Walk after the Spirit (Our Spiritual Walk #6)
Galatians 5:16, 25; Romans 8:1
INTRODUCTION:
Galatians 5:25 If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.
When we talk about our Spiritual Walk, we’re talking about more than taking a step or two. We’re talking about something that takes energy, that has a purpose, and that gets us somewhere. In a physical walk energy can be measured in calories. I know all about that. In my case, if I take a 30 minute walk, at about 3.5 mph, I’ll expend about 155 calories. When I do that kind of walking, my purpose is to burn those calories and I hope my destination will be better health and maybe even weight loss!
Romans 8:1 tell us There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. As Christians, we have a choice between two ways of walking. We can walk after the flesh or we can walk after the Spirit.
The first option – to walk after the flesh – is the default walk. This is the only option we have as unredeemed human beings. The second option – to walk after the Spirit – is available only through Jesus Christ – who came to earth so that we would have an entirely NEW life – and an entirely NEW Walk.
For a long time, I thought of walking in the Spirit as kind of a vague idea --- something that sounded good, but I had no real idea what it meant. I now realize this is something that’s not only important, it’s essential. This is the real secret of living the life God wants me to live. This is a very real choice we make every day … maybe even every hour of the day. We’ll talk first about how it looks to walk after the Flesh.
1. Walking after the FLESH
• FUEL
Fleshly walking uses a lot of FUEL --- it causes us to constantly run out of FUEL it depends entirely on human energy. The result of running on human energy is always the same: exhaustion and frustration. None of us … not even the best of us … have the inner strength to meet all the demands of life … not to mention the standards we set for ourselves and the behaviors other people expect from us.
The Apostle Paul talked about this kind of frustration in Romans 7:18-19: For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. And a few verses later, he cried out “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” Romans 7:24
I’ve experienced this kind of frustration many times. It’s how you feel when you try to break a bad habit, but you fall right back into it. It’s how you feel when you vow to be patient with someone, but you end up losing your temper. It’s how you feel when you determine to get up early every morning and spend quality time with God, but after a day or two you find yourself hitting snooze on the alarm.
The frustration that has really plagued me over the years has been weight control. I’ve tried just about every diet known to man --- I’ve tried out fad diets, bought into expensive commercial diets, I’ve done five day diets, two week diets, you name it, and I’ve done it. I even came up with my own diet which I called “the simpleton diet.” The one rule was: eat only one thing per meal. That worked until I started cheating. For example, I called a Chinese buffet one thing because, after all, it was all Chinese food. I definitely violated the spirit of my own law, and it all went downhill from there, or perhaps uphill if you look at the scales. In the end, I think my most successful effort was probably the “if it tastes good, spit it out” diet!
We all know the frustration of giving all we have to do what we want to do, but falling short time and time again. Whatever area of life we look at, all of us can identify with the Apostle Paul’s cry of the wretched man. The FUEL of human effort is just not enough to get us through the WALK of life.
• FOCUS
What do we do when we get frustrated with repeated failures? We FOCUS on what WE can do better. We rev up all our own will-power. We line our bookshelves with self-help books; we may rest up and rev up and try again. And maybe we succeed for a while. Maybe we even break one of our bad habits. But then what happens? More bad habits keep cropping up. In the end, we always come crashing back to the limits of our own ability.
If we walk the fleshly walk, we must attempt to live up to some sort of standard. It may be our own standard that we impose on ourselves, or it may be the standard outlined by others. People often look for some set of religious rules they can follow so they’ll feel righteous. The specific rules may vary, but every moral code or religion requires specific behaviors from their adherents.
• Some Christian groups demand that members fulfill certain requirements in order to be in good standing. That’s why the writers of the New Testament warned the churches against falling into legalism.
• Other religious examples might include the five pillars of Islam, or the “noble eight-fold path” of Buddhism.
• Secular examples might be the pressure to achieve financial success or to maintain physical attractiveness so you can be acceptable to the group you're in.
Many people spend their whole life trying to meet some sort of standard that will make them acceptable. Those who walk after the flesh are always desperately looking for the FINISH LINE!
• FINISH LINE
The hard reality is that there IS no Finish Line! When we Walk after the flesh we’re walking in circles. It’s a never-ending cycle of behavior-focused living that goes round and round and round. Effort, success, failure, try again … over and over and over.
There’s no victory in sight for the fleshly walk. Even those who are amazingly gifted and have astounding self-control can’t live up to their own standards. So in the end, folks either admit their failures, and feel ashamed, or they pretend to be perfect, and then they end up arrogant and conceited, and hypocritical. Either way, it’s a dead-end walk.
No wonder Paul cried out, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”
2. Walk after the SPIRIT
Now we get to the good news! Walking after the flesh is NOT our only option. We can choose to Walk after the SPIRIT. We can join Paul who followed his “wretched man” cry with this joy-filled exclamation: “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Romans 7:8 .
• FUEL
We no longer have to run on the inferior FUEL of our own self-effort. We can tap into the power of the Holy Spirit who lives within us. This is an unlimited source of FUEL! This is the inexhaustible energy that raised Jesus from the dead. We hear a lot of talk now-a-days about our energy crisis. Because of Jesus, our personal energy crisis is over!
Look at the contrast! The fleshly walk is an exhausting attempt to work our way into some sort of righteousness by self-effort. The spiritual walk is powered by the indwelling Spirit of Christ. This is like sharing your walk with a best friend. The Holy Spirit serves as our coach when we need a pep talk, our counselor when we are down in the dumps, our adviser when we lack wisdom, our mentor when we need a model of right living, or our GPS system when we take a wrong turn. Walking in the Spirit is entirely different than walking on your own. This is the opposite of trying to be the captain of your soul and the master of your fate.
But how do we put this into practice … in a practical sense, how do I know if I’m walking after the Spirit?
• FOCUS
It’s all about where we put our FOCUS. When we walk in the FLESH, our focus is on self. We look to our own self-control, our own oomph, our personal goals. When we walk in the Spirit we set out minds on God’s power and on what the Holy Spirit wants to accomplish.
Romans 8:5-6 says, Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace.
What does it mean to set your mind on the flesh or on the Spirit? The first time I tried setting my mind on the Spirit for a whole day … I was in college. I took a job working at a meat market. For almost 5 hours at a time, I worked in a meat locker, moving around boxes of meat, and hind quarters of beef. I mopped and cleaned all by myself which gave me quite a bit of time to think about things. I finally decided that instead of thinking my thoughts to myself, I would share my thoughts with Christ in a kind of informal and conversational prayer. This transformed my time alone into time spent with my Lord practicing His presence in my life. My 5 hours of work were not only good for me physically, by helping me loose weight, but also good for me spiritually, drawing me closer to Jesus Christ.
You see, every day we make a choice. We either focus our minds on things of the Spirit or we dwell on things of the flesh. We can’t do both at the same time. If you discover your mind focusing on earthly concerns, you can stop that pattern mid-thought and bring your attention back to the Spirit.
This doesn’t mean that we ignore what’s going on around us, but it means that we remember who we really are. We remember WHO is walking with us. We remember that, even though we are walking on earth, our REAL walk is in the Kingdom of God. It is possible to think about the responsibilities and details of human life through a spiritual lens. In this way, we consciously include the Holy Spirit in even our most mundane activities and routines.
On any given day, our minds will run in spiritual paths or in fleshly circles. There’s no Finish Line for the mind on the flesh … but the FINISH LINE is the best part of walking in the Spirit.
• FINISH LINE
When we walk after the Spirit, we live a life of ongoing Victory! 1 John 5:4 tells us, Everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Since FAITH is the victory, any time we are walking in FAITH, we are walking in Victory!
By focusing on the Spirit, we are freed from our old attitudes and behaviors. Our efforts no longer go toward trying to overcome sin. Our efforts go to keeping our minds and hearts focused on the Spirit of Life. When we walk after the Spirit, we will naturally find that we are no longer fulfilling the desires of the flesh. Far from the wretched frustration of walking according to the flesh, we can enjoy the exhilarating victory of walking after the Spirit.
It’s hard to describe in words what it feels like to walk in the Spirit. But once you experience it, you will never want to live any other way!
CONCLUSION:
We’ll conclude with an amazing promise in Galatians 5:16 - So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
It’s that simple. You CAN’T sin at the same time that you’re walking in the Spirit. Jesus is our example in this. Jesus is the only sinless person who ever lived --- This wasn’t because … in his human nature… he had super-strong will power and self control. Jesus overcame sin the same way we can overcome sin. Jesus was sinless all the time because He walked in the Spirit all the time! He is the proof that when you walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
So when we find ourselves sinning … rather than trying to overcome by relying on our own willpower … we can think this way: “This is a reminder that I need to walk by the Spirit. I’m going to pray for forgiveness and then re-set my mind on Christ.”
When we walk in the Spirit, our wrong attitudes and behaviors will just fade away … in God’s timing and by God’s power.
Instead, God will produce in us the fruits of the Spirit --- things like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness (Galatians 5:22). This is the description of life whenever we walk in the Spirit.
