Nougat 25

Sometimes we don’t remember that there’s a war waging inside of us. Our human (flesh) selves desire to be in total control, which is not quite aligned with what God’s Spirit, living in our hearts, desires for us. How do we deal with this battle – consider Today’s Holy Nougat

Galatians 5:16-17 NIV

[16] So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

[17] For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.

Walking by God’s Spirit

It really is straightforward. But it is not as easily manifested. We are spiritual beings, so it ought to be natural for us to yield to God’s Spirit, right? Not quite. And right there, is the issue. Yielding to God. That is the root of the problem.

Self-Check

How readily do our spirits yield to God’s?

Digging Deeper

If it is that at the beginning of time God created God’s ‘mini-me’ called humanity, then much of God’s nature can be found in humanity. It’s like us carrying traits of our parents and even distant family members simply because we share the same gene pool. The psalmist summarises it best, ‘we are fearfully and wonderfully made’ (Psalm 139); and humanity ‘is a little lower than [God]’ (some theologians indicate that the original text says God, not angels in Psalm .

Now if God is by nature Spirit, then as ones made as God’s ‘mini-me’, we are also spiritual beings. God is creative and has individual power, able to think of and execute ideas without the need to consult others. Humanity is also creative and capable of individual thought, created and executed without others’ input or feedback.

When in our finite bodies, we realised that we are just a little lower than God, our spirits – the part of us that is most like God – felt that we don’t necessarily need to yield to God’s Spirit. Hence the war is being waged within. (See the origins as well as the consequences of that discovery in Genesis 3.)

So siblings, thanks to a bit of outside, unholy spiritual interference, our spirits constantly seek to be independent of God’s Spirit. That’s partly explained in the Parable of the Lost Son, when the younger son left home. It is true that we don’t hear that the younger son was influenced by others, but isn’t it strange that he just upped and left the comfort of his father’s home to ‘experience the world’? How did he know he had an inheritance to collect, or that there was another world outside of his father’s house? He was influenced.

For as capable as we are of having individual thought, being God’s mini-me also means we are created with the desire to be led by God. If we choose not to be led by God, we open ourselves to be led by self, others, or the enemy of our souls. Like the lost second son, we may find that life outside of God’s Spirit is empty and hopeless. That’s the moment when we ought to decide to remain yielded to God’s Spirit.

In that moment, though a child of God, we come as servants, declaring our readiness to follow the leading of God’s Spirit, and not our own. For a servant has no desire to make his/ her own decisions, although the capability is there. The servant understands that it is all about the master’s will. Nothing else. S/he acts by the master plan. For us, that master is God’s Spirit, Who lives within.

Point to Ponder

What is God’s master plan for us today, and will we choose to live by (according to) God’s Spirit?

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May all we seek be found in Christ