You Have Got To Release Your Grip On Your Old Nature

My Utmost For His Highest

 

Those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. —Galatians 5:24

 

“Very few of us would debate over what is filthy, evil, and wrong, but we do debate over what is good. […] The cost to your natural life is not just one or two things, but everything. Jesus said, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself…” (Matthew 16:24). That is, he must deny his right to himself, and he must realize who Jesus Christ is before he will bring himself to do it. […] The natural life is not spiritual, and it can be made spiritual only through sacrifice. If we do not purposely sacrifice the natural, the supernatural can never become natural to us. There is no high or easy road. Each of us has the means to accomplish it entirely in his own hands. It is not a question of praying, but of sacrificing, and thereby performing His will.” CHAMBERS

 

We are born into a spiritual state of being.  The old things are passed away (2 Corinthians 5:17).  I had a conversation with a co-worker that other day.  When I quoted that verse, he chimed in to finish it.  He was well aware of what the Bible said, but as was evidenced by the conversation that followed, he saw life in two equal dimensions – the flesh and the Spirit.  Both coexisting. The idea of being dead to the old life was not in the equation.  I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live. (Galatians 2:20).  Although the natural life is obviously present in the life of a Christian, the rules have changed. 

 

God’s Word establishes the new normal.  But the pressure to live by the natural is so great.  The Bible says there is no difference between ethnic groups, male or female, we are all the same in Christ.  But the natural cries out “Yes there is! Don’t abandon you culture, your ethnic history, your distinctives that make you, you.  The things that make you naturally right!”  The spiritual says “You are not your own, you are bought with a price.  You have been born again into a new life.”  Can you embrace that?  Are you willing to abandon everything you hold sacred in the natural life and instead rest in the spiritual life that is now yours?  Do you love God with all of your heart or some of your heart?  If you are struggling with sin, it may very well be that your flesh, the natural, has a grip on you or more correctly, you have a grip on it.  Let it go!  ELGIN