Once you become a Christian, you soon realize that the Christian life is a hard life to accomplish. The very things that you do not want to do, are the very things that you do. That flesh, inside of you, is stronger than your will power. In fact, the harder you try to overcome fleshly desires, the more predominant they seem to emerge from your life.
The answer? You need power stronger than yourself. That power is none other than the Holy Spirit. Lewis Sperry Chafer, a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary’s early beginnings, said this of the education at that seminary: “In view of the fact that Christian service is effectively solely as it is wrought in the power of the Holy Spirit and that power is realized only through the scriptural provisions for personal adjustment to the Spirit, the theological curriculum is fundamentally lacking which does not provide the student with the training, power, and personal victory in Jesus Christ.” Thus, all ministry, in and out of the pulpit, begins, ends, and is everything in between, with the power of the Holy Spirit through Christ.
With that thought in mind, Scripture gives clear instruction on how to conquer your fleshly desires. “I say, then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish” (Galatians 5:16-17; NKJV). To obtain the ability to conquer the flesh, it is done by living your life by following the Holy Spirit’s leading.
You cannot live the Christian life in your own power. You must submit yourself to following a divine power. That power is obtained by walking in the Spirit. And, so often, that is done by not doing what you would like to do.
