you. And yet so many who go by the name of Jesus are too busy pushing or pulling their lives to accomplish God’s will. We are more apt to live in our strength than in His Spirit. That is a problem.
The Bible talks about walking in the Spirit, and there are some principles involved in doing so, just as there are some principles involved in driving a car. This week and next week, we’ll look at some of those principles.
The Great Distraction
“Anything except the Spirit of God.”
That is Satan’s mantra. From his perspective, he will encourage you to visit the sick and fight injustice if those things will keep you away from the Spirit of God. If you are so busy doing good deeds that you have no time for God, Satan will take that. You may not be pushing the car in the direction that would be his first choice, but he will take what he can get. At least he has you pushing the car. You are no threat to him.
Satan will distract you from God with anything that works. He will use money. He will use fishing. He will use your family. He will use the church. He will use your desires, your pleasures, your comfort. He will use food, music, education. He doesn’t have to get you robbing and killing in order to own you. He has merely to get you to focus your life on something that is not Christ. His job is actually quite easy, for he has a great ally that dwells inside you. The Bible calls this your flesh.
Paul frequently contrasts the flesh and the Spirit (Rm 8:1-13; Gal 5:16-26). In these contexts, the flesh refers to our natural human desires and priorities and the common thinking of the world. A man who lives his life in the flesh is pursuing whatever he pleases and doing so in a manner consistent with the prevailing culture.
The flesh refers not just to those desires that are sinful but to those that are earthly. We desire food and drink, comfort and pleasure. We want to have fun. We want to travel. We want to try the latest ice cream flavor or see the newest movie. None of these things is necessarily sinful. They can be innocent pleasures. In fact, the Spirit may grant them to us as gifts to enjoy, but when they become the focus, we are in the flesh.
In addition, the flesh involves living in a manner consistent with the prevailing culture. For example, the world says, “If you want to grow a business, you offer a product the people want, you price your product affordably, you make your product easy to access, and you market yourself well.” Today, many churches have built themselves on these principles. The principles are actually good, but they were never meant to be the foundation for a church. Consequently, when a church does this, its growth comes more from the flesh than from the Spirit.
Many church people live in the flesh and never know it. Their life is devoted to basketball or research or parties or a boyfriend or a job or something else, but it is not devoted to God. They never see the problem with this because the pleasures they devote themselves to are legitimate. “Why, if I were stealing or hurting someone, I could see a need to repent, but what’s wrong with biking?”
Nothing. The problem is not biking. The problem is you. God wants His Spirit to reign in you, but you would rather go biking. Your comforts and desires are the driving force in your life. You think that as long as it is moral, you can do whatever you want. That’s not what God made you for. Unfortunately, that is how most people live.
Our flesh is, thus, the great distraction. The flesh is not always focused on sinful things, but a life focused on the flesh is always sinful. Paul’s point is that the follower of Jesus is to have a different source for life. We are to walk by the Spirit and not by our flesh. We are to turn the key in the ignition instead of pushing the car. We may find that when we turn the engine on, we end up doing some of the same things we were doing before. We may enjoy a good piece of music or a burger or a friend. We may fight injustice or sexual temptation, but in the Spirit these things are not the primary focus. We do not think that our strength will accomplish anything. It doesn’t mean we don’t work. Heavens no. It means that our work flows out of something other than our own abilities, and our thoughts are based on something other than our own pleasure. We seek His pleasure, not ours, but in doing so, He gives us greater pleasure and greater enjoyment of Earth’s lesser pleasures than we could ever imagine.
