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In Matthew 12:25, Jesus states that a kingdom, city, or home that is divided against itself can neither stand nor prosper. The same is true for our heart before God, especially when we seek to fellowship with, worship, and serve Him. Although our spirit desires to do these, we often fail to do them in God's strength or at all due to the opposition described in Romans 7:14-25. This fierce and deadly resistance comes from our flesh, which strives to hinder us with an unending barrage of carnal temptations and self-centered attitudes. Because caving to these divides our heart, which prevents us from righteously serving God, it is imperative that we understand the flesh's opposition and how to overcome it.
To understand this division, we must first realize how God is to be worshipped and served. John 4:24 clearly states that this is only done in spirit and truth, meaning we can only serve Him through our new life in Christ and the Holy Spirit working through our human spirit. Paul confirmed this in Romans 1:9, saying he served God from his spirit in the Gospel's truth. However, hindering this service is our flesh, which is composed of all the bodily lusts and soulish attitudes of our old lives before salvation. When we live according to these carnal and self-righteous ways, Romans 8:7 reveals that our mind becomes set on the flesh, which makes it hostile to God and incapable of serving Him. Unless we are willing to surrender this old life to God and continually choose our new lives in Christ, we will live a fleshly life that divides our heart and renders us unfit to serve God.
This detrimental situation is demonstrated by Samson and King Saul. For example, although Samson performed incredible feats of strength when the Holy Spirit filled him, his unwillingness to surrender his bodily lusts for women wrought great destruction and eventually death. From wasting time chasing pagan women to allowing Delilah to break his Nazarene vow (Jdg. 14, 16), Samson's carnality resulted in God severely judging him with brutal slavery, a shortened life, and countless lost opportunities for godly service and eternal rewards. Also, while Saul was initially a successful and Spirit-filled king, his unwillingness to surrender his soulish, self-centered attitudes drove him into a hostile relationship with God. Beginning with making an unlawful sacrifice and disobediently sparing the Amalekite's king and sheep (1 Sam. 13, 15), Saul began habitually overriding God's commands with what he believed was best, which resulted in the Lord rejecting him as Israel's king. As Samson's and Saul's lives demonstrate, sparing our bodily lusts and soulish attitudes allows our flesh to make us hostile to God, unable to serve Him, and deserved of His discipline.
Fortunately, the Scriptures reveal how we can overcome the flesh. This method comes from Galatians 5:16, which calls us to walk by the Spirit, who alone can defeat the flesh's temptations through the power of Christ's victory on Calvary. To explain, Galatians 5:24 reveals that Christ has crucified our flesh with its passions and desires. However, God cannot override our will, requiring us to choose between the flesh and the Spirit. Just like we must accept Christ's salvation to receive it, so must we choose to live in His victory over the flesh every time we are faced with its desires and attitudes. When we volitionally choose to surrender these temptations to the Holy Spirit, He puts them to death (Rom. 8:13), making the accomplished fact of our flesh's co-crucifixion with Christ our life experience. By habitually choosing to do this, we walk by the Spirit, which frees us to fully serve God according to the Holy Spirit's power through our human spirit.
The flesh's pleasures and attitudes cannot coexist with the Holy Spirit's desires and instructions, for attempting to preserve the former divides our heart and makes it as unstable and unfruitful as a divided kingdom. Because this fleshly life cannot please, serve, or worship God, we must be willing to habitually walk by the Spirit to rid ourselves of all that is of the flesh if we truly desire to be useful to Him. Thankfully, it is never too late to begin this walk, for 1 John 1:9 promises that God will be faithful to forgive us and cleanse us from our fleshly patterns of life if we humbly come before Him, confess them, and desire to live a repentant life through His Spirit.
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