Romans 8:5-17 NIRV 

“Don’t live under the control of your sinful nature (flesh). If you do, you will think about what your sinful nature (flesh) wants. Live under the control of the Holy Spirit. If you do, you will think about what the Spirit wants. The way a sinful person thinks leads to death. But the mind controlled by the Spirit brings life and peace.  The sinful mind is at war with God. It does not obey God’s law. It can’t. Those who are controlled by their sinful nature (flesh) can’t please God. But your sinful nature (flesh) does not control you. The Holy Spirit controls you. The Spirit of God lives in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Christ.  Christ lives in you. So your body is dead because of sin. But your spirit is alive because you have been made right with God.  The Spirit of the One who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you. So the God who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your bodies, which are going to die. He will do this by the power of his Spirit, who lives in you.

“Brothers and sisters, we have a duty. Our duty is not to live under the control of our sinful nature.  If you live under the control of your sinful nature, you will die. But by the power of the Holy Spirit you can put to death the sins your body commits. Then you will live. Those who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. You didn’t receive a spirit that makes you a slave to fear once again. Instead you received the Holy Spirit, who makes you God’s child. By the Spirit’s power we call God “Abba.” Abba means Father. The Spirit himself joins with our spirits. Together they give witness that we are God’s children.  As his children, we will receive all that he has for us. We will share what Christ receives. But we must share in his sufferings if we want to share in his glory.”

It’s my desire to not just live for Jesus, but to live like Jesus. To be led by the Spirit and not the flesh, to ignore the dictates and desires of my body and enter into the kind of relationship I was created for, one in fellowship with God. It’s something that can only be done by the Spirit of God that lives in me. So each time I pray in the Spirit, I’m fueling the fire in me, my spirit speaking to His Spirit and His Spirit speaking to my spirit. It’s as a husband and wife shares their deepest most intimate secrets with each other, parts of themselves hidden from public view, woven into the two making them one.  The mystery of love and life flowing from one to the other, God giving us life by His Spirit, intimacy, deep communion, joy, peace and the deepest of satisfaction.

It doesn’t mean you won’t experience the pain and suffering of life, it means you don’t allow it to dominate you any longer. You control the flesh, the flesh no longer controls you. How can this be, you ask? Remember, Jesus said he would send us a helper, the Holy Spirit, it is he that would lead us into all truth. We can’t live life in our bodies without food and water to sustain it, neither can our spirits live without the sustaining life giving Word of God. Deuteronomy 8:3 NLT says, “Yes, he humbled you by letting you go hungry and then feeding you with manna, a food previously unknown to you and your ancestors. He did it to teach you that people do not live by bread alone; rather, we live by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”

Is your spirit hungry? Feed it. It may have been ‘previously unknown to you’, but as you begin to allow the Holy Spirit to lead you into the deep hidden truth, it will become the very thing that feeds and gives your spirit the life it needs to overcome in every area. It will give you the power to heal the sick and raise the dead, not just physical death, but spiritual death. There’s nothing like being free and that’s how God wants us to live. Free. So lets lay down the things that we’ve been reaching for and trying to hold onto. Things we thought would bring us happiness but have fallen short in so many ways. When you obtain one thing, it will lose it’s luster and you’ll have to go for more and more and more because nothing in this ‘flesh’ life will ever satisfy us like the Spirit of God in us.  So lets invest in our spirits not our flesh. Let us allow God to be big in us so that we can be who we need to be to a lost and dying world.