Galatians 5:16-17 says, “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.”
What are the deeds of the flesh? Read on in Galatians 5:19-25, “Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: sexual immorality, impurity, indecent behavior, idolatry, witchcraft, hostilities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let’s follow the Spirit as well.”
I had a friend ask me the other day, how can I remain pure sexually, not being married. Gotta admit that I’ve never been physically intimate with someone outside of marriage, ever, even before I was a Christian, and they see my life and how I’ve been divorced around a decade now and think I’m some super human to be able to wait like that.
How can I control myself, they ask. Looking at me like I’m some weird robot. 😂
Beep, boop, bop, does not compute. Kidding. Not a robot. 😜
The way I’m able to stay pure and chaste is by WALKING IN THE SPIRIT!!!!
The more I spend time with GOD, the more HIS desires become MY desires. A desire to obey Him, trust Him, love Him, know that HE meets all my needs, not some fleshly gratification.
Does that mean there’s not temptation? No way.
I live in this world, same as you, same as your friends, and same as everyone else. There’s ALWAYS temptation. Our world is REAL GOOD at sending temptation our way, isn’t it?!
Just yesterday I was searching something totally innocent and this guy pops up with his shirt off and I had to RUN as quickly as possible to get off that search (thanks GOOGLE! thanks a lot.) 😒
Point is, we all are human and we all WILL have those desires, but the more we line our lives up with God, let HIM permeate our hearts and souls, the more we RUN from the deeds of the flesh, whatever those might be for us personally.
Whether it’s sexual immorality, jealousy, drunkenness, or anything else. It’s all the same and we want to keep ourselves pure. No one is perfect from sin. No one can live life perfectly, but we try our ABSOLUTE BEST to live according to HIS light. We RUN from temptation like it’s the plague, and we seek to be a holy people set apart for the Lord’s work. The more we mortify our flesh (that is, to kill it, run from temptation, etc.) the more POWER and VICTORY we have over those sins that want to entangle us.
Yes, indeed, WE CAN have victory over sin. Even the ones that have a really huge grip on our lives. We are set free in Christ and we CAN overcome it. Is it easy? Nope. It’s not. But what part of life IS easy, I ask you? Anything? Anything at all? It’s not.
When we are in heaven, everything will be perfect. In the meantime, God knows our pain, our sufferings, and our struggles and He is CONSTANTLY THERE to help. 🙌 The next time you’re drawn in and tempted to do something that you shouldn’t, a deed of the flesh, run, and ask God to help your heart. The more you say NO, the easier it gets.
Did you get that???
The more you say NOOOOOOOO, the easier it is to run AWAY from things.
Another way that walking in the spirit really helps me with the deeds of the flesh, sexual immorality in particular, is that I see people as souls. That guy with his shirt off that I saw for a mili-second before I squinted my eyes and shut out the browser tab is not some guy to me. He’s a soul. And…do I really like his soul?
Most likely not. Why? Because he’s probably not saved. Genuinely saved people aren’t going out there PURPOSELY trying to make others sin and flaunting their sexuality!!! Why WOULD I like him?!?!?!
We want to like people whom we respect. Do I respect that guy? NOT….AT….ALL. But I DOOOOO, absolutely, respect my future husband, whoever that will be, and out of a great respect for HIM, I want to keep myself pure. I don’t want to HURT my future husband in any way or bring him pain at all. Would my future husband be happy with me if I was doing all kinds of bad stuff? Well, if he’s a guy I WANT (a godly man), he won’t like me to do those things. So out of a respect for HIM, that is, my future husband, I also do not do those things and it helps me be able to stay on the right track.
Listen, do whatever it takes to kill the deeds of the flesh. Because it’s a very slow fade that leads a person from “just looking” to…”I just did”. Just ask my ex-husband about that one! He’d been looking at porn since he was 14 years old. And, in a man’s mind, they CANNOT separate an image from real life. Images ARE real to men. And it’s “okay” to “just look” he said, so it’s okay to do more and over the years, adultery became okay to him too….and it destroyed us.
👉 His not saying no to the seemingly “small” things, destroyed our marriage.
So again I say, how vitally important this is. KILL, ANAOLATE the deeds of the flesh! Hold no prisoners. Do not think they are “innocent”. I promise you, they are NEVER innocent.
So…what does it mean to walk in the spirit?
To walk in the Spirit means to the best of our ability, we follow God’s lead. We give up OUR agendas in order to stop resisting where He is taking us – which is to make every part of us more like Christ (to conform us to His image).
We never have to worry because the Holy Spirit will never lead us off course (isn’t that soooo totally amazing?!?!) – we can trust Him completely even if it feels like we’re moving in the wrong direction.
The Holy Spirit also plays a very active role in helping us obey what the Bible commands, which is exactly what we need in order to lay aside the desires of the flesh or our agendas.
These aren’t my words, but I thought this was said so well that I wanted to quote it – “walk” in the Bible is often a metaphor for practical daily living. So practically speaking walking in the Spirit means things like we’re reading our Bibles so that we learn and become able to walk in love. Christians who walk in the Spirit love God and other people – and it shows. It will be obvious! Look at all of the other fruits of the Spirit as outlined in Galatians 5:22-23. When walking in the Spirit, we’re openly walking in goodness, kindness, patience, and so on.
That being said, walking in the Spirit is the exact opposite of walking in the flesh. When the flesh is in charge, the Bible says it will be confirmed by the evidence of sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, and the like as outlined in Galatians 5:19-21.
And when we walk in the Spirit, things like this won’t have the same control over us as they did before we were saved.
Victory is ours, in Christ alone. Hide yourself in Him dear loved ones, hide yourself there and never leave, and you will do well. 💖💖💖
So, your next question will be (at least it was mine, when I was learning all this), “Okay so how do I ACTUALLY walk in the spirit? Is it just some woo-woo thing that I’m supposed to pray for and God just, grants me somehow?” Because at the end of the day, I can tell you to go walk in the spirit and it never changes anyone. We don’t know HOW to actually GET THERE. Does that make sense?
So let’s talk about some practical ways to walk in the spirit…or at least, how I personally do it so you can glean from it.
The first, and most important thing I do, to make sure I’m walking in the spirit on a continual basis is to:
Saturate myself in the Word
Every morning, I wake up, get out of bed, walk over to my vanity in my bedroom, open my Bible and pray and ask God to show me what HE wants me to do for the day. Almost every single day I do this.
Why? So that the FIRST fruits of my day are HIS. They belong to Him. My life is His, it belongs to Him.
I ask Him to lead me, show me what to do, what to work on, on the blog, what friends to answer questions to, use me Lord, help me serve others. I’m praying He leads and guides me, and asking Him if He has any information for me (convictions) that I need to take care of or focus on that day.
I do this, while fasting. I didn’t eat in the morning yet, and I feel like it’s a good offering to the Lord: my heart, not having ate yet. I think for me, fasting is key during that time.
This is massive to my spiritual walk, that before I even open the door to my bedroom to get online or do whatever, I’ve taken even 10 minutes, to pray. Sometimes, there’s nothing (no convictions, tasks, etc.) and it’s like 5 minutes. Sometimes, I sit there for an hour, He’s convicting me of a lot. But either way, it’s His time and His will and His life – a life on fire for Him.
Next, throughout my entire day, I open up my Bible to read it and seek Him at LEAST 20 times every single day. I’m CONSTANTLY in His Word. CONSTANTLY tucking it away into my heart. My Bibles (I have one in just about every room in the house!) is my most important earthly treasure. Without my Bible, I cannot make it through the day. I am emphatically in love with His Word.
Throughout the day, I’m also working on posts like this. Writing a post, really gets all that I’ve learned OUT OF ME, to teach you. I’m also READING posts. I have a team, who is very gifted and I love learning from THEM. They will write a post and I’ll read it and learn and glean and add to it what knowledge I have all well so that it is this really beefy, amazing post that REALLY helps people and gets to the meat of the matter.
So, I have the Word of God in my heart from the Bible, then I’m writing posts, reading posts, constantly learning. Surrounding myself with GODLY people, so that we can all lift each other up to be better people. If you’re feeling all alone in your Christian walk, here’s a post about how to get through that, I feel like I’m a lone ranger in my walk with Christ! I will say it very clearly, that it is BETTER to be alone, than it is to be around people who are dragging you down in your spiritual walk.
Being alone is NOT fun (although, for an only child like me, it comes REAL easy, I must admit), but I’d rather be alone than surrounded by a ton of moral pollution that affects me and my walk. That doesn’t mean, live like a monk, but it does mean that we have to chose our friends very wisely (1 Corinithians 15:33), even as adults.
This means, if your unsaved family is making you be bad, it calls for drastic action of staying away from them if they are causing you to sin. This isn’t easy. You love your family. You’d die for them. But you cannot allow them to drag you down to their level. So limiting time with them is important, no matter HOW much you love them. Christ…is MORE important. Obviously, we want to witness to them, but if they are NOT LISTENING, you may just have to shake the dust off your feet and leave as much as humanly possible (Matthew 10:14).
Keep your mind in God’s truths
I also try to listen to as many sermons as humanly possible. I LOVE listening to a sermon while I’m creating printables or just for fun. Sermons are really important to spiritual growth and they are not just for Sunday’s. 😊
Constantly keeping yourself in the Word, finding good sermons to listen to, good Pastors you can learn from, is all key. I have a good playlist I’m working on creating at the moment, of all my favorite sermons here. So far, there’s two in there that are REALLY good and am working on adding more. I also have a playlist here of Charles Spurgeon sermons I’m working my way through. 😊
Making sure you are taking the time to completely saturate your mind in the Word of God and godly things (Philippians 4:8) is vital to a life on fire for God and walking in the spirit.
So if you’re focusing on those things…getting God’s Word and time with Him as much as you can, wherever you’re at in life and how much ever time you have, constantly focusing on Him, the more you’ll walk in the spirit and be spirit minded.
There are days you will fail and mess up, I do too, we all do. But if you do this as many days as you can, make it a goal every single day, you will begin to establish a pattern in your life, where you are focusing on God and the more you do that, the closer to HIM you will become and the further APART FROM THE WORLD, you will become!!! And that’s the key.
When you do that, you’ll see the world differently, you’ll learn the fear of the Lord and how to walk with Him daily. Your life will be completely transformed. It will become a pattern of your life (not a drudging-list-type-of-thing, but a heart-filled desire to be with Him), and then God can use you even MORE to reach others (because you will become a walking encyclopedia for the kingdom of God)!!!! And THAT…is amazing! 💖🥰💎🎉💯🎁🙌
