19 Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21 envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. ~ Galatians 5:19-24
Many of us have the desire to know how to battle sin so that we can begin to dive into spiritual warfare, but we don’t want to lay the foundation in order to be successful. Before we can battle sin, we have to make the conscious decision to carry our cross and follow Jesus regardless of what the world says or does to us.
If we decide to follow Jesus, we must understand the difference between right and wrong. They’re broken up into the desires of the Spirit & the desires of the flesh. Galatians 5 explains that we have both flesh and Spirit. The Spirit is our desire for God. The flesh is our desire to sin. But over the years, the majority of us have built up our flesh and starved our Spirit.
This is why when we become convicted of our sins, it’s so hard to break free. We have this idea in our heads that once we accept Jesus, all desires of the flesh will be gone, but that’s not the way it works. We have to go through trial after trial, battle after battle, until we have finally crucified our flesh.
After we make that decision to follow Jesus and carry our cross regardless of our situation, circumstance, surroundings, etc., we have to do an honest self-evaluation. But because we’re human, we’re going to overlook certain things about ourselves. So, what are we to do? Pray and ask God to search us. To show us anything that is in us that we need to change. Anything in us that we need to remove. When God shows us something, then we go into battle and take each fleshly desire down one desire at a time.
We fast. We pray. We read our Bibles and memorize verses that build us up and defend us against temptation. Then we make sure we don’t give the Devil a foothold into our lives. We stop going to places, hanging out with people, watching videos, listening to music, playing games, etc., which caused us to sin in the past. We change our lifestyle to match the commands of Christ Jesus.
This is a lot easier said than done, and it’s not going to happen overnight. But if we continue, we are promised that we will overcome sin because Jesus has already overcome the world. We can’t just pray and expect God to do all of the work; we have to meet Him halfway. We have to do something. We have to fight.
Peace. Love. Go Forth and Battle Sin.
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