War For My Will, Part 2: Flesh vs. Spirit

Good morning, Passionate Life Church. We are in a series called War For My Will, and I want to be honest with you right up front. The enemy does not like this series. Last week, something happened where we did not get a recording of the message. Both services we tried and it got corrupted. We did not have a hard copy. We learn from our stuff, and we will have one going forward. But I just want to give you a quick recap of last week before we get into part two, because if you missed it, you are not going to be able to watch it.

Last week I laid out five reasons why aligning your life with the Father's will is the greatest thing you will ever do. Number one, eternal life. Number two, experiencing God's goodness, which so many people are missing out on because they are living their own way. Number three, the things we do in this physical body last for eternity. We are rewarded in eternity for how obedient we were with the life God gave us. Number four, God's plan always has a hope and a future for your life, no matter how crummy your week was. And my week was pretty crummy. I am going to talk about that this morning. Number five, living in super abundance. God has an abundant, full life for you when you align your will with His.
Now, today, we are going to talk about why that is not always easy. Let me pray first.

Jesus, I thank you that we can gather together and have hope in you. Father, I thank you for every person in this room and watching online right now. It is not by mistake that we are here. You have a word for us today that we need. Open our hearts and our minds to your eternal word. I bind and rebuke every other spirit out of this room right now in the mighty name of Jesus. We only welcome the Holy Spirit. Jesus, get me out of the way. None of me, but all of your Holy Spirit in Jesus name. Amen.

I Was Hacked This Week
Before I get into the meat of the message, I need to make an announcement. I was hacked this week. A couple of my emails and my phone number were completely hacked. They took over one of my financial apps and locked me out of it. It was crazy. And almost got into another one.

So listen, if you get an email from me asking you to buy gift cards and send them somewhere, that is not me. I do not want to have any secret meetings with anybody. I am not an undercover Saudi prince who needs your bank account to route twenty-five million dollars through. Pastor David was sitting across from me at church and got an email from me asking for a secret meeting. Pastor Josh was getting emails from me. It has been that kind of week. I changed my phone number and have been reaching out to people in my contacts, and everyone thinks I am a scammer. So I figured I would just tell everybody at once.

I did not get hacked because God needed me to have new preaching material. But we are going to get there.

Freedom Is a Choice
Galatians 5. For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. Let us stop right there. You have been called to live in freedom. But freedom is a choice. You have to choose it. Freedom in this country exists because people died for it. Freedom is never free, and there is sacrifice involved. But you have to choose it. You have to believe that what Jesus did on that cross two thousand years ago was complete.

And one of the things Jesus did on the cross is He lifted the fear of death from our lives. Look at the world today. People are terrified of getting older and dying. They are spending millions trying to reverse aging. There are people who have had themselves frozen, hoping to be revived when a cure is found. We are obsessed with not dying.

I was riding home from church a couple of weeks ago with my twelve-year-old Zeke, and we were talking about ages and timelines, and he goes, "How old do you want to live to, Dad?" And I said, "However long God wants me to live, as long as I am healthy and strong and can walk and see and hear. I want to complete everything God has in store for my life. I am fine living into my nineties." And he thought about it for a moment and said, "I want to live to seventy. Seventy is good." And here is a kid who is completely confident in his eternal life. He has no fear of death. And we should not either. When you are in Christ Jesus, that fear has been lifted. That is what it means to be called into freedom. We choose it every day.

But do not use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Paul is saying, look, you have freedom to do whatever you want. So do not use it to feed what your flesh craves. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love. For the whole law can be summed up in one commandment: love your neighbor as yourself. I am still working on that one. And if you are always biting and devouring one another, watch out. Paul is not talking to the world here. He is talking to a church. Stay unified. Your flesh wants to get offended. Your flesh wants to complain, be critical, gossip, and run from community. Do not do what your flesh wants. Stay free in your spirit.

James on Troubles, Testing, and Endurance
Now, let us flip over to James. James 1:2-8. Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. Even when people hack your email and your phone number, pretend to be you, and lock you out of your financial app.
I talked to my wife about it this week. I am not going to lie to you. I felt violated. I was ready to pull my money out of the bank, buy silver and gold, and hide it in the walls. I was ready to disconnect all of our phones. I was like, " Am I overreacting? And then I had to step back and say, at the end of the day, it is just money. It is just stuff. I still have my health. I still have my kids and my wife. I am still living for the Lord. And here is the thing about going through hard things. Your flesh always wants to go back. Always. Your flesh never wants to move forward. Your flesh says, " You know what would feel good right now? And it drags you back toward whatever it used to be before. Now, for me personally, drugs and alcohol are not a temptation anymore. God removed those desires completely the moment I surrendered. But I know what that feeling is. I understand the pull.

And it is relevant because last week, seventeen people got baptized. Praise God. And every single one of those people is now going to be tempted. They are a new creation in Christ Jesus, but they are still going to feel that tug. That pull back. The baptismal water was not even dry yet, and they will face their flesh trying to drag them backward. It is okay to have those human moments. What matters is that we repent, we turn around, and we ask God how to move forward.

For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. I got some endurance this week. Let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing. When your endurance is fully developed, you become bulletproof to the enemy. Not that you stop feeling. You are human. You still have emotions. You still go through hard things. But as far as your faith and the track God has for your life, nothing can pull you off course. You become bulletproof, and you plow right through the enemy's traps.

If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and He will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. But when you ask Him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver. A person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind. Such people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.

This is James, not me. You can get mad at me for reading the scripture if you want. You walked into a Bible-believing church today. This is what we preach.
But I want you to internalize this. This is not for the person next to you. Maybe your prayers are not getting answered because your loyalty is divided. Search your heart. I search my heart every single day. Just because I am up here on this platform does not mean you should put me on a pedestal. I struggle just like you do. I just have enough endurance that nothing is going to pull me off course. And I want that for you too. I want you to know who you are in Christ Jesus so firmly that no matter what happens in your life, you cannot be derailed. Because our flesh is constantly trying to do exactly that.

Your Flesh and the Tug of War
Back to Galatians 5. So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you will not be doing what your sinful nature craves. The sinful nature wants to do evil. Your flesh wants to sin. Now I know some people say, well, I am a good person. And you can do good things while living in your flesh. But we are sinful people. We have to acknowledge that our flesh wants to do sin. If you do not acknowledge this, the enemy will have a field day with you. You have to own it. My flesh is the problem. My sinful nature is an issue. And the spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what our sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other.

When I read this passage this week, I thought about my dog. If you have ever played tug of war with a dog, you know what this is. It does not matter which direction I am going. He is always going the opposite direction. He does not care where he ends up. He just wants to go against me. That is your flesh. Your flesh does not care which direction it is going. It just wants to go in the opposite direction of your spirit.

For those of you who are fighting to stay sober, know that it is going to be a battle, especially at first. For those battling anxiety, fear, anger, whatever it is, know that you are going into a fight. Satan does not want you living in freedom. But you are not just battling the enemy. You are battling your own flesh. And that is not shameful. That is just reality. And now that you know it, you can deal with it.

The Works of the Flesh and the Fruit of the Spirit
When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear. The Apostle Paul lists them in Galatians 5. Sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, which I had this week, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties. I do not have time to go through all of these in depth today, but let me say something about sorcery because it is getting more prevalent and it is seeping into the church disguised as spirituality. Tarot cards, crystals, Ouija boards, and dream catchers. These things are not harmless. Drugs are also in this category. I am not going to pretend otherwise. When you give yourself to these things, you are giving yourself over to your flesh, and you are producing something in your life.

And then Paul says this, and this is not me, this is the Apostle Paul: anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the kingdom of God. I know that is a hard word. I am glad I do not have to judge anybody. I am glad Jesus is the judge of the human heart. But I do not want to confuse anyone by how I live or what I say from this platform. And there is an important distinction to understand here. There is a difference between practicing sin and struggling with sin. If you are struggling with sin, you are repenting, you are pressing into God, you are fighting for freedom. When you are practicing sin, you do not care. You are living an unrepentant life while claiming salvation. That is what Paul is addressing. And it is a warning the church needs to hear.

But now look at this. The fruit that the Holy Spirit produces in our lives. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things. Nobody can argue that you should not love people, have joy, be gentle or exercise self-control. Even someone who does not know Jesus cannot argue with these things. And here is something I want you to hear. If you are focused and aligned with God's will, you are producing this fruit every day. You might not even know it. You are here today, and that is the fruit of faithfulness. People at your job are watching you. They are noticing that you have peace. They are wondering why you are not devastated by everything that goes wrong. And one day, they are going to ask you. Be ready for that moment.

Crucify Your Flesh
Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to His cross and crucified them there. This is one of the reasons we have a cross in our sanctuary and why we have a response time every week. Some of you come up to that cross every single week. And what you are doing is crucifying your flesh. You are saying, I got angry this week, but in Jesus name, it is finished. I fell into anxiety this week, but I am nailing it to the cross. You might have to do it fifty weeks in a row. Do it. Because in week fifty-one, something might shift. You might step into the freedom you have been fighting for. Or it could be one moment if God sets you free instantly. Either way, do not stop. Do not give up because you have been battling for months or years. We are not in a one-hundred-meter sprint. We are in a marathon. God is playing the long game with your life. Endurance. Keep pressing in. Keep repenting. Keep asking for forgiveness. Keep nailing your flesh to the cross. It is worth it.

And let me end on this. Do not become conceited in your freedom. Do not provoke or be jealous of one another. Paul ends with this because he knows church communities. He knows that we can get elitist about where we are in our walk with Jesus. Do not look at someone who is still battling and act as if you have arrived. Celebrate them when they win. The world pounds on them enough already.

I almost did not get up here this week. I did something stupid, and I had to press through my own pride to stand in front of you. And I am going to preach on pride sometime in this series because man, we all need to nail our pride to the cross. Some of you today need to do exactly that. Pride might be the thing standing between you and the freedom God has already purchased for you. Do not wait. Your miracle could be moments away.

Respond Today
We are moving into response time. Three stations are available. The station of the cross, where you write something down and give it to Jesus and say it is finished. The altar, where you get alone with God. And the prayer cove, where our prayer partners are ready to stand with you.

Come on. Crucify your flesh today. Allow the Holy Spirit to have His way.

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