The Flesh Crowding out the Spirit

Every time I go to my knees I want to more fully know what it means to submit to God.

I often find myself questioning the battle that is being waged within my heart. Galatians 5:16-23 has been a large help in understanding these feelings of discontent. This passage explains that the Spirit and the flesh are at absolute odds with each other, the Spirit is against the flesh and the flesh is against the Spirit. Subconsciously I feel that I was always aware of this truth but had never felt it within my own spiritual walk, probably because my walk has been historically shallow.

There is certainly a spiritual warfare occurring within all of our hearts.  What else would explain thoughts so evidently bad, followed by thoughts so evidently good?

It is my belief that there is only so much room within our heart. This room is either filled with the desires of the flesh or the Spirit, an area of the heart cannot be filled with both.

As Christians we must make Christ the gatekeeper of our hearts. Through Him we must open the door to our heart and allow our sinful desires to be dug out of their firmly established homes.

Things of the flesh are not easily torn from their homes, after all it is through the fulfillment of these desires that we have derived pleasure for years. Sin does temporarily fulfill us.  If every sin felt immediately disgusting, there would be no temptation to indulge ourselves. But, we must quickly realize sin will never fully gratify.  True fulfillment is found in accepting the offering of the Almighty.  An offering to wash away our sins, fill us with the Holy Spirit.  A promise so beautiful, but far too dull to the minds of many in a western world that is far too comfortable with the doctrines of Christianity.  There is nothing boring about eternal life.

I love John 14-16 because in these chapters Jesus constantly refers back to this Counselor he is going to send us. He tells the disciples that having the Holy Spirit in their hearts is going to be more beneficial than Jesus Himself physically walking and talking with them. Imagine the disciples' reactions when they were told they would be better off without Jesus. The beauty of this revelation is that through it we learn that God is offering the same gift to every human being that graces this planet in the After Death (AD) era.

How easy it is for us to forget how great of a gift the Holy Spirit is. He is such a gift that we must make every effort to clear our hearts for Him; He will not occupy areas of our hearts where we are still clutching sin. This is why it is imperative for Christians to declare a war on the desires of our flesh. What an insult it is to not accept the gift of the Holy Spirit with gratitude. Luckily, through prayer and repentance God opens the doors of our heart and the Spirit begins to dwell in us. Once the Spirit is inside of us He begins to help us uproot our sins; however, I often find that He does not always immediately fill the void that was left by sin. I believe this is where a Christian's endurance must kick in (James 1:2-4). We must muster up all our strength to hold the walls of our heart open. It is during this process that God is purifying us, trying us by fire so that He can make us shine. Our hearts are crying out to God, "I can't do this anymore Lord the weights of this void are so heavy". Meanwhile we continue to resist this sin that has held us captive. In the moment when we feel like we cannot hold up the weight of world a second longer, God fills the void left by the eradicated sin and the satisfaction is rich. We gain an instant appreciation for how comforting the Spirit is, we begin to see the fruits of our hardship throughout our lives, and it is from these moments that we build our love for God and an unquenchable thirst for the presence of His Spirit.

If we don't embark on a full-scale war with our sinful nature then we are robbing ourselves of all the gifts God has to offer. By putting ourselves at the mercy of the Spirit and ridding ourselves of our unhealthy pleasures, our faith and love in Christ will grow exponentially. Once we hold up under our first practices of purification, the next stages become easier, not because the work the Spirit is doing is less important or less painstaking, but because we have learned to love and trust the Trinity. Problems and pain begin to become smaller and smaller when our trust in Him has become larger and larger.

Knowledge, Roots, and the Christian Faith

We've spent our whole lives learning to live our lives the way we want, our parents want, or our culture wants.  In order to be a child of God we should be prepared to spend as much time learning to live how God wants.

The true necessity for deep spiritual knowledge has been perplexing me lately. Although following Christ is certainly based upon one's faith that lies in Him and the pursuance of a loving relationship with the Trinity, the role of deep knowledge of scriptures and biblical truths has been weighing on my heart lately. I believe that a desire to know God's scriptures and truths to a further extent is often proof of a growing love for Him and His ways, but not always.

Turning one's pursuit of knowledge into a Christian competition is certainly counterproductive, as competition is largely rooted in pride and a tightly held pride can not be part of a loving relationship with God, which is the point of Christianity and our ultimate calling in life:

And he (Jesus) said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Matthew 22:37-39

When the Son of God, fully divine, and therefore of the same divinity as the Creator of this beautifully complex world says something like: "This is the first and greatest commandment",  we must sit up and listen. However, learning what it means to love the Lord with everything we have, as this passage clearly states, is a lifelong process. Recently I've been struggling with how someone like myself, one wanting to understand everything around him, can truly love the Lord his God with his mind without sacrificing the love of his heart.

Can I keep my humility while also pursuing deep theological knowledge of God? Is it even necessary?

First, the words of Paul come to mind.  In 1 Corinthian 3:1-4, Paul scolds the Corinthians for remaining infants in their faith.  A Christian remaining an infant in their knowledge of the Christian teachings for an extended period of time is just as ludicrous as a 15 year-old insisting on remaining in preschool where they are comfortable playing with blocks.

Likewise, having a deep understanding, as deep as fallible human understanding can go, of the Trinity and its ways is necessary for many to stand firm in the faith among the vast number of temptations the world is able to throw at us. In this analogy, the Christian is a tree and her level of understanding is her roots. Without any roots the tree is going to be non-existent and therefore not a Christian at all. All Christians must have roots of some sort. The width of the root system is symbolic of all the different types of biblical truths: the love of God, Jesus' atoning death, the role the Spirit plays in our lives, etc. The deeper our knowledge of any of these truths, the deeper our roots.

Ideally, a Christian would have a constantly growing, broad, balanced root system. One can not stand on one single extremely deep root, and one will not stand in the face of adversity if the roots are broad but shallow. Both a shallow root system and a root system boasting only a single deep root will be uprooted by the first wind.

God did not create us to be satisfied with either of these root systems, and if we are then it is a sign that we are not truly in love with the magnificent Creator and therefore not a Child of God at all.