How to Discipline Your Flesh

How to Discipline Your Flesh One of the things you will consistently fight against is the flesh. What is the flesh? It is the system that wants to govern your desires, appetites and way of thinking that is not consistent with the principles of the word of God. Being ruled by the flesh is the opposite of being led by the Spirit. If you are not spiritual, You will be carnal. Being carnal is not an expression used for the unbeliever’s. It means a believer that is not ruled by the Spirit of God. He is called a carnal Christian. When you are ruled by the Flesh, You battle with sins. But we are not to battle with sin are believers. We have dominion over sin or any works of the flesh. There are believers everywhere who are caught right now in that kind of defeat, Most of them have "repented and rededicated" more times than they can remember. But every time they take a fresh stand against the devil, he just knocks them flat again. The Battlefield of the Mind. As a born again Christian, the devil has no dominion over your spirit. No! Not at all. He can only take the battle to your mind. Your mind is the seat of your soul. Your soul houses your feelings and emotions. So what the devil wants to do is to battle with you in the Battlefield of the mind. You will think it's your reasoning and not knowing that he is the one putting those thoughts in there. Before you can consistently enjoy victory, however, you must go to the Word and learn something about the strategies the devil is using against you. You must learn how he operates, so you can put a stop to those operations in your life. You must find out, for example, exactly where he's going to attack you. After all, you can hardly expect to win the war if you can't even find your way to the battlefield. Hebrews 12:1-3 will help turn you in the right direction. It says: 1.Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, 2.Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3.For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds. Read that last phrase again. "Consider Jesus...lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds." As long as you live in a mortal body, your mind is the place where your fight with Satan will be won or lost. Your mind is the battlefield. Some people have made the mistake of thinking Satan's attacks come in the realm of the spirit, but they don't! Jesus defeated him once and for all where the spirit realm is concerned—and when we made Jesus Lord of our lives, that victory became forever ours. The battle for your spirit is over. It has already been fought and won. As a believer, you've been spiritually reborn into the image of God, and there is absolutely nothing the devil can do to change that. He's been permanently kicked out of that domain. Unless you understand the difference between the soul and the Battlefield of the Mind spirit, that may be difficult for you to grasp. So let me give you an illustration that will help you see the distinction between the two. Over the years, I've met a few people who, through supernatural visions, have had the privilege of actually seeing Jesus. In describing their visions, several of those people have told me the same thing. They've said that when Jesus appeared to them, almost all of the questions they'd always wanted to ask Him suddenly vanished from their minds. Then later, when the vision was gone, they'd think about that great opportunity they had and wonder how on earth they could have failed to ask Him those questions when they had the chance. Why didn't I ask Him about this? they'd think. Why didn't I ask Him about that? I'll tell you why they didn't. It was because visions take place in the realm of the spirit; and when you're operating purely in the realm of the spirit, your mind (which is in the realm of the soul) is not in charge. The only questions those folks could think to ask were questions that had truly been in their spirits. All the others—the ones they so quickly forgot—were simply questions they'd been entertaining in their mind. When they were caught up in those visions, the devil wasn't even a factor. Because they had for that moment stepped totally into the spirit, he couldn't get in and mess things up. Even though he himself is a spirit, he's lost all his authority in the spiritual realm. He can't fight you there anymore. Remember, 1 Corinthians 10:13 says, "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man." That means Satan has to operate in this natural, soulish realm. And even in this realm he has no authority, but he can try to deceive you. Deception is all that he has. Deception is a tool of Satan. He feeds on it. If he ever gets a born again Christian, then he successfully deceived the individual. That he doesn't have authority over you, That doesn't mean, however, that he'll just pack up and go home. He's still going to come after you. He's still going to try to steal from you and kill you and destroy you—and he's going to try to do it by gaining control of your mind. By bombarding you with destructive thoughts and putting pressure on your emotions. Satan has 3 mission statements: 1. To kill 2. To steal and 3. To destroy These are the 3 things he tend to achieve everywhere he puts his signature. You need to know that. You need to prepare yourself for it. You need to realize that if you're ever going to take a successful stand against him, you're going to have to do it on the battlefield of your mind. Defeat by Deceit Now that you know where the fight is going to take place, you need to know what kind of weapons the devil is going to use against you. That’s not really too tough to figure out. He only has one, and I can describe it to you in one word: deceit. Once he begins to work on your mindset towards the word of God and makes you to begin to have a soft spot on some sinful acts, then he has begun to deceive you. It's a mind game. He has to use deceit because he doesn't have the power to defeat you any other way. He doesn't have the power to win outright. In fact, he doesn't have any power of his own How to Discipline Your flesh. Jesus stripped him of it all when He arose from the dead and took away from him the keys of hell and death. Is anybody with me? He has to win the battle in your soul by tricking you into defeating yourself. He must somehow deceive you into setting aside the victorious life of righteousness and con you into stepping again into the slavery of sin. Living in sin doesn't start out big. It starts like a thought in your mind. That thought when meditated on will lead to action. But you won't know that the thought came from the enemy. He battles in the mind. It begins small and grows. The devil doesn't just come blaring up to you and say, ❖Why don't you be a prostitute? ❖Why don't you be a rapist? He starts by planting a little seed in your mind. He starts by causing you to wonder the benefits of the action and makes it look like it's a nice thing for you. When you give in to little thoughts that flash to your mind which are not consistent with the word of God, your flesh—your natural, human appetites and desires—became the boss of everything you do. Even sexual sins starts with a thought. The thought was not generated by your mind. It came from the enemy. If you meditate on it, You will start thinking of having sex with someone. And that can manifest into action. At That point, The devil has won you. You see. The battle was in your mind and not in your spirit. Lasciviousness: The First Point of Attack To help you begin to understand how this strategy works, I want to draw your attention to a peculiar word found in the New Testament. It's probably not a word you've heard very often. in fact, it took me a long time just to learn how to say it, much less find out what it meant. But it's a crucial part of the devil's battle plan, and you need to learn something about it. The word is "lasciviousness." Some translations call it "licentiousness" and, scripturally Lasciviousness: speaking, it keeps very bad company. In Mark 7:20-23, for example, Jesus includes it along with adultery, fornication, murder, (and a number of other sins) as one of the things that defile a man. In Galatians 5, it's listed between "uncleanness" and 'idolatry" as one of the works of the flesh. The actual meaning of lasciviousness is "no restraint or unrestrained"; and the reason I believe it's such an important word is that it's the devil's first and most important point of attack on the life of a believer. If he can conquer you there, he's got it made. You see, he knows that if you're going to live a godly life, you'll have to restrain the desires and appetites of your flesh. You'll have to put your spirit in charge and make your flesh yield to and come under the authority of the Holy Spirit within you. Satan's goal, of course, is to stop you from doing that. So, through lasciviousness, he starts applying pressure to your flesh, causing its appetites to grow stronger. He starts trying to talk you into letting go of your restraint here and there. Not much at first, of course. Just a little now and again. Until suddenly, almost before you know it, your flesh begins to take control. It starts dominating your spirit. You find yourself doing things you really don't want to do. Giving in to the weaknesses of your flesh. If food is your greatest weakness, for example, that's where the cycle will begin. Food is the physical ground for more human failure and lasciviousness than any other item. Satan used it to successfully tempt Adam and Eve. Then he tried to use it again against Jesus by coming to Him when He was hungry and telling Him to turn stones into bread. The desire for food is a powerful, powerful thing. But if you'll get some insight into lasciviousness and refuse to let that desire control you, many of you can start right now and get rid of about two thirds of that fat you've been carrying. Regardless of whether you weakness is for food or something else, however, the signs of lasciviousness are always the same. The goal is to create an appetite within you that will be an obsession for you. Little by little, you find yourself starting to lose control. And when you are no longer in control, the urge, desires or ungodly zeal will take over you. This is the strategy of the devil. That’s how lasciviousness works, and though it gets far less publicity than things like adultery and murder, in the end it is just as devastating. The truth is, all sin is the same. The devil has just packaged it in different ways. Sexual sins have one kind of ribbon around them. Gluttony has another kind of ribbon around it. But take off the wrapping and it all comes down to the same thing—and that's selfishness. Every sin begins the same way. It begins when the big "ME" becomes predominant in your thinking either through fear or through pride or through a combination of the two. Just as all sins have a common beginning, they also have a common end—and in Ephesians 4, we can see exactly what that end is. So let' take a look, beginning with verse 17: "This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart: who being past feeling [or dead to shame, having the conscience seared until it has no more voice to the mind or the body] have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness." What we see there in that passage is the progression of sin. It begins when you allow yourself to be controlled by the thoughts Satan plants in your mind. Then it keeps on pushing you further and further until you are totally given over to it. read that last phrase again.— "working ALL uncleanness with greediness." Think about that. ALL uncleanness! The ultimate goal of Satan is to use lasciviousness to bring you again into total slavery to sin. His plan is to pressure you into yielding to the weakness of your flesh until that weakness begins to dominate you. If he can do that, he can defeat you. He can see to it that you end up living a life of failure. He can make you live just like the unsaved people of the world have to live despite the fact that you're a born again, Holy Spirit-baptized child of God. I don't care if you are the most anointed, If you start giving up your restraint and giving into the desires of your flesh, through lasciviousness Satan can bring you to a place where you're living like an unbeliever living a life alienated from the life of God. Working all uncleanness, with greediness. He can bring you to a place where you have no shame about you at all. That's a terrible, terrible end. It is an end marked by big sins. But always remember, every one of those "big sins" had small beginnings. My time ends here. Thanks for being part of tonight's edition of School of the Spirit. God bless you all! comment and share your views

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