Life in the Spirit: Radical, Rigorous, Rewarding

We've been looking at the doctrine of sanctification, what the Bible teaches about sanctification in this particular passage as we're going through the book of Romans. What we've seen so far in the book of Romans is quite simply, and this is a little oversimplification, but basically what we've seen is that the way that God justifies us is by placing us into Christ. Through our union with Jesus Christ, we have been covered by the righteousness of Christ, and so when the Father looks at us, He sees the righteousness of Jesus Christ. We are as accepted by the Father as the Son Himself is. So it's because we are in Christ that we are right before God, and that comes through faith. Now Paul has begun to talk about, now how does God change us, just as T has been talking about?

How does He change us now that He has accepted us? All believers are 100% perfectly accepted by the living God through faith in Jesus Christ. But obviously we all need change, isn't that right, wives? We all need change. We're all in the need of being transfigured, and the amazing thing is that need never diminishes. A lot of people, they first come to Christ, they think they're going to reach this plateau. In fact, some people are under the mistaken assumption that they have reached the plateau, and I hate to tell you this, but there just isn't one. There's no plateau. It is a continual life of being transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. So how does God change us? Well just as He has made us righteous in His eyes by putting us into Christ, so He changes us by putting the Holy Spirit into us.

The Spirit has taken up residency in you, and now our life is described as walking and living in the Spirit. And so this life in the Spirit is God's means of transforming believers into the image of Jesus Christ. Now what we want to look at this morning, very briefly, is in just two verses, in verses 12 and 13, is what this life in the Spirit is all about in three simple statements. First, if you notice the title, life in the Spirit includes is radical, rigorous, and rewarding. What I mean by that is life in the Spirit first of all demands radical obedience, as we'll see. It demands radical obedience, the kind of obedience that Jesus described as if your right-hand offends you, cut it off. If your right eye causes you to stumble and to sin, then pluck it out.

Now that's about as radical as you can get, isn't it? And so Paul follows in the steps of Jesus and talking to us about the radical obedience to Jesus Christ that it takes to be transformed as we live in the Spirit. Secondly, life in the Spirit not only demands radical obedience, but secondly, it involves rigorous effort. This is a real mistake in the minds of some people because they come to grasp some of the truths about the grace of God, but they fail to understand that the grace of God doesn't mean that you lay down or that you let go and let God. That's a nice little phrase, but you better understand what it means because it's not a biblical phrase and it can be a very unbiblical kind of concept if you misunderstand it.

In Psalm 46, it's where it says, cease striving and know that I am God. A lot of people say, man, I just need to cease striving and let God be God in my life. Well, go back and look at the passage because he's talking specifically about his enemies and what he is saying is, stop resisting me. Stop resisting me. He's not saying, kick back, lay down, and don't ever worry again about living before God and holiness. And so what we want to look at is the fact that he has called us to rigorous effort in the Christian life and life in the Spirit. And the third thing is that life in the Spirit produces rewarding effects. The effects are so amazing what God wants to produce in the lives of his people and what he is producing in the lives of his people, what he's producing in your life.

Because we forget how much he has transformed us until we step back and take a look. Well, let's look at this one by one. First of all, life in the Spirit demands radical obedience. And notice that expression. I'm going to read to you verses 12 and 13, Paul says, so then, since this is true, we are quite literally deaders. We are deaders, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you are living according to the flesh, you must die. But by the Spirit, you are putting to death the deeds of the body you will live. For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. This is the description of what a Son of God is. What is a Son of God? A Son of God by description of his life is, he is one who is led by the Spirit.

He lives his life. That's what sets him apart. If you could have gone up in a helicopter and looked over the wilderness when the Israelites were being delivered out of Egyptian bondage and taken in the Holy Land for 40 years, you would have known who they were. Because they were all out there being led by the pillar of fire and the pillar of the cloud as they wandered through the wilderness. It was obvious they were being led by God. Now he was leading them in circles because of their stubbornness. And maybe you have experienced that at times where you have been going in circles because of your stubbornness, but one thing was clear, these were the people of God because they were being led by the presence of God.

The Spirit is a one who leads us. Now notice this, life in the Spirit demands radical obedience. He says we are to be putting to death the deeds of the body. That's pretty radical language. Be putting to death the deeds of the body. Because we are debtors not to the flesh to live according to the flesh. Now by implication, and this is a powerful way of saying it, the way Paul does, but by implication what he is saying is we are debtors to the Spirit to live according to the Spirit. You are debtors to the Spirit to live according to the Spirit. How do we do that? By doing this radical thing of putting to death the deeds of the body. Now notice how he begins this section, these two verses. He begins with these words now, therefore that's what's called an emphatic inferential.

What I mean by that is he says there are consequences to what I've been saying. The fact that you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, the fact that the Spirit of God dwells in you, the fact that Jesus Christ is in you and therefore the body is dead but the light, the Spirit is life within you, therefore there are consequences. Therefore there are some responsibilities that you have as those who are in the Spirit. We are not debtors to the flesh. We no longer have to follow the dictates of the flesh to obey the will of the flesh. And as we said before, the flesh in this context is referring to all that is characteristic to life upon this fallen world and rebellion against God. It's everything that you see practically.

Everything that is projected to you is the world. As John says, all that's in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, they're all passing away because they're not of God. And yet we're bombarded with it. We're like fish swimming in an ocean of it. It's all around us. And yet Paul says, you're not indebted to that. Do you know you don't have to lust after the flesh? You don't have to lust after everything that's presented to you in this world? Because you're not a slave any longer. You're not in the flesh. You're not obligated to the flesh to live in the flesh any longer. As Christians, we have been rescued from the realm of the flesh. Now here's what everybody knows though.

Everybody who's got good sense. That doesn't mean you don't have to deal with the flesh any longer, does it? It doesn't mean we don't come to church and all pretend as though we're not tempted by sin. We don't sit around here and I hope not anyway. We don't sit around here and pretend as though we don't struggle with the flesh any longer because after all, we're in the spirit. And if you had a little secret camera around this week and we could view it, we'd all go, oh my gosh. I thought you were in the spirit. Even though you're in the spirit, you must still deal with the reality of the flesh because it has not been eradicated from our lives as we're told back in chapter 7, verse 25. Pastor Paul says, he's going to deliver me from the body of this death.

Thank God through Jesus Christ, my Lord, but then he says so now that I've been delivered in this way. I've been made right with God and the spirit's been put in me. So now, with my mind, I serve the law of God, but with my flesh, I serve the law of sin and death. See, it's a struggle, isn't it? And that's why it takes radical obedience to the living God. You see the danger that we have is forgetting the fact that as long as we are embodied, as long as we are still in this fallen world with this sin-curse body before our transformation, we are going to have to deal with the realm of the flesh. It's all around us. And in fact, sin is still in us. Now the danger we have, all of us have is the danger that since we have been delivered, set free, we're legally and positionally free from sin, as Paul told us in chapter 6.

But the problem is, is that we can do what he warns against back in chapter 6, verse 11. He says, even so, consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. So don't let sin reign in your mortal body any longer, that you would obey us less. And don't go on presenting the members of your body as weapons of unrighteousness, but present yourself to God as those alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness. For you're not under law, but then notice what he says. So then, because we're not under law, should we therefore sin because we're under grace? And he says, don't you know that when you present yourself as a slave to someone, that's whose slave in practice you are.

So the Christian who's been set free from sin, if he presents himself to sin as an instrument of weapon of sin, he becomes for all practical purposes a slave of sin in his actions. It's kind of like being set free from a master who owns you, and you've been, in fact, this happened, you know, in the United States. When the slaves were set free, many of them couldn't bring themselves to abandon their masters, continued to submit to and obey and live under the rule of these masters who no longer owned them. And many Christians, that all Christians from time to time struggle with that, as we live as though sin was still our master. It's as though the commands and the way that sin controls us, the way that sin shouts its orders to us, we're told us through the lusts of the flesh, through the scheming of the devil, and through the appeal of the world system.

In fact, Paul says, our John says, everything in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, is an amazing. You think it's an accident that this world system continues to create and design things that have such an incredible appeal to you, the lust of the eyes, for me to experience and to see, to feel, to have what God has commanded me not to have. Look at Solomon and his struggle. By design, God says, one man, one woman committed to each other for life, Solomon had a thousand women. And Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes and said, vanity, vanity, all is vanity. It was Solomon who said, it is a wretched thing to live in a house with a complaining woman. He had a thousand. Can you imagine?

I've never lived in a house with a complaining woman, but I bet it's bad. Make sure you tell my wife I said that. Our former master continues to make demands upon us. Are you going to respond? What he says is, we must practice radical obedience, put to death the deeds of the body. Now we know what the deeds of the body are. Describe for us in Galatians chapter 5. We might look there in just a few minutes, but you know what he's talking about? Put to death those things that the body so easily slips into. Isn't it amazing how you've never forget to sin? I've talked to people at all stages of life who've told me they never forgot how to sin. You never will. That's why Jesus said, if your right eye causes you to stumble into sin, pluck it out.

Now he isn't saying literally pluck out your eye. He's saying get radical with the source of temptation. You can't be passive in this life because the enemy is subtle. The enemy comes after us. The enemy has schemes and sin that dwells in you is still a powerful force. And that's the reason. That is the reason that advertising is so successful in our culture. It's because sin is so powerful. Can you think of one product that is advertised that doesn't use the flesh or the eyes or the boastful pride of life which is this independent attitude that I've got everything I need. I've got everything I need. Now I don't have to depend on anybody or anything. I am foot loose and fancy free. And so the commercials come on and tell you how to get that way or how to fulfill every wandering desire.

You see sin within us is a powerful force and so Paul says you have to be radical in your response. You must put the death of the deeds of the body. In Luke 14, Jesus said, oh you want to be my disciples? There's a huge crowd following him. As though they were his disciples and the disciples, the picture of a disciple was one who would be yoked up to a teacher and submit to the authority of that teacher. And Jesus says, you don't understand the nature of my demands. You cannot be my disciple if you don't hate your father and mother and sister and brother and your own life and take up your cross and follow me. Why? Because the demands of God, the demands of righteousness are at such opposition to sin and the world system and Satan that you're going to have to be willing to say no in order to say yes.

Jesus is not going to pattern your life in such a way that all you have to do is just do what you want to do. So I'd love it if the Christian life was like that. You just got to do what you want to do. You know, the spirit's going to make you want to do what you ought to do and you just do what you want to do. Why isn't it working for you? Is there something else inside of you that produces desires besides the Holy Spirit? Because the lust against the flesh and the flesh against the spirit. Radical obedience is a part of the Christian life and radical obedience is by definition taking a step at great personal risk and sacrifice in the known will of God. God wants me to say no to this in order to say yes to him.

But remember this, you've heard this verse before. It's in an obscure place for you, probably second Chronicles chapter 16 verse 9. Asa was tempted instead of following in God's in the path that God had let him down of depending upon him alone, he began to depend upon the arm of flesh and the prophet comes to him and says, you're going to fail and you're going to lose this war. You're going to lose your power because you have forgotten something. For the eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth that he may strongly support those whose heart is completely his. That's a great memory verse. The eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth that he may strongly support those whose heart is completely his.

I heard Charlie Stanley preaching on this this morning, how do you put these two things together? Just in the Lord and live the Christian life with absolute commitment because they're both true. As we'll see in a minute, you can only do this in the power of the Spirit. But radical obedience is saying, I'll give my life to you whatever it costs. My commitment to Christ has to be the basis of my whole life and all of my decisions and the turns in my life. It has to be based upon my commitment to Jesus Christ because there's an enemy. The sin is still alive and well because the world system is designed to get you to love something other than God. That's what John says in 1 John 2. The world system is continually offering you things to love like you should only love God.

What God asks us to do is basically to sign a blank check and put it in the hands of God whatever you call me to do. And it starts at this basic level. Can you trust God enough to take the scary step? Radical obedience is scary for us because we still feel so dependent upon the flesh. We feel so dependent upon the flesh. But it's a necessary step because we have a real enemy that wants to destroy our soul. We're seeing the effects of it in the Church of Jesus Christ all over the place. Faith is doing what God said just because God said it. This idea that the will of God and His revealed clear will towards us is optional and you should only have to do it if you feel deeply that you should do it is the biggest, most heinous lie of Satan I've ever heard.

And I cannot believe that Christians believe this kind of garbage. That the will of God is optional. Now it's true sometimes we struggle to know the will of God. We have differences of opinion about what the Bible means in places. But I want to tell you that's a minor part, isn't it? Because a word of God is clear, it has perspicuity, it is easy to understand if you simply come to it. People who tell me, I don't understand the Bible, I've tried to read the Bible, I don't understand it. Oh yeah, what have you read? I've read it, really. You've really read it, huh? What a joke. I don't know anybody who has seriously come to the Word of God and saying, saying, I believe this is the Word of God and reading this Word and coming away and saying, I can't understand it.

I've never, ever seen anybody do that. I've only seen people claim to read the Bible and say they don't come to the Bible because they can't understand it. God has given us a clear picture of His will, the heart of God, that what He commands in regards to your life, your relationships, the way you handle your money, the way you handle raising children, the way you handle marriage relationships, the way you relate to the world system, the way you do everything. When you come to the Word and you see the will of God through the Word of God, if you have confidence in this God, then that's what we are to embrace, radical obedience in it. Nothing less will do because there's an enemy. The second thing is, life in the Spirit involves a rigorous effort, rigorous effort.

Paul says, these are commands, we are not to be living and these are present tense commands by the way. We're not to be living according to the flesh, but we are to be by the Spirit putting to death the deeds of the body. Most of you know what a rigorous means, although it's not usually in a high school catalog about how you're supposed to approach education, but talk to Ryan Peterson, as in a Ph.D. program in Denver, ask him if he understands what rigor is and what being rigorous is in his approach to study. In other words, it's exacting, it takes something out of you to live in the Spirit. He says that we are to put to death the practices of the body. Now here, let me put together some things.

First of all, you never want to separate these two facts. First of all, we are responsible to act. He gives us a command here. Put to death. You don't understand what this means. You need to learn to what it means because he's commanded you to do this, to put to death the deeds of the body, the practices of the body when it's responding to sin. But we must never separate this command, this responsibility to act from the fact that we can only do it through the Spirit. That's what we must never do. Separate those two things. We are responsible to act, but we can only do it through the Spirit. Now, notice this, we need to avoid both these errors. That's what we see constantly flowing through the church, the life of the church from time to time.

One error is moralism or legalism, and that is holiness of life is achieved by our own unated effort. You just got to work hard. You got to practice the disciplines and you will become holy. What work? It won't work, and that's exactly what Paul has told us in Romans chapter 7. When I try to gain acceptance from God based upon my performance, I will always fail. But the other error is probably more common among us, and that is pacifism. Violence of life is achieved by the Spirit apart from our participation. You just let go and let God cease striving. And as I said, what God is saying there is stop opposing me. Know that I am God. I'm going to win this battle. He says, I am going to rain over the Gentiles.

Stop opposing me. That's what God is saying to us. Stop opposing me. He's not telling you to go limp in order to grow. He's told us to do something to engage into this life in the Spirit. But notice again, these two things. We have to understand both of these truths. First, that holiness of life is achieved by our constant living out the life that was placed within us by the Holy Spirit. Remember, the body is dead, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. The Spirit is the source of our life to live for God. And then we need to understand that this human activity, constantly living out the life that's been given to us. This human activity is never apart from the activity of God's Spirit.

You can't do it apart from the work of the Spirit. Paul is calling us, too, is obedience in total reliance and dependence upon the Holy Spirit. So here's the balance, rigor and reliance. Sometimes because you see certain things happening in people's life, you only want to emphasize one. You see, people have this attitude that it doesn't really matter. After all, I am righteous before God, so I've got some sin in my life. So I'm disobedient in these four areas. I'm really obedient in these other two, though. The Christian life is rigorous. Life in the Spirit is rigorous because you have an enemy. It isn't uphill battle in a very real sense. I've been praying this week, after going through the passage of last week, I've been praying all we got, help me today, let me feel the lusts of the Spirit.

I want to feel the lusts of the Spirit, because I know the Spirit is lusting against the flesh, and I know I'm going to feel the lusts of the flesh. I want to feel the lusts of the Spirit. Isn't it amazing that feeling the lusts of the flesh is like falling off a log? Nothing to that. People actually feel accomplished that they're sinning and it amazes me. We celebrate sin in this culture. We give awards for it, and people are just so excited about the fact they're so good at it. Yeah, it's easy. It's easy. It's easy to appeal to people's lusts in order to make money. They're willing to sell yourself and make a fortune in this culture. I'll tell you what's hard is to be so serious about the life and the Spirit that you practice the rigor of asking the Spirit of God to produce within your heart his strong desires for the holiness of God.

To say, notice in, and yes to the Spirit, He says, if you are living according to the flesh, you're about to die. And if by the Spirit you are putting to death continually, the deeds of the body, now that tells you something, by the way, it's never going to stop. Wouldn't it be neat if we said on September the 12th, guess what? The lusts of the flesh, the flesh are going to cease and desist. No more lusts of the flesh. Now that is going to happen when Jesus comes back and you're transformed into the image of God's Son. When adoption, the redemption of our bodies takes place, we'll probably hardly even know each other. Now much of our personalities is wrapped up in our own sinfulness. It's always going to be a battle.

Sin is always going to be appealing to you, to rebel against God's will in your life, to love this world more than you love God, to not be willing to lay down your life for one another, to form little clicks in the church. You know what a click is? A click is find three or four people that you get along with and you just exclude everybody outside of this group. Let's call the work of the flesh, but the lust of the spirit is he opens you up. He opens you up. The spirit lusts in you to give yourself away, to drink so deeply from this well that he's placed in you that it overflows into the lives of other people. The lust of the spirit is that you stop living for yourself, stop serving yourself. That's what Jesus died for, so that you wouldn't have to live for yourself any longer, but you could live for him who died and rose again on your behalf, so that you could lay down your life for each other, so you can give yourself away.

So you could find the joy, Jesus knows better than anybody else doesn't he, about what life is all about? And it's Jesus who said it is more blessed to give than receive. He ought to know, right? And that's what he said. And so it's amazing how this happens, by the way, in history, it's when a country, when a culture is very prosperous, they get more stingy, more turn in on themselves, more protective. We circle the wagons. We've got to watch our stuff. And when God sets you free, you want to give yourself away. See, that's the joy of the Christian life, and notice this. Paul says, in 1 Corinthians chapter 9, do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives a prize, run in such a way that you may win?

Now, he's not talking about outrunning all the other believers. He's talking about the fact that you've got to live this life the way a runner runs, and that is be serious about it. Look to the finish line. Be serious about this race that we're in. He says, everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things, because he's got his mind on this. You've seen this in these Olympic athletes who are willing to sacrifice so greatly in order to accomplish this, and Paul says something, we have something so far greater. You're in a race. This is a race that we're in in the Christian life. He says, they then do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we, an imperishable, therefore, Paul says, I run in such a way as not without aim.

I'm careful how I run. I saw yesterday this 100-meter quarterfinals, and this one runner from the United States has been the fastest man in the world, and the guy, his beat him twice, was in this race again, and they were talking about how he was working on his technique, every little detail in his technique. He's so focused. When he came out of the blocks, they were showing how that before, simply coming out of the blocks, he would put his feet off to one side, and he learned that if he put his feet straight in front of him, he could cut off a tiny millisecond. He's so focused on the race. Focused. And that's what Paul is saying. This life in the spirit takes focus, and so he says, I run in such a way as not without aim.

I box in such a way as not beating the air, but I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that after I preach to others, I myself may not be disqualified. Are you serious about this Christian life that God's called you to? He's called you into a race, and it is a war because we have an enemy who wants to undermine you, who wants to make you disqualified, he's called you to it. It's a great challenge. I love the way Jesus would respond to people who said they want to be as followers. They're like, great, we're going to sign you up, we're going to tell you the three easy steps, how to be a disciple of Jesus, and all you got to do is come to two meetings, and if you'd like to give something to the church, you could do that, but you don't have to, and here it is, this is all you got to do.

Jesus says, it will cost you everything to be my disciple. It will cost you everything, but it will give you, it will produce in you, and that's the next point. Life in the Spirit produces rewarding effects. What are you living for? What are you living for? As you're laying plans for the next five years or ten years, what are you trying to achieve? We have here in these few words a real warning and a real promise, and notice the warning, if you are living according to the flesh, you must die. You must die. Anybody remember Tom Dooley, the song Tom Dooley, or that phrase, hang down your head Tom Dooley, hang down your head and cry, hang down your head Tom Dooley, tomorrow you're bound to die. That's what this means.

You know what is ahead on the path of living according to the flesh? You know where that path goes? That path leads to death, death. In fact, the wording he uses here quite literally is, if you live according to the flesh, you are about to die. It is so sure. You're going down a path that leads to death. What kind of death? Well, it can't be physical death because we're all going to die. Unless Jesus comes back before you die, we're all going to die physically. He's talking about spiritual death, the penalty of those who live according to the flesh. You want to get on this path? Do you know where this path leads? This path leads to separation from God for all eternity. What a warning. Death in its fullest sense, eternal separation from God is a penalty for sin.

What a warning. You know what? We are tempted to do. We Calvinists, we grace folks, is we eviscerate this warning. We gut it of all its power. We come up with some interpretation that takes the sting out of it. Paul has clearly affirmed in this statement that his readers, these Roman Christians will be damned if they continue to follow the dictates of the flesh. If you live a life of the flesh and you will end up in hell, that's what he says. That's what the Bible teaches. John Murray, who is a Calvinist of some repute, said, the believers, once for all death to the law of sin, does not free him from the necessity of mortifying sin in his members. It makes it necessary and possible for him to do it.

Think about this. Paul has given all these assurances to us that justified believers throughout all of these chapters, these first chapters we looked at. He has promised that we have absolute assurance because of God's justifying work in Christ Jesus. And he's driven home this fact that justification is once for all, it's accomplished. You have been declared righteous before God. But this does not mitigate the seriousness of the warning that he gives here. In a way that, finally, we can't synthesize this into some neat, logical formula. We can't, we want to just do away with it. It scares us to say that God would warn believers, if you go down this path, he'll be destroyed. Now, a parent says to his child, you're not going to play in the street because you're playing the street, you're going to get run over.

Well I can tell you that that parent is also going to make sure that that child doesn't play in the street, isn't he? And here is the contact point between this real warning and also the real promise. The promise is, if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body you will live. He's promising life, but he's promising life through putting the death to death the deeds of the body. The contact point between this promise and this warning is the Spirit of the living God, the Holy Spirit who has joined you to Christ upon which the basis of your justification, your acceptance with God is based. That same Holy Spirit who's joined you to Christ is now living in you and this Holy Spirit who lives within you, this one who gives you these inclinations, he produces this bent of mind that you want to obey God.

Why is that? Because the Spirit lives within. And so he says, stop resisting the Spirit. Paul says in 1 Thessalonians, don't quench the Spirit. As the Spirit's at work in your life, don't quench the Spirit, this is life. Verse 17, he goes on to say that we are heirs of God, join heirs with Jesus Christ. Peter chapter 1, Peter says that we are heirs of God and our inheritance is being kept for us in heaven. It's been guarded for us as we are being protected here. God is going to see to it, but you need to understand what God is going to see to. He's going to see to it that you put the death of these of the body. I don't know what you're struggling with right now. I don't know what lust of the flesh has got its hand around your neck.

I don't know what lust of the eyes is, especially appealing to you and taking you off track continually. But I can tell you this, if you cannot come to God's Word, if you can't come to His Word and settle down and listen for His voice, read His Word until it touches your heart because you have too many other things that you are focused on, that you have succumbed to the lust of the eyes and the lust of the flesh. And I guess what I think Paul would say to us today is, God has given you this incredible gift of salvation. He's given you life in the Spirit. He has taken you off the ashi, as the Old Testament says, and He has caused you to sit with a prince. And now He says, take this serious. You have life in the Spirit.

Now live life in the Spirit. And you know what it's going to take? It's going to take radical obedience. You're going to have to put the death of these of the body. It's going to take rigorous effort. Is it worth it to grow in the Christian life? Is it worth it to be used by God in His vineyard? Is it worth it to fulfill the ministry to which He has called you? Is it worth it? Is it worth the rigor? Is it worth getting up a little early in the morning to be in the Word? Is it worth it to say no to the flesh, to put away those things in your life that you're protecting? Why do you think Paul said make no provision for the flesh in order to obey its lust? As we tend to, when you go on vacation, do you think about what it's going to be like to be away from your normal life and how you're going to feed the flesh in some other setting and so you have to make plans for it?

Paul says, put the death of these of the body. Jesus said, if your eye offends you, pluck it out. Take this Christian life seriously, He says, because this is life. Don't let Satan, don't let sin, don't let this world system rob you of this life that He has called you to. Experience the life. Stand with me in this closing prayer. Our Father, we thank You for the Word of God that it's alive and powerful, sharper than a two-edged sword. It's able to penetrate, pierce into us to the dividing of bone and marrow, soul and spirit. It's able to lay us bare before you and I pray that you would do that work in our hearts today. I pray you do that work in my heart. I pray that you would convict me and convince me to say no to the flesh and yes to the spirit.

Father, I pray that you would in the days to come, in the months to come, in the years to come, in this fellowship that you would raise up people who want to be in the race, people who want to lay down their life for Jesus Christ, people who value heavenly things, more than earthly things. Oh, God, we confess our struggle. We ask you to prepare us and to use us for the glory of Christ, for the good of your people. Help us now as we have conversations, as we talk to each other, have fellowship with each other, that the Spirit of God would quicken us to encourage each other to love and give good deeds for the glory of Christ, we pray. When we stand before Christ, I pray that we will be able to stand there in great joy as we present those that you have brought into our lives that we've had influence over and that we could see them stand before the living Christ, that that would be the reward of our life that we would see the people that you used us to impact for Jesus Christ.

Prepare us for that work, I pray, in Jesus' name, amen.