Reforming (phase 1), Our Personal History of Salvation (step 5), session 2

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh . . .  - Gal 5, 16-17a

I know that I sometimes use my less pure thoughts as a way of escaping my stress and loneliness. But I also know that the thing that keeps me alive is the desire to be the person God is calling me to be.

Fortunately, the former are becoming rarer and briefer. I am noticing that things at which I never used to hesitate are now clearly choices that I am unwilling to make. But I still don't guard my mind to the degree that I should.

This lesson's reading continues through verse 23, but I really feel that the rest of the chapter goes right along with it.

Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.- Gal 5, 24-25

Why do we expect crucifying the flesh with its passions and desires to be painless? I think that, early in my Christian walk, I expected the Holy Spirit to simply lift every negative impulse from me. I heard an interesting talk on the radio last week about Jesus, temptation and sin. The speaker wanted to address people's objection that, if Jesus' ever-present divine nature was such that it would be, in a sense, a contradiction of himself to commit sin - if he was in this sense incapable of sinning, because he would always exercise his free will according to his Father's plan for him - how could we accept that he was ever then really tempted?  As part of his rebuttal, the preacher asked who better knows the weight of the barbell: the one who successfully holds it aloft or the one who fails in their effort to fully lift it? Jesus knows the full weight of temptation better than we do precisely because he did not succumb to it.

I heard that either last Tuesday or Wednesday, as it resonated with the reading I received during prayer group last Tuesday evening:

What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you yield yourselves to any one as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?  - Rom 6, 15-16

So when we choose the flesh, we make ourselves slaves to the flesh rather than to the Spirit. And since no one can serve two masters (Lk 16, 13), using the wrong things even as a brief respite from realities and frustrations keeps me from being fully available to God's will for my life.