Join us in our latest deep-dive into the book of Galatians with Pastor Ryan Brown. This week we will reveal how Paul's teachings illuminate our Christian freedom, and discuss just what it means to live by the spirit rather than under the law.
But freedom, as liberating as it sounds, also comes with its own set of inherent dangers when the guardrails are removed. As we walk through the scripture this week, we'll dive into the implications of living free and how to navigate the treacherous waters of temptation. We'll also discuss the power of service to others as a true testament to living in the spirit. Through an in-depth look at service in practice, we'll shed light on how it can help us overcome the desires of the flesh and the temptation to misuse our liberty.
Lastly, we'll address the elephant in the room - sin. How does it play out in our Christian lives post-law, and what are its consequences? We'll delve into how Paul's advice to the church of Galatia is still relevant today - that freedom IS NOT an excuse to indulge in sin. We'll explore the importance of spiritual discipline, embracing the power of saying no, and developing spiritual habits that starve the flesh and feed the spirit.
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Notes: https://sermons.church/archives?church=PalmsBaptistBibleStudy&id=126
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Join us in our latest deep-dive into the book of Galatians with Pastor Ryan Brown. This week we will reveal how Paul's teachings illuminate our Christian freedom, and discuss just what it means to live by the spirit rather than under the law.
But freedom, as liberating as it sounds, also comes with its own set of inherent dangers when the guardrails are removed. As we walk through the scripture this week, we'll dive into the implications of living free and how to navigate the treacherous waters of temptation. We'll also discuss the power of service to others as a true testament to living in the spirit. Through an in-depth look at service in practice, we'll shed light on how it can help us overcome the desires of the flesh and the temptation to misuse our liberty.
Lastly, we'll address the elephant in the room - sin. How does it play out in our Christian lives post-law, and what are its consequences? We'll delve into how Paul's advice to the church of Galatia is still relevant today - that freedom IS NOT an excuse to indulge in sin. We'll explore the importance of spiritual discipline, embracing the power of saying no, and developing spiritual habits that starve the flesh and feed the spirit.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RealBibleStories
Notes: https://sermons.church/archives?church=PalmsBaptistBibleStudy&id=126
Website: https://real-bible-stories.square.site
Check us out on these Streaming Platforms: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1912582/share
I appreciate you I appreciate you.
Speaker 1:Hello and welcome to Real Bible Stories. Join us as we deep dive into the historic, religious, cultural, political and emotional context surrounding the real lives of real people in the Bible and the stories. We've all grown to laugh. Hello and welcome back to this episode of Real Bible Stories. So this week Selena is still in Spain enjoying herself with her family. It's a ten day trip, so she left about a week ago. Now she comes back on Wednesday. I gotta go pick her up from the airport like 8 pm, but she'll already be back by the time you hear this.
Speaker 2:but and actually by the time you hear this, I'll be in Guam.
Speaker 1:Oh, man, you're so cool. Bye, ryan. So this is actually just me talking to you guys through the void. But the voice you just heard is of Pastor Ryan Brown, our teacher for this evening on Real Bible Stories. So the sweet crooning voice from across the way is that's Pastor Ryan's voice. But we have been going through the book of Galatians for the last couple weeks. I think we're probably on the sixth week now. We've got a couple weeks left going into this book. Do not be swayed by the fact that we are halfway through chapter five and there's only six chapters. We're not done the best things are yet to come.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:We're gonna end up practical living now. This is not just hey, here's the right way to think, and theology and all that. Now we're talking about like, hey, this is how you live a Christian life.
Speaker 1:Is this starting the fruit to the spirit, or is this acts of the flesh?
Speaker 2:The end of this chapter will be added to that, but that's not what we're talking about tonight. Yeah, every single episode.
Speaker 1:That's what I'm waiting for. I feel like this whole series at least for me personally, this whole series is building up to fruit, to the spirit. Because if you have and if you have not listened to the whole series, you need to go back, start from the beginning, because you'll understand the premise of what I'm about to say. Because the whole beginning of Galatians is a deconstruction of the faith and basically he argues, Paul argues that you are no longer under the law and you are living by the spirit. And you can tell if you are effectively living by the spirit by you can measure that via the fruits of the spirit. And I was like, oh snap, Brian, that's crazy. I spent my whole Christian upbringing thinking that I was under the law still and that I needed to live exactly by the law. And I could never really answer those questions when people would be like, well, why don't you eat kosher? Why don't you? Why do you eat pig? And it's like, well, I don't know. I mean, it's like, for some reason, some of these laws are really important.
Speaker 2:And if you're talking at the end, why do you still circumcise? Yeah, it's like yeah. Why do we still circumcise today?
Speaker 1:And I didn't have an answer for that, and now I do. It's like well, we're not under the law, we are living in the freedom of the spirit, under grace, and that means that you're orienting yourself on the pursuit of the spirit, on the pursuit of Jesus Christ, on the pursuit of God, and that pursuit will, if effectively done, bear fruit, and so you can tell that you are on the path by the fruit that it bears, and so that that, to me, is the overarching kind of premise of the entire study of Galatians. I don't know if that's what you meant when you initiated it, but that's what it's become. For me, ryan, that is what it is, and so I'm waiting for Relations has many things to many people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I'm waiting for the cookie that's in the jar, and Ryan keeps like moving the jar further down the kitchen counter, and so I'm here for it, though I'm here, I've learned so much over the last month and a half.
Speaker 2:Don't let it blind you from the beauty of things that are in between.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness, it doesn't. It's incredible this whole process, but my eyes are set on the fruits and I'm trying to get over there.
Speaker 2:We're about to walk into it. So if you remember, at the beginning of last week's episode, one of the things that Paul kind of emphasizes, that it was for freedom that Christ has set us free. He has set us that as a reality. We are free. Now, whether we choose to walk in that freedom is up to us, and that's kind of how it started during last week's episode. So the concern and one of the things and this kind of feeds back to everything we've been talking about in this series about the point of the law it acted as a babysitter. It meant to keep the Jewish people on track and they didn't veer too far off into sin right Playing with idols and being just like the Gentiles.
Speaker 1:So you could say sin could have bound and you would know God's people. And grace abounds, all the more right, so that grace could have bound all the more.
Speaker 2:But in the time before Christ was revealed, the promise seat of Abraham was to be revealed. It acted as a babysitter for them until that time, right? So the law acted functionally as a babysitter to keep people from veering too far off into sin. So when Christ comes, paul's arguing you don't need the law anymore. But then there's this natural, I guess, question that you can counter to Paul and then say well, if the law meant to serve as a babysitter to keep people from sinning before, if you remove that, what keeps people from?
Speaker 1:going crazy and sinning now and I asked you that before and it's like so I can do whatever I want. It's like that's the natural. That's like the first broken, obvious question that anyone would want to ask. All right, so I can do, I can finally indulge in whatever I want, because I'm under grace, and that's where we start talking about freedom. I'm under grace. So I'm good, I can do whatever.
Speaker 2:Right and which isn't the heart of you know, obviously somebody who's chasing after Christ right Problem number one, but that's actually kind of the problem number, definitely when I first taught this in the Bible study, I titled it the danger with freedom, so there is a real danger with that, though. Okay, so you remove the babysitter, you remove the guardrails. Now it's kind of like Now it's your job to make the strike.
Speaker 2:You have removed the training wheels from the bicycle, right? So what keeps them from you falling over? Right Like are you mature enough to ride your bike without the training wheels? And which is always a big decision from a parent right Like, are they ready? Well, I guess we'll try it, right.
Speaker 3:They'll learn eventually, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah they'll learn eventually. But how then, if the training wheels were meant for keeping us from falling over and hurting ourselves? If you remove the training wheels, there is now a risk. There's a danger that when you remove the training wheel, that you do fall over and hurt yourself, right? So what keeps believers, what keeps, you know, these Messiah people, followers of Christ, from falling and going insanely into sin? Right, what's the boundary? How do we maintain that right? So that's kind of the problem we're gonna hit.
Speaker 1:I felt this, I felt that, not felt that's the wrong term, but like. This interesting concept came into my head of like, oh, you remove the training wheels, but usually the parent like holds onto the seat and like helps the kid, you know, ride the bike a bit so they get up to pace. And so it's like the Holy Spirit would be like holding the seat to make you know fall over. And then when you look back at the Holy Spirit, you're like I got it, holy Spirit, I can do it myself. And the Holy Spirit is like okay, let's go, and then you fall over immediately and you're like but I couldn't do it.
Speaker 3:Why did you let?
Speaker 1:go, and the Holy Spirit is like you said. You could rely on yourself.
Speaker 2:There you go, yeah, and then see, we're getting good better with our analogies here. Well, when they ask a question, before we dive too much, just in regards to freedom, right, because we talked a lot about it last week. But what would you say if you were to go take a straw poll of anybody out in town? Right, like unbelievers?
Speaker 1:Whatever town you're in.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, what do you think if you were to ask them describe what is something that defines or describes or identifies a Christian to you? What would they say? You know and you would get a spectrum of answers right. Like on one side, you could get very cynical, all their hypocrites. They're on the one extreme Right, Like the cynical in their hypocrites or their.
Speaker 1:It's like they're on a clue, or all right on the positive end though let's talk about the positive end.
Speaker 2:Like the faithful believers are out there, being faithful to Christ, right. What do you think people would say about them?
Speaker 1:I would say that things that identify someone as a Christian is the oh, here we go. So Selena has this friend named Denexi and her name's out there now, but Denexi is one of the most overt Christ followers I've ever met, and I'll just tell you how she is, and this is my answer to your question. So she is someone who attributes everything that she does to God.
Speaker 1:So glory to Christ and everything everything, whether it's like I know, it's like how are you doing today? And she's like I woke up, grace to God, like by God's grace I woke up this morning. I'm like that's wild. No one ever answers that question like that.
Speaker 2:And it's like I feel like I want to meet her.
Speaker 1:I hope one day you have to go to Miami and so, like she'll like pass a test. And she's like only by God's grace that I pass this test. You know, she graduated only by God's grace and it's like everything that she did was tied back to his glory, no matter if it was things where she was struggling through something, and she was like I just need you to pray for me. Right now I'm really just going through X, y and Z. This thing happened in my life X, y and Z. It just really need, really need your prayer. I said I know God's moving, I just don't really see how he's moving right now. I just I know, I'm looking, I'm looking, I just need you to pray for me.
Speaker 1:And it was always tied back and so me being the mess I was in college, I would look at her with this sheer awe. I'm like how can you completely? I literally, in my head, I was like how can you completely rely on God? And I talked about this in the last episode of like I literally only gave things to God that I felt like I couldn't handle and I was like this woman's crazy, she can't handle anything. She gives everything to God.
Speaker 2:Well, so that's a good right. So dependency. What else, though, what do you think are identifiers? Generosity?
Speaker 1:Generosity, Stedication, to study Care Like caring for others in general. We were talking today at church about the helping hands ministry that the church has. In the benevolence ministry that the church has where it's people will just bring problems to the church and the church has like a mass email system where everyone's put in like their skill sets that they have that have volunteered for this ministry.
Speaker 1:For gifts and needs, and yeah, and the email goes out and it's like hey, I have the ability to fix this pipe, I have the ability to haul things with my truck, I have the ability to paint this barn house, which is good.
Speaker 2:So when we get to that stuff and that hits a lot of the fruit of the spirit when we get there, right, if we get there, when we get there. So Paul kind of defines further markers, right. But what I kind of wanted to highlight, because you didn't hit it, most people don't hit it and people who are listening probably, I mean maybe they hit it, I don't know. But if I were to guess the majority did not, what did you say?
Speaker 2:What wasn't mentioned was freedom, that Christians were meant to carry the mark of a free people, and how often that's not the case. People generally don't look and say man like Emrean just lives free, right, ryan, just lives like he's just in life, he just, you know, just manifests freedom.
Speaker 1:You know, you know, you know someone who manifested freedom in like the most real way for me and in some ways it seemed like the most frustrating way for Pastor David was his, his, wife, oh, she was yeah. Just gave everything to God and just did not worry about anything at all, and it's like it'll work out the spirit's got it, god's got it, we're we're fine, you don't have to worry about it.
Speaker 2:She lived free from the stress the anxiety the worries, the even like, in terms of some of the faithfulness where, you know, Pastor David, by his own admission, struggled. You know I struggled with this. He's like, I think he I don't think he cares, because I've heard him use this before and some of the sermon, so, but he was telling the story about when they were just starting out in ministry. You know, he was pastoring a church and he sees his wife writing a check for Tithe and he's like you haven't how much she's like.
Speaker 2:I'm paying Tithe. He's like but you know, I'm the pastor, we're paying Tithe to ours. And she's like do you? Do you want our house and finances to be blessed or not? Right, okay?
Speaker 2:And she was just, you know, she was just a you're right a free person, and she's a good example of just like nothing seemed to rock her, even when and I, of course, I see the public, you saw the public, you know I'm sure she had dark moments, but you even talked to her kids and Pastor David like it didn't matter how mad they got at her, it didn't matter how. If he said something he's like I shouldn't have said that she just brushed it off, forgave, moved on right.
Speaker 2:She lived free, right and that's a good mark, and most. I would just say that, generally, though, people don't look at Christians and say, man, they just live free, you know, and that's one of the identifying markers that Christians are supposed to hold in an godly way right. So what we're going to really?
Speaker 1:hit tonight and it was like to the point where it didn't make sense. You know it's like free, to the point where other people look they'll get hurt and be like I can't understand.
Speaker 2:I can't even assess an illogical love.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just can't have my hair Illogical irrational love and it's like, oh my goodness, this woman.
Speaker 2:And boy, you must strive to be like that, right? Yeah, so what we're talking about tonight is, you know, not just living in freedom what that means properly but the dangers of living free, because there's also a danger with that. If you remove the training wheels, if you remove the guardrails, if you remove the babysitter, so I'm just no one, I'm free to. Yeah, so what keeps you on track, right? So Paul is going to answer that. So our target text is Galatians 5. And we're going to go in from verses 13 through 18.
Speaker 1:Yep, galatians 5, 13 through 18. So this is from the NIV version. All right, you, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free, but do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh oh man, there it is. Rather, serve one another humbly and in love, for the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command love your neighbor as yourself. If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. So I say walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh, for the flesh desires what is contrary to the spirit and the spirit what is contrary to the flesh? They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want, but if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law.
Speaker 2:There it is, there you go. So you just spent an entire life never reading Galatians. You know, you said I spent my entire life.
Speaker 1:I probably, I probably was. Well, I definitely. So where I say so? So I say walk by the spirit. You will not and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh, for the flesh desires was contrary to the spirit. I've heard that before. For the flesh desires was contrary to the spirit.
Speaker 2:We're gonna get to that one, because I think that is probably one of the most relatable verses the conflict that you feel just the battle of the flesh between the spirit, for the believer, and inside, we'll get to that in due time so let's just start from the beginning, because there's a lot of good stuff here. So verse 13 it says you, my brothers and sisters were called to be free, right. So when we talk about called, remember how we say that's kind of synonymous for being saved, right. When Paul uses that to be called, and then we talked about, there's a difference between being in terms of mentality, right there's a difference between being saved from and called to right.
Speaker 2:Be saved from something is different to be called to something right, one annotates purpose right, you're called. So what were you called to? You were called to be free, right, so to be saved in Christ, but to remain in the slavery of situations, the slavery of sin, the slavery of some of your habits, the slavery of your fears and your anxieties and your worries, all like all that. You were not called to remain there. You were called to be free, to go, live free. That is a purpose to which you were called to. You were saved to a purpose, and that purpose is. One of the purposes is to be and live free, right, yeah, so, but do not use your freedom to indulge in the flesh. Now here comes to the fundamental problem right, a fundamental problem.
Speaker 2:Here's the other side of the coin, and I think that this is certainly true of the world they don't frame it this way, but it's also true of believers. Okay, because one of the things remember who is Paul writing to in this letter? The church of Galatia. To the church he's not writing to, the procounsel of the Roman government, to the world he's writing to a church. These are people who have submitted their life over to Christ. These are people who have surrendered, who have said we belong to God's family innocent of the kingdom.
Speaker 1:We write. These are people who are saying Christ is. Lord bless him the way. It's a whole song.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah right these are. These are people who belong to Christ and he's having to remind them. Here's a danger. What you guys can't be doing is indulging your flesh and using that freedom to go live in sin. Right, yeah, you'll be in grace, but don't abuse God's grace, right? One thing to just say about that, if I could just, is your way of saying thank you for Christ dying for your sin is to continue to living in it. Thank you for suffering for me to save me from the thing that I'm still gonna chase after, right? So the heart of a believer isn't is, for now, centered on Christ and the manifestation of what he represented and what he demonstrated on the cross, his glory and his love. We say thank you and you turn your heart away from that sin and towards him.
Speaker 1:You don't say thank you now, whatever I want, that's yeah, but.
Speaker 2:But if I could say, though, what? What is true about both the world even though they don't frame it this way but also the church. We often love our sin. We just hate the consequences of our sin. Yeah, and the mentality of some people is that Christ saved me from the consequences of sin. That's true, but that's all he did. What he hasn't to them save them from is the sin itself, meaning, yes, I am a sinner, I was hell bound. He has saved me from hell. The consequences, right, thank you Lord, but I'm still struggling and I remain in the sin, to which you save me from the consequences of. But here's the problem I will consequences manifest different ways, right? So, yeah, you may have saved you from hell, but that doesn't mean it's gonna save you from the STD. We're gonna save you from the relationships breaking down having a child at a wedlock right.
Speaker 2:There's other consequences to sin yeah, and absolutely and then, if you look at the, the way the entire world is structured is they're trying to find ways to eliminate consequences of sin without getting rid of the sin itself. The Christian manifestation of that is that I remain in my sin and I just show up on church on Sunday. Thank God, he's saving me from the consequences and I continue to go to my right, go back Monday morning and Paul says do not think that you can use your freedom to go indulge in your flesh right.
Speaker 1:I wanted to make a point that I've brought it up before, that we is exist in a world that is interrelational, so you can't really commit any sort of act that doesn't have some kind of relational consequence. So I'm me choosing whether, to you know, clean the house or not. I may not be required to clean the house. I may not be, it may not be like something my wife and I've organized is like something that I will do, but me not taking care of the home and just like having a weird expectation that she does it when it's also not a requirement that has a relational consequence.
Speaker 1:Alright, the home must be taken care of and we have to work to negotiate that peace out, every and little things like that. You still have to negotiate. So you, the way you interact with your co-workers, the way you interact with your, with your faith that if you study your Bible or not, like there are always going to be relational consequences to that, even in within the relationship you have with the Holy Spirit as well. So you have to, you have to understand that there is. I don't think there's a single thing you could possibly do that will not have some effect on someone or on the Holy Spirit positive or negative, right and positive or negative, like it's like any sense.
Speaker 1:So you can never just be like oh well, my sin doesn't hurt anyone, it's like it, it does right, it guarantee you it does if you remember when we did the week on my sin, what's the big deal of sin?
Speaker 2:right, the source of hurt, the source of if you, if you look at your situation, right, anybody who's going through a hard time, right, maybe they're a divorce dealing with you know, you know the, the, the other parents of your, your child and going through custody battles, or you know, any tough situation, are generally the consequences of someone's sin, your own or somebody else's that the sin hurts people yeah right.
Speaker 2:Sin is what causes suffering. God hates sin. He hates sin not just because it's morally against his character, but because it's against his character. It hurts people and he hates seeing people hurt. That's why, ultimately, god's gonna deal with it. Decisive blow once and for all, he says. At some point, everybody needs to make a decision of whether you're on the side of sin and continuing to go and hurt people and live for yourself or for the kingdom that deals with sin right. And for those who just say and they choose no, I'm gonna still live for myself, I don't care if I hurt people, I'm gonna get rid of them. I'm gonna destroy the wicked because at some point there's a decisive moment where I deal with the pain, the suffering and everything that exists within it. I'm gonna.
Speaker 2:And the source of that is sin and wickedness right the source the source of that is missing the mark so if the whole point of why Christ came was to deal with sin and its consequences. Why do you think you now have the freedom in Christ to continue on sinning, which means you're saying missing God's mark.
Speaker 2:I'm going to continue on hurting people. I'm gonna continue on, you know, creating the same environment, the old kingdom of the world, in my life. I'm gonna continue on living there, yeah, while claiming citizenship to God's kingdom, which has come to wipe that out. Right, so that is so awesome.
Speaker 2:The point is or maybe you can even say a question but are you wanting to be freed from your sin or just the consequences of it and people, the danger with sin, or the danger with freedom in the Christian life for people coming in is that they want to be freed from the consequences, but they don't really want to be freed from the sin itself yeah because, let's be honest for a moment, sin is kind of fun if it wasn't fun, we wouldn't have such a hard time.
Speaker 1:It's really, really fun if you have no context of the consequences and sin is really painful once you, once the Holy Spirit starts making you aware. But we do have.
Speaker 2:My point is like I mean, you look at abortion, right, boy, I want to be as sexually free as possible. I just don't like the consequences that sex brings, ie babies, yeah, right. So let's, as a culture, try to just make this not what it is right like, yeah, of course it's fine. Of course it's fine, just get rid of the consequence. And now I'm free sexually because now I have a remedy for my consequence. Right, and that that we see that all across culture. Right, that they they're talking about. There is a pharmaceutical companies, it's this essentially. They're calling it the guilt-free pill, to where it has the ability to, where, if something happens, that isn't that isn't stealing a lot of guilt in you you're able to take it and it almost does like this guilt eraser, it blocks oh my god guilt, so you don't feel guilt anymore.
Speaker 2:So now we're saying I and there's consequences to what I did when we figure out a way to block the sensors in my brain that caused me to to feel guilt, which guilt has always been a driver to repentance guilt has always been a driver to change right.
Speaker 1:There is a book called brave new world by Aldous Huskley which was written kind of as a continuation of George Orwell's 1984, and he wrote that book in 1931 1984 came out like the 20s but in that book there is something called soma. And so just think of the world 1984, but kind of even more extreme. But in this world there's a stroke out, soma that people can take that will remove any negative thoughts. So if they experience any sort of trauma or something morally compromising or they feel just doubt about like if what they're doing is right or wrong, they can take, yeah it doesn't make me feel good.
Speaker 1:They take the soma and to just go to like a dream state and and kind of reset and it makes the bad feelings go away and in that society people just take that instead of actually feeling pain or trauma and growing and that's how you see, though, culturally happen all the time, where we're trying to shift narratives to say, read that book, by the way.
Speaker 2:Hey, that guilt you're feeling, you shouldn't, you shouldn't have to feel that guilt. In fact, they're the ones wrong for making for making you feel good.
Speaker 2:It's like whoa wait did I even say anything? Right like? So it's argue that that's the world, right, yeah, but Christians do the same thing. Theologically, yeah, where we're like man. I show up to church on Sunday just to make me feel better about the guilt I feel from all the sin throughout the week. I just need that reminder. I need that spiritual aspirin to make me feel a little what was it called?
Speaker 2:soma, so spiritual soma to make me feel a little bit better about my all the sin this week, so that by Monday morning I am forgiven, all right back to being a sinner you know I think there's that that country song by Luke Holmes where it says he talks about being at church on Sunday but then he hasn't been calling in hungover most Mondays.
Speaker 2:It's like, yeah, how many. How true that is for a lot of people of man. I went to church today feeling good. I got, you know, took my soma. Now I'm gonna go drink heavily to where I'm hungover and not and having to call in to work the next day right, I can, even I've been even more of a straight line during football season.
Speaker 1:You get your Sunday morning, you got your devotion and like man, I feel so free in the spirit and loved, and you go home and you're just cussing out the football team that has no emotional attachment to you and you're doing that for any of your kids and all that and it's like, is that freedom in this, in the spirit, there the way? Okay, because your your spiritual, so you take you following your week right Sunday yeah.
Speaker 2:So the point is, is that Paul saying you cannot use your freedom as an excuse to go indulge on the flesh, right? So what does he say? So, my brothers and sisters, you're called to live free, but do not use your freedom to indulge on the flesh. Believe that drug exists, by the way. Rather, serve one another humbly and love, okay. So here's the thing, the. What is the antidote? Right? If you remove the guardrails, the training wheels, the babysitter, how do I make sure you don't just fall into sin, as I'm in that freedom? Right, he says. Here's the antidote serve one another in love in love.
Speaker 1:I mean here's why the flesh?
Speaker 2:the flesh is self-centered, right. It expects the world to conform to your desire and this is what.
Speaker 2:I mean, if you look, think of lust, right? What with the problem with it is that when you see a pretty woman walking by right and you're looking at her lustfully, she is no longer in terms of you're not seeing her through God's eyes, of, you know, seeing her as a doubt. Woman is made in God's image. She was made to a purpose, to his glory, as a vessel, or a potential vessel of worship to the Creator of the universe. Instead, you turn her into an object, as a possible object, as a means to satisfy a sensual desire yeah, you fun, you basically removed any sort of humanity, you, you know in terms of purpose, of how God made us right.
Speaker 2:We say objectifying.
Speaker 1:Objectifying, it's like that's what you're doing, you. When they say objectifying women, it's like well, yes, you, by lust too. Lust is literally to objectify, you have to remember into an object everything that would make her unique or make him unique or make whatever that thing is unique and just make it just what you need in that moment to serve your needs and imagine if you went up and you said or your want, not need, hey you vessel of worship and purpose for God, who was created in his image.
Speaker 2:You want to come sleep with me because I'm. You know, I have this sensual desire. Right, of course, if you're looking at it through that lens, you would never have that conversation. Yeah, right, like so. So the point being is that, and if you do get help, the point is is that the flesh expects the world to conform to you. That's what selfishness is right. I'm selfish meaning I expect the entire world around me to conform to what I want, where what Paul says the antidote is is no, you don't expect the world to conform to you.
Speaker 2:You instead go serve others in love you operate outside of yourself and you go serve others. That's your antidote to the flesh. If you're struggling with fleshly desire, go serve people. Yeah, not to serve people, but serve them in love, right? I think I've said it before, but one of the best pieces of advice I'd ever got was having a real bad day and I was told, you know, as I was kind of cranky and you know just in my you know sulking this I was told go serve somebody. That's the last thing I want to do right now.
Speaker 2:You know why. It's the last thing I want to do, because I'm in my flesh right now. Yeah you are. But then you go and I the second. I went. I went. I'm like, okay, first opportunity. I was kind of convicted. I'm like, all right, let me serve this person, go and serve that person. And my sulking, this was gone. My Grumpiness and crankiness was gone. There was a new life in me. The situation didn't change at all, but my spirit did yeah because I was operating outside of myself right.
Speaker 2:So the, the, the flesh is inward focused but the spirits outward focus of yourself.
Speaker 1:So if you want to engage and Be, by walking in the spirit and getting out of your fleshly desires, serve people humbly and this is the other problem I'm gonna think about too is that, um, we, we kind of talk about selfishness a lot, but, um, there are other self-focused emotions that are Inherently putting you outside of the spirit, putting you out, make sure, making it so you're focused on your flesh and focused on you. All right, like self doubt, self, was I thinking? Self doubt, selfish. There was one more, there's one more that was a big one, but, but it's like you have these emotions that when you just get tied into your own, um, focusing inward, and you just lay there, you stand still, you just focused on well, why me, why me this, why me x, y and z? That is exactly when you're outside of Of the spirit at that point You're not being led by the spirit anymore.
Speaker 1:You're being led by your own, by your own desire, right, your own desire, which is now dictating your passion which is dictating your emotions, yeah, right.
Speaker 2:So you know the. If you make a lot of people try to will their way through this, sometimes right, like they make promises to themselves and make these little vows and these commitments right, that doesn't help you. Serving people helps you. You know the. If you look at Jesus, for example, right, jesus had Complete liberty in his life. He had completely conquered the flesh. Right, the. We always talk about the divine element of Christ, but if you don't forget the human man Portion of Christ, right, he Conquered the flesh. How did he conquer the flesh? Did he use that freedom? Um, and all the liberty that he had? Right to Self serve. Where did he? What did he do? He's a great man, he served others how did he conquer flesh?
Speaker 2:as the man he served others constantly, his entire life, every day woke up to serve others, yeah.
Speaker 1:Um, you know, and feed, teach right.
Speaker 2:And you know there's a movie out there. The premise is essentially the Superman story, but if Superman used his powers for evil and not good, it's like a horror movie, oh man.
Speaker 1:Uh, I want to see that movie, I do it, but the concept's interesting right.
Speaker 2:Because, now, what this positive thing of like oh Superman, the the hero, yeah, but wait, what if he was evil?
Speaker 1:It was like if Superman was raised by abusive parents, because that's basically what it is.
Speaker 2:Is that what it is?
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, I was more until he becomes evil because of the abusive parenting and then he just like, becomes just like.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I didn't know all that, I just do the premise of what if Superman was evil, not good, right yeah and to my mind, he is evil because of the difference of the kind of world right when Superman and you know, right in his freedom and his liberty, using the power he had to serve others versus fear to be selfish. Be self-serving with that same power. What does that look like? Yeah, you know, and, and you?
Speaker 1:know, the, the whole idea of homelander from, uh, from the boys on the amazon show. That's the. That's the end. That's when you're talking, that's when you really the example. You're thinking of what if Jesus was just a narcissistic, um, completely self-serving, self-focused person that just cared about how people saw him? Um, that's, that's homelander, right there. Homelander versus Superman same powers, but just narcissistic, um, and totally focused on how the world views that worship me.
Speaker 2:Right, worship me because I'm worthy of that worship. And how the outcomes are different. Right, yeah, and Jesus is an example.
Speaker 1:Every day, served people not recommending that show, by the way. It's highly Crazy, it's not, it's not in the spirit at all. Don't watch it.
Speaker 2:All right. So, um, do not use your freedom indulge in the flesh. Rather, serve one another. Humbly in love, right, humbly in love, um. Vows and commitments aren't going to do it. Your promises aren't going to do it, um, willing your way through, it is not going to do it. The way you conquer flesh is, um by serving others, you know. Here's another thing I was just thinking about really quick on this point.
Speaker 2:When you look at statistically in the american church how many people are sexually active outside of marriage, um Is about equivalent To the inverse of people who don't serve in church.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's interesting, um, and if you just think about, like there's, there's everybody keep talking about, there's this kind of which is ridiculous, because most people All right, most people are sexually active outside of marriage, um, in the church, and that's like a huge problem. But then you're also saying that that means that most people aren't serving. I'm, statistically, it's about the same.
Speaker 2:So my point is is that there's this epidemic in the american church of you know people are concerned. Of you know, you know sexual sin in the church and it's like, well, yeah, because they're all self-serving. And how many of them are actually? Serving the church or how many of them are showing up on sundays and just like, just serve me, serve me, serve me, serve me. I'm here to receive.
Speaker 2:Don't pour their gifts back into anything and serving it practically. So now it's just feeding that right and then they're like well, how am I not getting in victories? Because you're not serving people, You're you're you're serving yourself, you're you're not serving outside of yourself, right?
Speaker 2:So Living, learn how to serve right, like if you want to conquer, if you're serious about conquering some of that, paul is saying you need to serve one another humbly in love. But he continues Verse 14, for the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command Love your neighbor as yourself. Okay, so a couple of things here. Paul's bringing back the law right. He's already done this whole thing about what the law is, its function, right it. But earlier we talked about in earlier episodes it's not that the law, that the Torah was bad, it's the material that Torah was working with Right. Torah was good, it was just working on sinners.
Speaker 2:Yeah so it can never bring about any sort of justification. It can never justify anybody, because the material it's working on right. But what does Jesus say that? Um, if you follow this, these two commands love God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your might, and I love your neighbor as yourself. That to which all the commands, or all the law, is wrapped up under right. Yeah, so he's saying you, if you, if you want To be good at Torah, love one another the way you love yourself now here's the question.
Speaker 1:It's a fun because all it's it really is. All the Ten Commandments and all of the the law come down to keep God first and treat others with it. Want to treat the other way you want to be treated.
Speaker 2:You know I love your neighbor as yourself and have no other god, as we talked about, that is the apostle john, like last week. Right, that's the point.
Speaker 1:Here's the one sentence summary of being a christ follower and being one. That's what I was saying.
Speaker 2:Is that the apostle john we talked about last week? His mantra and the end of his life as he's being carried to worship. He just kept telling everybody, right over and over and over have faith in Jesus and love people, and that's enough. Right the same thing just love God and love other people the way you love yourself.
Speaker 1:And that's enough, because that is because you love yourself more than they love anyone here.
Speaker 2:The glation church is being pressured to go get circumcised right under the law and he's like, look, if you go love people the way you love yourself, you satisfy the entire law To include circumcision. Yeah, you know what I'm saying, because there's been a circumcision of the heart, which paul makes that point more in romans, but um, but here's the question, though, because now here's the metric right. Well, how should I love? How should I humbly serve you know, how should ryan humbly serve emran and love? Well, how does ryan Pridefully serve ryan and love?
Speaker 1:You know what I mean. So it's an internal conversation that you have to how did.
Speaker 2:Let me ask you how did emran? Love emran today. You always got fed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you were fed, emran had emran had ryan bring him food, that is true. I guess I fed you today, um, but you made sure you were clothed. I, I showered. I I didn't make sure you had a shower. You um Certainly have a place to sleep tonight.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're wearing clothes. I'm thankful for that. Yeah, you made sure that you, you weren't going anywhere naked, right? Yeah, you made sure that you were clothed. My point is that on the very basic sense of just basic sense of love. The point is that, on the very basic sense of just basic sustenance, emran loved emran enough tonight in today, to make sure you were fed, you had water, you had a place to sleep, that you had clothes good clothes that you had a shower. Right, that's just you loving yourself today.
Speaker 3:Right To include other things that you serve yourself.
Speaker 1:Take care of yourself now.
Speaker 2:I love how christ used the metric. He doesn't say, hey, I need you To love like god loves, because that's impossible. Yeah he gave us a realistic metric and says you have shown the depths of your capacity to love and how you love yourself. Just take that depth and capacity to love yourself and put it outward, serve others and love others that way.
Speaker 3:So how did you?
Speaker 2:love yourself today, and did you do you love other people?
Speaker 1:that way. Imagine if every married person just did that just love your spouse as you love yourself Every, every day of your marriage. And if you both do that and you we haven't done the mutual submission One yet it's like you're winning. You're winning if you love your Wife or your husband the way you love yourself and you take care of your wife or husband the way you take care of yourself.
Speaker 2:You both are gonna be cooking and that's the same concept of mutual submission, right? So?
Speaker 1:think about. The hard part is when you let you get in the way of you right, it starts cars and problems, don't?
Speaker 2:I'm there, like all right. I see my wife, you know, doing a chore and I'm on the you know the couch watching TV. Like okay, if I was her.
Speaker 3:What I want, what do I, what would I, what would I?
Speaker 2:want me to do? Oh, probably go help her. Yeah, you just get up and go. Hey, how can I help you? And you just see her face light up, right, um. But there's other times I'm in myself and I'm like oh. I didn't ask her to go do that chore. I'm, you know, I'm gonna watch the game.
Speaker 2:Yeah and then it builds up, and then you know she's frustrated right, and it's like yeah, if you just love and submit to each other the way that we love and submit to ourselves, right Like we, we, we would do so much better.
Speaker 1:I remember um is it paul that talks about the uh, the, the complexity of marriage versus singleness, and that he was like it's like being married, you have it so much harder because of that constant process of development that's happening. Um, because it's like I, what for those that are not married, because we use we're both married, so we use that kind of process of like, yeah, your, your wife and my wife are the ones that are the ones we're constantly interacting with and growing up spiritually, because we're that, we're constantly challenged and you grow. You can grow so quickly in marriage because you constantly have that feedback loop. But for those that are sing single, where do they get that feedback? Because they don't really have that person that's, they're almost visually being hurt or uh, or subject to whatever tyrannies that they, that they have well, let me say this is that Paul makes the argument if you cannot be married to go serve Christ, then don't do it Right?
Speaker 2:Because I'll just give an example my family, you know, my kids and my wife, went and visited family in Utah and I was here, I had to work, I couldn't go with them, so I had a week by myself Right Now. I would say in that entire time I was very lonely, like I was like very sad right, like that was very depressing coming home.
Speaker 2:Like all the chaos and the craziness that ensues in the brown household that always frustrate me. Once it was all gone, I was really sad, right. So I want to make that very clear. I miss my family very much, but one thing that it did do is that it gave me a lot of time because I had no obligation to them in that week because they were gone. So I was like, well, what do I do with my night? What do I do with my day? It's just me, and it gave me so much time I was able to go serve a widow.
Speaker 2:I think we actually recorded a couple of podcasts that week.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we did, we made dinner for you, yeah, yeah, I was able to come and do fellowship with you that I would otherwise say. No, I didn't go eat dinner with my family. I was able to spend time with you guys, right, like it opened up a lot of opportunity for other ministry aspects More opportunities to serve, and I would say, if the antidote to the flesh is serving others, when you're single, you have a lot more opportunity and time to serve other people. When you're married and you have a family, you're still serving other people. It's just now, more focus, it's focused. I'm serving my wife, I'm serving my kids. It was my number one priority. And then what's left over? I'm able to go now serve outside of them, right, because they're my first ministry, which is still important and still good. I don't want anybody to think that I'm like I should have never been married.
Speaker 1:I am very happily married and I'm very glad, I don't think anyone thinks that, good yeah, I'm just saying I didn't get that vibe.
Speaker 2:But part of the function of that marriage.
Speaker 1:It only matters if your wife got that vibe. Yeah Right, yeah, Honey, you know I love you. He's like the way you said that. No, yeah, Kind of kind of sus.
Speaker 2:But she, but you know her acting as that kind of accountability to me. Well, how does the single person do that? Well, if they're serving others humbly and love this way as they love themselves, there's more opportunities to do that, and they're already getting discipled by the spirit in that process. Right, we talk about everybody. We talk about quiet time.
Speaker 3:Right and it's like you know.
Speaker 2:I just it doesn't seem, like you know, god is coming to me and I'm trying to spend this time. Maybe, if you want to get close to God, you need to go where God is. Yeah, go serve.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:God is with hungry people, god is with the homeless, god is with the lonely widow, god is with the orphan, god is with. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, those dying in the hospital, oh yeah, and you know. You know you can go where God is, go serve, go serve in those ministries and you're going to find God very quickly and I can tell you that the most amazing experiences I've ever had. You know the weird, the weird stories that people are like. Is that true? Is he being dramatic, that kind of make people feel like a little uncomfortable when they hear him because you're like there's no way. Right, I've had those Like there was this one lady doing benevolence.
Speaker 2:It just so happened that we were at one of the baseball parks for baseball game or practice or something and we saw this, this van parked out. It was getting dark, right, like it was later practice. The kids are there. You know baseball practice for leaving. We just kind of note this, this van that's there. Well, somebody else who was in our church, was on that same team, was dropping their kids off at a daycare and they saw the van was still parked through the following morning. So they give a call like hey, it seems like they're still there. I think they're sleeping there overnight. I think they're homeless, you know, and there's kids out there playing out front, like there's kids, I think, that are living in this van. Like, okay, interesting. So I go and I'm like, well, you know, maybe it's broken down or whatever. So I went by the church. I just picked up some, say, her brother gift cards. I picked up some bus passes that we have, you know, some Benette ones things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I swing by there and I go ask them like, hey, you know, is everything okay, you guys living out of here? And she's like, yeah, like she's like, but we're trying to move. You know, it kind of broke down. I have a check that's coming. I just don't have a way to get there. And I was like well, I have some bus tickets here for you that help. And she's like what? I was like, yeah, free bus tickets. And I did. She just starts crying and she like literally falls down praising God. And she said last night I was praying God, just get me somehow to the college. I don't know why her check was at the college, but yeah, just needed to get picked up.
Speaker 2:She just didn't have a way to get it Right. She just give me a way to the college I could get my check so I can get us out of the situation Right. And she was just praying God, find me a way there. And this random dude on her perspective just shows up with bus tickets for her and she takes it. She's crying, Bus pulls up right where we are. She runs over there, gets on the bus, goes over there. And what about the kids to get her check that her sister was there.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Another adult there. But my point is is then I was like well, was this true, right? So I drove by at the end of the day and they were gone. Um, they were able to, I guess, tow it away and they got them out of their hole, right it? Just I'm just saying things like that, like that's spirit led man. You know, and it is so cool to be a part of that, but if I wasn't willing to do the inconvenience of driving over there? You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:And, just you know, having a conversation with another, with another. What do we call? What do you call the call people.
Speaker 2:What do I call people?
Speaker 1:Image bearer.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, so if you were willing to go and have a conversation with another image bearer and the church, wasn't also attentive and said, hey, I think they slept there overnight and cared enough to call hey, can we help them Right Like that? That's the kind of thing that gets you, and when you have that, there's nothing about you. When you, when you're working hands on for God's kingdom in that way, there's no part of you that's thinking internally in yourself of how do I serve my flesh today?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, it's just. That's why we're talking about. The antidote is serving people, right, so let's continue on. So verse 15 says if you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other Right? So when people in the church start using their freedom to get others to conform to a different agenda, right, that's when you start seeing these fights and you'll see Christians start to devour each other. I. There's actually a sense in the Greek here that Paul actually is talking about literally physical, physical violence.
Speaker 2:I think, he had a concern that you're going to have two camps You're going to have the circumcision camp and you're going to have, I guess, the grace camp, and that this was going to turn to like physical violence, because that's kind of the way they did things back then.
Speaker 2:Right? He says if you are not careful, you will bite and devour each other and you will destroy each other. Nobody comes out of that. Nobody comes out of a church fight, a nasty church fight, like victorious. And we're here. Right, he's like no, you will devour each other and you'll destroy each other. You will both lose. Right, so I say verse 16. So I say walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. Walk by the spirit. What is the antidote? Serve others. Well, where do I serve? How do I serve? When should I serve? You need to be walking by the spirit.
Speaker 1:I want to throw out there that, because my brain came up with a question and then answered the question right after, because the question that came to mind is that the flesh has desires and if I walk by the spirit, I'm satisfying the spirit and not satisfying the flesh. But that doesn't get rid of the desires of the flesh and that's a problem for me because it's like the desire is still there and that's the most frustrating part. And then my brain kind of was like you already know the answer to this, and the answer that I came up with or that came to me as I was thinking about it, was that habits and choices and character. So your choices, the choices you make over time, become habits.
Speaker 1:So if you have a bad habit of drinking in excess when you're sad, or drinking just to feel, or drinking to not feel, or of watching porn whenever the feeling tickles your fancy, or gossiping whenever someone frustrates you and instead of talking to them about it you go and talk to someone else, you have to make different choices and at first it's going to be hard, but if you make those different choices over time they become new habits and you'll actually be able to replace those old habits of sin or doing the wrong thing and acting outside of the character of God, acting outside of the spirit. You can replace it with new habits that are online with the spirit, are online with his character, and then you will start seeing those fruits and you will. You will see your character or others actually, more likely, others will see your character change over time and you'll start understanding that that's happening, as they, as they reveal that to you, so that there's a quote.
Speaker 2:I don't, I can't remember who it's by, but it says we make our habits, and then our habits make us.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And so you have to make your habits, and your habits become your character.
Speaker 2:So your habits make you right and, and you know the idea being. That's why, when you start talking about spiritual habits, spiritual discipline, yeah. I'm conscious of. Hey, I'm choosing. We do said to make this choice for this situation every time, and it's very deliberate every time, but eventually it becomes automatic. If you get good spiritual habit, and that spiritual habit will then make you right and yeah, and if you notice, it doesn't say that.
Speaker 1:I guess the ultimate point is that you can change.
Speaker 2:Yes, but I would say walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. It doesn't say that it removes, like as you said, the desire. The desire remains there. Yeah you just don't gratify it. And that's a frustrating thing because I think sometimes we think and I want to get over the sin, I just can't. I continuously have this desire for it. Well, it doesn't say that the desire goes away, it says that you don't gratify it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right when you walk by the spirit. And here's what we want. We want, Lord. I'm weak in this situation or towards this thing. To remove the desire? Yeah, and what?
Speaker 1:he doesn't.
Speaker 2:I got a prayer a lot what he did, but he doesn't do that. Yeah, paul talks about this again in Corinthians and I think it's his first letter to Corinthians. But he says you know essentially what God does is he doesn't remove your weakness or the desire. What he does is he gives you the strength to overcome it. So every day you are walking again in the reliance, independence, the power, the sustenance and the grace of Christ. Something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, something I realized over the last couple of years is that I I hate me when I am relying on me, and I love me when I'm relying on Christ.
Speaker 2:And those are two different walks right.
Speaker 1:It's two different me's living in my head.
Speaker 1:And it's like the me, that's like this is, you're on the, you know. It's like you reach. I think you reach a certain level of spiritual maturity where you kind of a good idea of what you're supposed to do and you can have some spiritual immaturity where you're kind of just you're still relying on God's law that's written on your heart, but you may not know all of the why behind, why God's law is written on your heart and and why it is the way that it is. But I think I've reached a level of spiritual maturity where at least no, and the but the hardest part is knowing and then still failing and just looking at myself and just be like why do you suck?
Speaker 2:Well, I think there's a, you know, it's talking about walking right, walking in the spirit, and what you're just saying is that I feel like I'm stumbling sometimes everybody has a unique walk right.
Speaker 2:And we're talking about the identifiers of freedom, right. Yeah, there is. You should be able to see somebody in the way they're living, the way they're walking in life, and you're able to kind of pull things out from them, right? Yeah as an example, I was at a we were doing youth camp last in this last youth camp you're at and the camp director.
Speaker 3:It was very nice.
Speaker 2:It was. But the camp director came and he was like he's like, hey, you're a, are you military? I said, well, not anymore. I used to be, but I still work at the base and you know I go through that whole thing. He's like yeah, you can tell. Like, really, why is that? I'm like, he's like you. Just, you guys have a walk like the way you walk is different than the way you know other people walk right.
Speaker 1:It was the same thing on my campus when I was in NRTG. People knew I was in NRTG before I walked in.
Speaker 2:The same goes through spiritual walk and they could just physically see it. Yeah, and the same goes through spiritual walk, where people you don't even have to be talking and people are like man, he, just the way he conducts himself, the way he walks in life, that could, that's his wife, that's the next see, it's like something's different about you.
Speaker 1:How are you in so deep and all this stuff going on in your life and you yet still are so literally free, right Like free of?
Speaker 2:all of the like walk so much different from everybody else, and like I felt that all the time around.
Speaker 1:the next. I'm like how are you like this?
Speaker 2:Wow, so verse 17, it says and I think this is very relatable verse for most for the flesh desires, but as contrary to the spirit. And the spirit, what is contrary to the flesh? They are in conflict with each other so that you are not to do whatever you want. He says if you are going to live in the freedom of Christ, that also means that you've received the spirit, that promise of the inheritance. How do you walk in that freedom, Walking that inheritance? Right, if you receive the spirit, then you walk in the spirit, and the spirit is contrary to the flesh, which is what sin wants. So if you're thinking that you're using this freedom of Christ to go sin, then you're not walking in the spirit, because the spirit is contrary to the flesh. Yeah, right, so you're using the freedom of Christ to go sin, but you're not walking in the spirit.
Speaker 1:You're using your freedom from consequence to justify doing whatever you want.
Speaker 2:Right Over here while not walking by the spirit, and who he says is that they're separate right. So what I like here is Paul does not live this pie in the sky. Christianity right. He's not like this Uber idealistic.
Speaker 1:No, he lives that down in the trenches. Christianity Right, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:Because this is probably again every single day. I think every believer can relate to this. The flesh desires what is contrary to the spirit, the spirit contrary to the flesh. So let me just put it this way Any situation. This is why Paul says this, james says this, but we need to be slow to speak and slow to anger.
Speaker 2:Well, why do I need to be slow to speak? Because, naturally, the way we ever want to respond to any given situation, the way we want to speak, you know, reactively in any situation, is always in the flesh.
Speaker 1:Yeah, usually right, it's the one that pops up first.
Speaker 2:Slow down and think how do I want to respond right now? And just know that nine times out of ten, that is probably exactly contrary to what the spirit wants you to do. Or wants you to say or wants you to act right.
Speaker 1:So something that my therapist told me this is a few months ago.
Speaker 1:This is actually an interesting one, because usually I just bring up controversial stuff that he says, but and he's very good, he just says some controversial stuff sometimes but something he said was that if you feel a desire that you are not comfortable with because I've talked to him about, like sexual temptation and those feelings and all that and he he's like, if you feel it, I mean, instead of just getting angry at yourself, instead of freaking out that you're feeling that emotion, just stop and try and just try not to think.
Speaker 1:Just allow your mind to go through the process of, of manifesting the thought and then allow it to leave, because typically, thoughts and desires are constantly popping up and going down, popping up and going down in your brain all the time, and and you focusing on it and allowing it to be reinforced by focusing on it over and over and over again, is is part of, is probably part of causing your issues.
Speaker 1:What he was kind of describing to me and so I thought that was an interesting point Like if the, if the thought comes up instead of allowing it to consume your thought, and now you're like, oh no, it's controlling me, blah, blah blah. It's like just either turn to your focus to something else, have something that you're he also recommended like having and for me it was scripture, just having a scripture in your head that you would just start like a mantra that you say to yourself to distract you from the thing, or or just stop what you're doing. Don't act on the desire, don't act on it at all, just just sit, allow it to come and and see how long it takes to just kind of leave. Because that's what thoughts do? They come and go, they come and go.
Speaker 2:So I would say what Bible says is you take every thought captive. And when and when we talk about surrendering and being submissive and surrendered over to Christ, that includes our mind, our thoughts, right? That's why it says love your God with all your heart, your soul and your mind, right? So when certain thoughts like that come in, the idea is that one, you take that captive, you stop it, say no, that's not me, and you get anybody, paul would later say is get your mindset on higher things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, and you know, I think I'm just, I'm just highlighting that, at least for me, is one of the things is like you, I try to stop it, and it's like, yeah, that's what I'm focused on it, and it's like captive.
Speaker 2:You take that, you take it captive, you get control and you put it to death. And I think another thing, that, because I think one of the big pieces here, if I could just say you know, how do you? So there's this danger and freedom that we veer off and descend, but there's also, well, how do I overcome the flesh? If I'm struggling with fleshly things and it seems to be defeating me? I'm trying to fight it. I can't get over it, right, mm? Hmm, like how do I get over this? Two things like you need to a starve the flesh.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And feed the spirit Right. Those are your solutions. Starve the flesh. Feed the spirit. You feed the spirit through serving others humbly and love. You feed the spirit in prayer. You feed the spirit and Bible study.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You feed the spirit and community of believers and accountability of believers, Right. All those spiritual habits that we were just talking about with you know habits, right? Yeah, and you starve the flesh. You remove those elements that would feed to that desire, right?
Speaker 3:Build new habits and one of the exercises in terms of thoughts.
Speaker 2:this helped me with the battle of porn. I know this has helped many people. This, this little bit right, is that many times, when it comes to certain desires of the flesh that seem to it's like once it enters it's like it's over Right, like for me it was like once it entered it had control. It felt like like I just I lost my battle already.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:Um, one of the things why it was because I was being reactive to it, not proactive to what I was struggling with, and what I mean is that when the desire hit for porn, it was immediately. Well, I lost the battle. I'm going to go do my thing, right, um, but instead, of, what I started actively doing is actually actively thinking about it on my terms, not on the terms of my flesh, but on the terms of my spirit, to really say okay, what is porn? Why do I like porn? Should I like porn? Hey, do you realize how much sex trafficking occurs in porn? Is that your value, ryan? You're okay with that? Confronting yourself Right, like, and you make a.
Speaker 2:I remember going through and making a list of realizing how, you know, incredibly, incredibly opposed the values of pornography and in the whole industry is to the man, particularly the man of God. I want to be yeah, right. So now I have this argument in the spirit of what I'm struggling with, so that by the time it would enter my brain, I'm like, hey, we wouldn't go. Look, I'm like my mind would not just go to the flesh and went to the list, because I've actually actively and proactively thought about it instead of being reactive to it Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it helped me. You had defenses. And that's the things of how you take those thoughts captive. You put them to death. You think of higher things, right? How does this glorify Christ?
Speaker 3:How does this?
Speaker 2:make me a better husband, a better father, right, all those things. And so let's continue on here, yes, sir, because, man, we were kind of going on that for a while that I. So I say walk by the spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh, for the flesh desires with the contrary to the spirit. The spirit is, but it's contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want, right, like I just say. One last thing. This is an example, but this woman came, she's talking, one time.
Speaker 1:Was it different?
Speaker 2:woman.
Speaker 3:Or is this the same woman from the van? No, no no no woman in church.
Speaker 1:Oh, this is a negative example.
Speaker 2:Oh, but she, she had a question. She was like you know my, this is when you taught this Bible, study a church. And she was like I'm divorced because I hadn't, I think, allies. I had an affair, but she's like I don't feel guilty about it. She says I, you know the man that I had an affair with, who is my current boyfriend. You know, I really felt the spirit weed me to this man.
Speaker 2:Hmm as I was like no, you missed bad. Yes, like you miss this. The flesh desires, but it's contrary to the spirit. God is not and does not contradict his own character. If God loves and honors marriage and he hates adultery, why do you think that the spirit would lead you into it? Right, god doesn't tempt and test anybody that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah right.
Speaker 2:It's completely contrary to it. The spirit did not lead you there, your flesh led you there. Your own disruptive thoughts have tried to rationalize it in your brain, to alleviate the guilt of something you know was absolutely wrong. Right, the first step in understanding this and this is what we're gonna. Part is you can next week we're gonna hit this because I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:I'm just gonna say we know what acts of the flesh are. Yeah, paul Gives us a big exhaustive list just to remind us, and a lot of us hate it so much that we try to rationalize it, but go well, that's not speaking to me or my situation, like. No, it is. It's very obvious. The fact that you try so hard to rationalize your way around it shows how obvious it is. But what he's saying is just but. But this is, this is what Paul ultimately does. Right, because I like his solution to this. Let me just finish it off here real quick.
Speaker 2:Yeah first 18,. But if you are led by the spirit, you are, no, not under the law any more right. If you have the spirit, you have to guarantee of the inheritance of a child of Abraham. If you have the spirit, you are freed. You are free from the flesh and the slavery it brings. But if you're not walking in the spirit, what you're essentially saying is I'm choosing to walk in my chains. Yeah, you are walking Without that guarantee, you are walking in slavery and you're ultimately under the law. At that point right.
Speaker 2:Yeah so what I like about what Paul's solution to this is well, how do I Deal with the desires of the flesh that has people captive currently? But if I don't have the guardrails and I don't have the law to keep me there, you know how do I overcome that. It's a positive thing. It's about what you do Versus what you don't do. Right and a lot of people try to fight interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, people try to fight this in a way of like, okay, if I just stop doing this, I'm gonna, my spirit will be better if I stop doing this, if I, yeah, I'll find victories. What Paul says is no, it's not a negative thing, and in the sense that it's not about what you don't do, but you need to start doing. To go serve is go serve people. Yeah, you go love people. You need to be out there, build a heart for Christ.
Speaker 2:Right You're now engaged with the kingdom, and your heart swells up and you start realizing oh wow, I don't, I Don't.
Speaker 3:I don't desire things.
Speaker 2:I don't desire that like I used to, and sometimes it creeps in every now and then, but it's not like and you're like wow, I just realized I have victory over a battle that I didn't even realize I had victory because I wasn't even focused on that anymore right Is you were living a positive thing.
Speaker 2:But if you're wanting to choose to live in that slavery, he's like well, now you are under the law, and under the law, not living by walking by the spirit. Well, the law is gonna convict you too, because you can't, yeah, find any justification there either. So it's very simple. I would say three things. I talked about this last week.
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna reiterate it today Build a habit of saying no to yourself and the little things so that, when it comes to the big things that do matter, you already know how to say no to yourself, right? The second thing starve the flesh. Right. If there are things that are weeding you into certain sins, starve it. Yeah, right, even if the thing itself isn't bad in itself but it's leading you into sin. Starve it, cut it out completely. Right.
Speaker 2:If if alcohol, right, having one means having eight and then having a lot yeah if and then having eight means that you lose all control of your body and go step around. Yeah, cut it out, cut it out completely, just starve the cold dirty flesh right, I just starve it if the horn is a problem. Get rid of every single media that that tempts you. Well, you would you mean go into a dumb phone?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you mean getting rid of that, for eight months I legit went to I would say that for me, I went to a flip phone for eight months. I Got rid of social media over the course of two or three years because I I I found that that was a trigger, a trigger gateway directly to pornography. I would see Some girl the disc. You know, the discover tab on Instagram is just a mess and the AI knows who you are, so it knows what I wanted to see and it would just generate all this stuff and it's like it was just a rabbit hole every, every time. So I cut that out and and then I but it wasn't enough.
Speaker 1:So I was like I just can't have internet for a while and I got rid of my smartphone for for eight months. Even now I still have pretty significant restrictions on my iPad and on my phone to to Destroy as much of that temptation as possible at least as many of those avenues as I possibly can and still be able to like work, practically Starve the flesh, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if it's it's, it's an anger, is your problem, right? If I, man, I just realized I was my temper. It's just, I am angry, I'm an angry person.
Speaker 1:Oh wait, I wanted to tie that. Then no, like cuz some me, some of you might be listening like man Imran's like real extra and it's like Imran really doesn't like his sin and Imran is is really trying to get in the way of himself and Imran's been really honest, right and which I think is great you know what I?
Speaker 2:mean Cuz. That's another piece. That kind of missing sometimes is we're not honest with each other, with our battles in our Particularly in the church, right, there's not the transparency that there probably should be, but the battles we're facing. Everybody just has that Instagram filter on in church like, oh, we're good, we're good. Yeah, you're good, yeah, I'm good, yeah, we're all good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, praise Jesus, right and all reality is that everybody's struggling with something we're not being honest about, and so you know whatever that is like, what are those triggers, but just starve the flesh to death. Right, starve it to death. The second thing is feed the spirit. Right, we were talking about good spiritual habits, right, building good Habits in your life, making those choice, conscious choices, of building a habit that feeds the spirit. So if you find yourself, for example, if you're gossiping, and as you gossip you realize oh man, this is where I always gossip or to the people, or, you know, it's always my Engaged with this person that I started engaging in gossiping, right, said every woman's history of the flesh.
Speaker 2:Replace that thing that time with something that feeds the spirit, right? Yeah, so it may be your book club, if you may have to get a new book.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there.
Speaker 2:They're this guys. There may be things you have to give up that you like, right like, but if you're serious about it, you want to wage war against the flesh. Sometimes you got to make those radical changes right.
Speaker 1:And I knew the other thing was you were never told it would be easy. There was nothing about this relationship. I remember it was easy. It says that.
Speaker 2:If you walk by the Spirit, you won't gratify the desires of the flesh. The desires can always remain there right, so you're.
Speaker 1:It's a conflict inside of you but.
Speaker 2:But I would say, though, is replace when particularly maybe you're losing your battles. You know, if it's always going like pornography, if it's at nighttime, replace that with Bible study time if. Having certain conversations with certain people where you're about to go into gossip. Replace that with prayer time.
Speaker 3:You know what I?
Speaker 2:mean? Do the things replace the those negative elements of the Part of starving the flesh is replacing it by feeding the Spirit. Yeah, you know mean.
Speaker 1:I want to say that there's More to feeding the Spirit than just Like a Bible study or prayer and stuff like that, and those are definitely fantastic things. But where Paul talks about love your neighbor as yourself, like maybe replacing that like, let's say that a certain time you always start drinking and it's like, well, maybe at that time you go serve somebody yeah, you go serve someone. Maybe you call your mom or you set as that as the time that you're gonna call your mom, your mom or your girlfriend, so that you're replacing that bad habit with a good habit. Now you're building relationships and sustaining relationships.
Speaker 1:If you know that you always Watch porn, or the desire to watch porn hits at a certain time, maybe set that as the time that you and your wife Just sit down and and talk and catch up on how the day went. Also, if you're not doing that, you know, set aside Like 10 minutes a day or so to talk to your wife and act about like how your day went, because then by the end of week then you actually talked to your wife for an hour and 10 minutes. You know about things that are not just house hunt, house stuff.
Speaker 2:Well, that was a meaningful conversation with in terms of feed the Spirit, right, yeah, and those spiritual habits, those good spiritual disciplines that replace the time, that which you're failing, with those positives, right and like you said. All right, I'm gossiping right now. How do I replace that time with loving somebody the way I would want to be loved in the situation?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I can guarantee you Nobody wants to be gossiped about now. Nobody likes the idea of Knowing that there's people out there who are talking about me when I'm not present, in a negative sense. Yeah right.
Speaker 1:How would I?
Speaker 2:love myself in that I wouldn't gossip about me. So then why do you gossip about others?
Speaker 3:Yeah right.
Speaker 2:Love yourself or love others the way you love yourself, right? So replace that with love, replace it with serving it's it's. A lot of people are like oh, I just don't have the time like you have plenty of time.
Speaker 3:Right, you have enough time for yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like do you think people who are Serving in church, like who are putting on a wanna, who are doing youth group, who are doing the men's and women's ministry, who are?
Speaker 3:Yeah, helping hands, helping hands benevolence and all that, do you think?
Speaker 2:they're. None of them are married. None of them have kids. None of them. Oh, so oh. They have time for the game, the married people for the married people with kids get more hours in a day, or you know. I mean like, yeah, we all have the same amount of time in a day, so how are they able to do it? And you're not. It's. It's not a time problem, it is a priority problem and.
Speaker 2:And you're like I Don't have time to serve, and then you're gonna be far more in your flesh than you want to be. I'm telling you, like it is amazing if I go just two weeks Without serving, practically somehow, right like I'm getting ready to go to Guam, right for for like ten days for work yeah, ten days, like that's a lot of time I Won't be practically with my hands serving the church right.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna use that time, a lot of that time, to be doing Bible studying and we run a couple sermons that are coming up and be writing some series right. I'm gonna use that time for the kingdom the best I can in that time. But I always find myself by the end of like those kind of trips. I'm just like, why am I? I'm just like really in the flesh right now like I'm very angry.
Speaker 2:I found myself complaining more I can find my right, yeah it does wonders like your antidote is to serving people and loving people the way you want to be loved. Start the flesh. Feed the spirit, built good spiritual habit. Replace bad, sinful habits with good spiritual habits and and start waging war against the flesh.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that for this week I just want to leave off by just reading the scripture again, because it's just so clear and concise going into this week. So for Galatians 5, 13 to 18, I'm just gonna leave you with the with God's word, for you were called to freedom. Brothers Only, do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another, for the whole law is fulfilled in one word you shall love your neighbor as yourself. But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. 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. But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law. All right, and with that We'll see you next week on real Bible stories.
Speaker 2:It will serve and love somebody Amen.
Speaker 3:Thank you for tuning in to real Bible stories. If you enjoyed this podcast, be sure to leave a review, share and subscribe to be notified each week when we upload new episodes. Real Bible stories is produced in partnership with Palm Church in 29 Palms, california. If you would like more information or want to check out archive sermons and Bible studies, please check out the church website at palms Baptist church comm or check them out on Facebook, instagram or YouTube. Real Bible stories can be found wherever podcasts are found. Thank you again and we will see you next week.