There have been constant struggles between a natural influence and a spiritual influence battling to gain control of human beings. People have tried hard to classify the natural influence as “the flesh” while the other is “the Spirit.” As contained in the lead text of this devotional, the natural influence called “sinful nature” or the ‘flesh’ opposes the “The Spirit nature” called the Holy Spirit. The Spiritual conflict simply tells of how the natural and the spiritual natures oppose one another by struggling to take over the desires of man. It is a conflict because what the nature and the spirit want man to responds to and keeps doing is direct opposite. While the sinful nature, the flesh, pushes man do just what the flesh desires the Spirit nature insists on man doing what pleases God only.
One important thing to point at here is that a spirit is involved in the works of the flesh as well as the works which urges man to do only those things which please God. The spirit that desires man do what the flesh wants does is known as ‘evil spirit’ while that that makes man does things according to God’s heart is known as the ‘Holy Spirit.” For instance, the evil spirit would tell man ‘kill your brother’, nothing will happen’ then the Holy Spirit would tell man ‘if you kill your brother the law will go after you, so don’t kill’. The sinful nature spirit pushes man into loving pleasurable things of the world while the Holy Spirit pushes man into doing holy things. The minds and hearts of men and women are however responsible for taking the last decision of what to do. This is where the conflict stands. This makes man responds to either the voice of the sinful nature or the Holy Spirit a matter of choice.
We Christians are told that responding to the voice of the flesh against the voice of the Holy Spirit is sign of weakness on our part. It is weakness in the sense that it takes courage to refuse the voice of the flesh. An action taken is qualified by either yielding or refusing to do what the voice said. Those acting according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what the flesh desires, those acting according to the voice of the Spirit have their minds on doing holy things (Romans 8: 5). The devotional wishes to tell readers that those who incline their minds to sinful nature always have restlessness on their inside. The best option is having the Spirit of Christ on our inside. With the Spirit of Christ in us, our body may be dead by sin but our spirit will be alive in righteousness (Rom. 8: 9 – 10). Therefore, it will be wise for us to yield to the Holy Spirit’s control in any spiritual conflict we are involved in.
PRAYER:
HOLY SPIRIT, grant me the strength to yield to your prompting when passing through Spiritual conflicts of life that are sure to come to mankind in the name of Jesus Christ.
bishopubaudenyi@hopealivechurch