Hi guys welcome to Consistency. Happy Friday, it’s the “weekend”, it’s been a long week I imagine. Even if, in the blink of an eye, we will find ourselves on Monday. Well, it’s life.
Anyway, today I want to address a simple subject; Our mentality when faced with certain challenges or adversities.
Galatians 5:16: “I say therefore, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the desires of the flesh.”
What I love about this verse is the direction it gives us when dealing with sin. Most of the time we tend to want to fight our flesh ourselves, to resist with our own strength so that we can honor God and manifest the Image of His person which the Bible says we are. But this verse simply tells us to first walk in the Spirit and therefore we will not fulfill the desires of our flesh.
I think that for most of us, we tend to reverse the formula, we want to fight to flee our desire and then walk according to the Spirit, but however the reciprocal is the key.
What do I mean, God wants to teach us to fill ourselves with the Spirit, strengthen ourselves, seek to abide in His Presence, feed on His Word and in doing this, the logical outcome will be the crucifixion of the flesh, and a regression either of the desires or of the acts of the flesh.
I hope you understand; but furthermore I will use this verse and its interpretation to lead us to understand something. In our everyday life and in certain areas too, we perhaps tend to use this formula in the wrong sense. We have weaknesses and difficulties that slow us down in our daily routine and most often we tend to want to attack the branch instead of the root. In short, practically speaking, for example, you have difficulty memorizing or concentrating and then your solution is to complain, or to try to make an effort to retain the information. But have you tried to strengthen your brain instead? Have you tried to read books weekly, eat foods rich in Omega-3 etc? You will gradually train your brain and you will see that over time you will increase your memorization capacity.
Another example, you feel like you are too distracted, emotionally unstable and what if instead of fighting to stop being distracted and unstable, you instead tried to work on your focus and stability through activities that nourish your soul positively.
Be careful of the nuance in my words, you can fight something without treating it. In other words, sometimes to empty a glass full of stones you have to fill it with water.
Sometimes you have to fill it first to be able to empty.
Filling with information (walking in the Spirit) will allow you to effectively fight against lack/weakness (the desires of the flesh)