They come in the package with the purchased item, slid along the edge or crinkled at the bottom. Some are one sheet, others a booklet.
Instructions are written as guides … which usually prove more confusing and scarcely decipherable, enough to make you throw your hands and exclaim, “This is no help whatsoever!” I sometimes wonder why instructions are included at all.
And then I realize I’m in the same predicament. My sinful flesh serves no purpose—except to destroy me.
Jesus says in John 6:63,
“It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”
My Savior came to liberate me from the evil to which I was subject. Now my previous life no longer has a place in the new.
“We know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.”
– Romans 6:6
Ephesians 4:17-24 explains it in more detail.
“You must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!—assuming that you have heard about Him and were taught in Him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”
I cannot consult the flesh and expect godly inclination. All I will get is selfish, sensual compulsion that opposes the Lord. The contrast is stark.
“That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” … “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”
– John 3:6, Romans 8:5-8
God’s Provision: But the Father doesn’t leave a searching soul unanswered. He delightfully instills truth and teaches wisdom (Psalm 51:6).
Word of the Week: Renewal. Hope is found in transformation via “the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5).
Abby
