The Missing Ingredient in Battle Against Sin

In review of Galatians 5:16 it says, “So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves.”

Bottom Line:

Allow the Holy Spirit to guide you so that you won’t obey your own selfish desires.

What this means to me:

I am advised to let the Holy Spirit be my guide. He’ll direct me on what to do. When I do, I won’t be satisfying my own selfish desires and natural tendencies.

I can do everything right and still not defeat a sin. I can read the Bible every day. I can pray. I can have a group of friends around me who’ll speak the truth in love to me on a regular basis.

And I can still be trapped in habitual sin.

At the end of the day, I can’t depend upon myself and what I can do to defeat sin. I also need the Holy Spirit’s power. The Holy Spirit enables me as a believer to do what I can’t do and to fulfill God’s desire for my life.

Galatians 5:16 says, “So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves” (NLT).

I can have all the right equipment to defeat habitual sin in your life, but it won’t matter without the Holy Spirit’s influence. This is much like finding a bird that had just died less than a minute earlier. If I pick it up, it won’t be much different than one of its live counterparts. It’ll still be warm. It’ll have the same muscles, bones, feathers, and wings. However, if you toss it up in the sky, it’ll drop right back down to the ground.

This bird has no life left. The life isn't in the feathers, wings, or bones. It’s in the life God puts in it. Without a spirit, the bird won’t fly, even if it has all the right equipment.

Likewise, I can have all the right equipment to live a successful, victorious life, but without the Spirit’s empowering, I can’t live that kind of life.

It’s much like throwing a dead bird into the air.

I won’t be able to live a victorious life of Christ on my own. It’s impossible. My best intentions and my too-easily-broken promises won’t enable me to live the Christian life. The Holy Spirit has to live through me.

I can get the Holy Spirit living through me by inviting him in. By allowing him to speak truth into my life when my thoughts go wild. I need to remember that God, via the Holy Spirit is living in me. I can tap into this by pushing myself and my desires aside and listening to his voice. For me this will require just quieting my own thoughts down and then allowing his presence to come forward. I can ask for his guidance whenever I need it. In summary, Paul also said in Galatians 5:17, “The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires.” So today, I will do my best to live by the Spirit.