Choosing Not to Listen

     We all have temptations. We all have feelings and desires coursing through our bodies and our bloodstreams. It can be difficult to combat. We do have the Holy Spirit within us but though we do feel His presence in our lives it is not often in the same way as the pounding of the heart or the whispering of the mind or the yearning of the flesh. The Spirit speaks to us and the world screams.

     When in the midst of struggle or just in the day to day we all feel like something. I feel like watching a movie, I feel like going out, I feel like doing something I shouldn't; but what is that? Have you ever wondered? Think about that statement, “I feel like...” Your thoughts are clearly separate from that desire as you think about them. This raises the question, is this feeling an expression of your conscious desire or are you experiencing a sensation whose origins are outside of yourself?

     Our bodies do not control us, nor does the world around us and yet we yield command to feelings and to sensations all the time. This thought came to me today as I thought about why I find it so hard to write when writing is something I want so much to do. Why is it that I never feel like writing? More to the point, why do I so often actually feel repelled by the idea? Now some might argue that it is because I don't really want to write (trust me, not true) but this goes beyond that one example. How often do I read my Bible? How often do you? How many excuses do we all make every day and how often do we conveniently fall back asleep and so find ourselves without time? Why do the people of God so often deliberately avoid doing something that is neither painful nor terrible? Why do we fail to pray?

     It would seem that what we are dealing with is the voice of the flesh, that worldly whisper that would drive us from the good and the right. Why it took me so long to think on this I cannot say but we know that we carry with us still the nature of the old man and is it any surprise that he struggles against us? We feel it's push and it's pull on our hearts and mind and it has us convinced that that sensation means something.

     But it doesn't.

     It's just a feeling. That tug on your heart, that pressure in your chest is nothing more than a three-year-old tugging on daddy's ankle as he tries to walk away. We feel it sure, but it has no real power to alter our course. The Christian is free from the controlling influence of sin. We are servants and sons of God now and no longer slaves to evil.

     I have often struggled with how difficult walking in the spirit can be but I think I'm beginning to truly see now that the words of temptation were only loud because I was listening and the hold of the flesh only seemed strong because I rarely tested its grip. The Spirit of God resides within us, we have power available that is greater than anything and can never be exhausted. The devil is the father of lies and what he has wrought in the world works on much the same principle, deception.

     Stop listening. Pull back. Look away.

     Walk free.

“I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.”

(Galatians 5:16-17)