Today you should read: Galatians 5:16-26
Indwell
• To be permanently present in (someone’s soul or mind); possess spiritually.
“the Holy Spirit descended to indwell the believers”
Have you ever stopped to think that the Holy Spirit lives inside of you? He has possessed you and breathed life into you if you are a believer. All of us start out dead because of our sin and then God through his spirit brings us to life. However, this leaves us with an internal battle where the Spirit is at war with our flesh.
Our passage today is not only a commentary on the reality of the battle but a game plan as well. The Spirit’s desires are against the flesh and this is where we get the feeling of conviction. When we want to sin the Spirit checks us and we feel the weight of the choice. Conviction is a fruit of the Spirit and we should rejoice when we are convicted because it is an indicator to help us walk faithfully with God.
Now if you are like me you want to allow the Spirit to win the battle against the flesh but I am not always successful. The problem is that our flesh is part of us, so we don’t always see our sin objectively. Thankfully Paul gives us a list of the sinful desires of our flesh that we can be aware of in verses 19-21. All of us can identify with something on this list and if we see patterns of these actions or desires we know that it is a result of our sinful flesh. Also, when we see the fruits of verses 22-24 we can know that it is God living in us and winning. We do not have to work to produce the fruit of the Spirit we just need to work at killing our flesh through repentance.
Do you want to kill the flesh?
Posted by: Chad Wiles
JumpstartCPC.com 