The Flesh

“Therefore, brethren, we are debtors not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh” (Romans 8:12).

“The flesh” is that urge within us toward total autonomy and rebellion, toward being our own little gods–accountable to no one, responsible to no one, obeying no one, respecting no one, and running our own little worlds to suit ourselves. It has inherent in us an element of self-centeredness and selfishness that keeps us from being completely and totally His.

The Lord Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega–The Beginning and the End. He demands submission to Himself and that means every area of our lives are to be submitted to Him. To leave a pet sin is wickedness when He died for every sin. Also a good God expects us to capture every thought and denounce the flesh and announce that your mind belongs to Christ. The flesh does not run you for we run it by the Spirit of God. We are to resist the devil and the improper advances made available to us. We are to master them and punish every sign of disobedience that rises as a vagrant soldier to cut us down.

Persistence and patience is what I get to do. For we are never free from an attack of the the world or the flesh. Don’t lay down your armor until you get home. There is no vacation when it comes to the exterior foe–the world, the interior foe–the flesh, and the infernal foe–Satan. But we have won in Christ, for what He has once delivered for us now, I must and have the privilege to deal with my interior life moment by moment and hour by hour. It is possible and plausible. Praise His name!

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    “Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, and for the love of the Spirit, that you strive together with me in your prayers to God for me” (Romans 15:30).

          R.A. Torrey, a great man of prayer,  became the president of Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, and later the Dean of Biola in Los Angeles. Ever wonder how it all started for Reuben Archer Torrey, this great man of God?

          Reuben was a young student at Yale when he was overcome with guilt and shame of his sinful lifestyle. Sin had taken him down a dark road and it about killed him. One night in 1875, overcome with his sinfulness, he looked for a razor there at his wash basin. He was trying to locate the instrument, not to shave, but to end his life. He had rebelled against his father and mother’s upbringing in the church and it now was costing him dearly.

          Reuben did not know, but his mother was on her knees far away in another city,  praying earnestly for her son’s salvation. Reuben became burdened also, and knelt there by his bed, and prayed to God and was found by Him. Prayer became special to this dear man after this time. His salvation resulted from his mother praying and in his own praying.

       What about us? Are we praying earnestly, fervently, time-consumingly? If we were saved because of someone else’s prayer life, should we not consider that God is wanting to reciprocate that very act in our lives?

  • God the Shelter

    “From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed; lead me to the rock that is higher than I”

    (Psalm 61:2).

     

    Jesus is to be the center of it all. Everything.
    Today at the Good News Baptist Church on the island of St. Maarten, we sang a song that expressed this prayer. God is the star of His own movie. For so many of us we think indirectly or directly much of this thought:  It is about us.
    When we pray we are asking God to guide, to guard, and to govern. We must realize He is the One who gives breath and life. He is the only One who has the power and the prowess to do just this. And He desires to honor you as you and I honor Him. We are very insignificant when it comes to the almightiness of the God who stands apart from us.
    Today when you call upon His name remember that He loves you and He desires you with all of your warts and blemishes. He desires greatly to bring glory to His own name through your life. It is God who is pursuing Himself in you. Allow this God of glory to have His will and His pleasure in your life. It is amazing to receive and feel His love.

  • Not I, But Christ

    “…for by works of the law shall no flesh be justified” (Galatians 2:16c).

    “…for in thy sight shall no man living be justified” (Psalm 143:2).

    Our Lord suffered in His death for our disobedience. In His life His obedience to the law was perfect. Since the Law was perfect (revealing the heart and mind of God), it says that any who break it is condemned to death. Jesus Christ is and was the only One who ever obeyed all points of the law perfectly and obediently. All that is required of us to be justified, therefore, is to acknowledge our sin and helplessness. We are to repent of our life of self-assertion and self-righteousness, and to put our whole trust and confidence in the finished work of Christ to save us.

    Faith in Jesus Christ is more than intellectual consent only, but personal commitment. We believe “into” Christ Jesus. It is through faith we are justified. The law kills but faith in Christ makes alive. “For it is through the law I die to the law, so that I might live to God” (Gal. 2:19). The law slays but Christ saves. So we have no good works we can do to earn justification. Because the works we do, under the law, only condemn us to death; while faith in Christ bypasses the law of condemnation for us but trusts in Christ who died according to the law for us, who did not bypass the law but died our death’s penalty.

    Salvation is an act of committal, not just assenting to the fact that Jesus Christ lived and died, but running to Him for refuge and calling unto Him for His mercy. Justification is not only a legal fact when we are saved in Christ, whereby we are declared righteous by a holy God; it is also a transforming experience through a living identification with Christ.  By union with Christ we are radically transformed; we can no longer go back to our old life, for in Christ we are “a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17). We are saved by the faith of Christ: past, present, and future.

  • The Third Day

    “Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off” (Genesis 22:4).

     

    Abraham’s son, Isaac, was the child of promise. All the hopes and desires of nations rested upon this son. Out of Isaac comes Jacob and out of Jacob the twelve tribes, and out of the tribe of Judah King Jesus. And still God told Abraham to take his son and sacrifice him. Would Abraham hold too tightly or would he loosen his grip on his son? Would he trust God or hold tightly?

     

    Corrie Ten Boom said, “Hold everything in your hands lightly, otherwise it hurts when God pries your fingers open.” Do we trust God in all things? Is He all we need? Will God fail us? Has He really promised that if we bow to Him He will honor us?

     

    Abraham traveled three days with his son knowing the time of sacrifice was ahead. Look at Abraham’s fingers for they were not clutching to Isaac. Every step his fingers were opened. On the third day Abraham’s eyes saw the place far off and said to the others to stay behind for he and his son were going to worship and come again to them (Gen. 22.4).

     

    The power of the third day is this: When we walk with our hands open and hold to things and people loosely we can worship God. And what we give back, God takes, and what God takes, He cleanses, and what He cleanses He will use. And what He will use He gives back in a more powerful, pure, and purposeful manner.

  • Mere Life

    “A cheerful heart is good medicine but a crushed spirit dries up the bones” (Proverbs 17:22). 

     

    Too many people walk through life with gloves and a raincoat on, refusing to observe and experience the beauty and the wonder of the world around them and above them. So many have forgotten the privilege of not only earthly delights, but also of our unearthly purpose.
    Each day has its own distinctness and its own inexhaustibility. And yet how few really realize the miracle. Just because we take it for granted, doesn’t mean it isn’t miraculous. Perhaps nothing is really ordinary.
    Do not treat your faith in God as if it were an artificial limb that you strap on each day. Though faith in God is meant to be full, yet to many it only helps you to stumble along, it never really becomes an intrinsic part of you. Whatever happened to that holy wonder, that appetite for the sacred? Have we grown blind to the sacredness of everyday things and of everyday people?
    It’s been said that as we get older, we don’t regret the things that we did do, but only those things that we failed or forgot to do. Life is short, and at times it is shorter than its “supposed” to be. But there is the question that troubles me far too many times: Why do we still continue to live bland, insipid lives? Why do we waste the days that God has given us? Each day comes and we forget but once in human history that each day comes!

     

  • Going Beyond the Gun

    Hundreds of students across the Piedmont Triad walked out of class during Wednesday’s nationwide walkout, but Connor Groce had his own way of taking a stand by staying in his seat.  Connor said, “I just spent the moment in prayer and in reflection,” the West Forsyth senior explains.  “Obviously, for the families of the victims in Florida and the horrific tragedy down there but for our nation as a whole because I think we live in a very fragile time.”

    At its core, the current debate taking place about gun control is about more than guns.  What’s being protested is a symptom of a much larger problem.  We will not be able to legislate away evil.  No laws written on any book will change the human heart.

    Our day is a lost culture that the students have inherited from us.  It’s a lost culture that mocks or ignores God and His “Timeless Truths“.  We live in a generation that is top-heavy for carnal pleasures and temporary thrills.  We have lost control of ourselves.

    There is a growing epidemic of gun violence.  In addition to Florida, there have been school shootings in the states of Texas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Alabama, Michigan and Pennsylvania.  “How many schools, how many children have to get shot?” Andrew Pollack asked and pleaded with the President of the United States.  Mr. Pollack’s daughter, Meadow, was murdered in Parkland, Florida.  He said, “It stops here, with this administration and me, because I’m not going to sleep until its fixed.”  Any parent can understand this man’s broken heart if it were one of us before President Trump.

    Many of the people who want to control and eliminate the symptoms are the very ones, sadly, who want to ban the very things that will lead to healing and revival.  Unless this country and her churches turn back to God, those with a fervent and sincere faith are going to be continually mocked and marginalized rather than respected and uplifted, meaning there is absolutely no help or hope from outside of ourselves, for God is out and Satan is in.

    John Adams, second President, remarked that “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”  History is very clear:  godlessness and immorality leads to any outbreak of evil.  If Conor Groce can take 17 minutes to pray in a classroom, can not God’s people take more and call upon God’s grace and mercy to start in us.