“Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Matthew 26:41 NIV
“The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life.” John 6:63 NIV
“Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.” Romans 8:8 NIV
“For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.” Galatians 5:17 NIV
“The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.” Romans 8:7 NIV
“Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.” Galatians 6:8 NIV
“What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.
The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.
The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?”
But we have the mind of Christ.” 1 Corinthians 2:12-16 NIV
Religion of man’s desire and imagination will want to have a “church” like a hospital; but the Kingdom of God will restore and fulfill His desire for a Family in a spiritual Eden.
The most potent and deceptive lie of the Devil, the original temptation if you will, is that he led man to believe that his own happiness is the highest goal of his existence and he could attain unto it by his own devices and his own understanding.
Put it to a simple test whether we are practicing religion of man or the Kingdom of God. Who is that we are to serve?
First we have to inquire: Why a soul is distressed? Is it for godliness or God’s will, or for one’s own wellbeing and own expectations?
If the latter, then he is either deceived or is yet to die to his old self. If he refuses on latter, no one could help such a wretched soul, not even God. He is reprobate in heart and mind against the Gospel of Redemption and Glory.
Anyone in the guise of God’s goodness who promise or suggest that such a soul needs not to reckon its state of spiritual death is by nature and by effect a lier and a worker of lawlessness or death. We all sin and God gives us full provision in Christ Jesus to rectify that; but to deny the existence of sin, and refuse the remedy of it is by nature blasphemy of His Holy Name and rebellion against His grace and love.
How fitful! God’s garden is guarded by the blades of fire thru which all humanity is to become dust. The splendor of God’s plantings is indeed “beauty out of ashes”.
The Cross naturally leads to the Grave; no one is able to roll away its reproach- the curse of slavery in spiritual death, unless true faith in Christ Jesus is exercised into His resurrection power.
Is a believer whimpering before his cross or is he groaning from the grave of his spiritual death? These are categorically two different cries.
Religion of man runs to the first and gets drowned with it in the ocean of lost humanity. But messengers of God’s life will only happily embrace the returned members of God’s Family who had come out their grave of humanity.
Whose needs are we serving, the whim and whining miseries of man or the joyful and liberating life of God? Are we scattering others to their spiritual death like dust, or are we knitting them into a vessel and breathing on them the breath of the life of God?
What spirit are we from, in and for when we posit ourselves as servants of God?
“For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.” Philippians 3:18-21 NIV
