Learning to Walk in the Spirit

2008

There’s a big part of the religious world that mistakes apathy for peace. If I don’t care about sins in my life, if I don’t care about failures, then that brings me peace. Well, the problem with that is the whole Scripture story demonstrates pretty clearly that God does care about that stuff. So, you’re putting yourself at war with God when you say, “I don’t care about sin.” That’s not peace, that’s peace where there is no peace. That’s a false peace. That’s the devil’s peace.

Alright, so now I decide that I do want to be perfect as He is perfect. I want to put to death the misdeeds of the body; I want to deal with the garbage in my life—pride, vanity, selfishness and laziness, and temper—all that stuff. I do want to deal with it, and I’m passionate about it. But if I fail again and again and again—that’s where faith becomes the issue. Romans 8 says, “We put to death the misdeeds of the body by the Spirit.” Well, apathy says, “I don’t care about putting to death the misdeeds of the body.” But if you do care and you fail repeatedly, isn’t the temptation then to be discouraged? Depressed? Hostile? Judgmental of yourself? Judgmental of others? The tendency is to become unstable if we care a lot about what God cares about and we fail. The temptation is to become unstable. We’re either angry and hostile and walking around with emotion, or we’re tempted to be apathetic. Right?

Well, there is another solution, and that’s to learn how to walk in the Spirit, which is what it’s all about. I mean, God allows us to fail so that we can learn to put to death the misdeeds of the body by the Spirit. He wants to prove to us (that) you can’t do it by willpower; you can’t do it by your great skills and all your knowledge and all your niceties. You can’t do it with a thousand people helping you.

Oh, surely I can do it—just hold me accountable. Hold me accountable—that’ll solve all my problems. No, it won’t! It won’t either—it’ll drive you nuts. And it will drive them nuts. Now, that doesn’t mean accountability isn’t one of God’s tools, but accountability doesn’t solve the problem. “Put to death the misdeeds of the body by accountability.” Wrong! “Put to death the misdeeds of the body by the Spirit.” So, like Edison, if you fail 10,000 times, what have you learned? You’ve learned you’ve not learned how to walk in the Spirit, yet. You didn’t learn it doesn’t matter—‘cause I’ve failed so many times it doesn’t matter anymore. You didn’t learn to beat yourself to a pulp because “I’m such a failure,” and “I can’t do this, and there’s no use, and it’s too hard.” What you learned if you keep your eyes on the prize—if you understand that by faith we can throw mountains into the sea—we can uproot the fig tree, and we can wither the fig tree, and we can, you know, accomplish greater works than these, as Jesus said we could. These things are all true because God said so! GOD SAID SO!

The God who spoke the world into existence said this other thing too. That is, you can put to death the misdeeds of the body by the Spirit.

So, it isn’t working out today. What have I learned? Well, I’ve learned to become apathetic?—No. I’ve learned to be really mad, and angry, and depressed?—No. You’ve learned one more thing that’s not walking in the Spirit. You’ve learned that you’re not connected to the head somehow—you’re not properly connected to the vine. What’s God’s goal? That you’d be a patient person instead of impatient? That you’d be self-controlled instead of controlled by fleshly things? That’s not really His goal. That’s evidence that you haven’t yet reached His goal. His goal is that you be connected to the head. His goal is that you walk in the Spirit, as He is in the Spirit. That you would commune with Him and not do anything you don’t see the Father doing. That’s His goal. All these other things are just evidence that you haven’t learned how to do that yet. The selfishness, the pride, the laziness, the dumb remarks, the lack of self-control—these other things. They’re not the enemy—they’re evidence that the enemy has not yet been conquered. They’re not the enemy. Lack of self-control, pride, selfishness, fear, laziness—those aren’t the enemy. Those are evidences that the enemy has not yet been conquered.

What is the enemy? Lack of connectedness to the head. The enemy is: Not walking in the Spirit, instead walking in the flesh. The Spirit and the flesh wage war with one another. All of our failures are evidence that we’re not yet learning how to be connected to the head and walk in the Spirit. Okay? So, that’s a whole different ball game. Because now, instead of a thousand enemies that we have to beat, and then the pride of “I overcame this, and I overcame that,” and all this confusion, and then you fail again, and you’re just topsy-turvy up and down the roller coaster—that’s all external stuff that really has nothing to do with the real issue. The real issue is you put to death the misdeeds of the body by the Spirit. Okay, I’ve not effectively put to death the misdeeds of the body, what did I learn? I learned that I’m not keeping in step with the Spirit. I’ve learned that I’m not communing properly with the Godhead. Because—those things—when I behold Him—we’re drawn into by ever-increasing Glory into the image of the Son. I’ve somehow lost sight of beholding the Son and walking in the Spirit.

There’s my problem. That’s the enemy. These other things are just the breadcrumbs along the trail to demonstrate that we, in fact, are not quite as close to Jesus as we thought we were. They’re just evidences of that. They’re not the real enemy. Whatever the thing happens to be.

So, that’s actually kind of cool. It’s like the Edison thing. I’ve learned 10,000 things that don’t work. Yes!!!