The Battle Is Within: Taming The Flesh

The Name of the Lord is a fortified tower;
the righteous run to it and are safe. - Proverbs 18: 10
Our sins trick us, making us feel small next to towering heights.
Yet, God's love and Salvation through His Name, Yeshua the Lord,
shows us we in fact already reside with Him atop towering heights.

I sometimes feel like crying because the temptations are so overwhelming.

How weak I feel sometimes has me believing the weakness.

My flesh bursts with wild and heated emotions, a flood of tears being held back by my pride.

When temptation stirs, it can seem like a shot of some drug that flashes throughout my body.

Thoughts fester and my mind begins to spin.

At times, my arm or a leg flinches, or a smirk on my face quivers.

Temptation's shock seems quicker than adrenaline's work, more like an electrical zap to my hardwired nerve circuitry.

I sometimes feel like I want to tear out my eyes because of where they wonder off to.

I sometimes feel like I would like to delete certain images my eyes have downloaded to my mind's hard drive.

At times I wish I didn't feel, or was somehow immune.

But this is my lot in life, and serves a purpose despite my disdain for my frail humanity.

It only takes a glance and the damage is done, memory being a temporary enemy or deepening etch in cerebral stones.

I desire to break such memory banks on the Rock, shattering all memorialized temptations to bits.

It is understandable why some places on earth demand women to be covered from head to toe.

But does such an extreme effort remove temptation from men's hearts?

Do such extremes teach women to be spiritually modest, and respectable in all their ways?

If they did, then those places with a legacy of century's worth of outward modesty and strict public dress rules would be comprised of near-perfect human beings.

Such places would have long achieved spiritual levels that would prove inherent divinity.

Sin, depravity, holiness, and all things good would beam as a light from such places if exterior efforts proved correct.

This is but one exterior manner some people have utilized in dealing with what is first and foremost an inner struggle.

The battle against all temptations begin (and should end) within.

The triumphs on the inside usually form outer appearances, not the other way around.

Exterior efforts weighted upon others is an easy way to deal with internal individual struggles, but usually fails to produce the desired goal: righteousness, inner peace, resolve.

There are extremes, and we see extremes in both western and eastern cultures.

One man's definition of modesty is another man's evidence of control.

One man's definition of freedom is another man's evidence of lawlessness.

To become angry, or even hateful, about the weaknesses of our fellow human beings is to not recognize their fallen state as also existing in a state of grace. (John 1: 16)

To blame another person for our struggle is to place responsibility squarely and fully on others while justifying or excusing ourselves.

This is the manner of the Pharisee, the hypocrite, the religious.

'They made me do it' is the silly excuse... and only the immature make such blame-shifting accusations.

To blame our temptations on others because of their failures, their perversions, or their depravity, is to ignore our own set of shortcomings... since all fall short of the glory of God.

Blaming others, or society at-large, is excusing our role in being gracious, loving, and considerate of others.

Blaming others is not dealing with ourselves.

After all, isn't this how we would want someone to approach us regarding our sin and our thorns?

Is this not how the Lord has approached and reached us all?

Of course.

He has humbled Himself, having become human like us, in order for us to be raised to a higher state... to escape the corruption found in the world.

Are we to run away to the hills or some caves to remove all low ways from our sight or get away from others so we may somehow live a better life?

How, then, would we be utilized in revealing Christ to others?

There is a time to leave physical hovels, yet not all are called to leave certain places since they are to be the light for those others.

God has provided, knowing very well mankind's rebelliousness argued as freedom and legalism argued as religious truth.

The battle is within, which is where all temptations are sparked.

For those called heavenward, the inside is the only battleground.

The human body is God's work of art, He is the Great Designer, the Grand Artist, having an eye for symmetry and beauty in all of creation.

I believe viewing and admiring the human body is for our enjoyment, but in the proper setting and circumstance.

The husband enjoys the contours of his body's shape (his wife).

The husband's body is his wife.

He protects, is kind to, cares for, and treats with utmost tenderness and kindness and gentleness his body (his wife).

The wife enjoys the manner of her master's strength (her husband).

The wife's husband is her master, the head of her family.

His strength is revealed in how he loves her, in all humility and vulnerability.

He loves and treats his body not as a physical possession, but the vessel of the Holy Spirit she is.

He considers how God has made this vessel of flesh for not only his physical enjoyment, but more so as the reflection of the part of himself he was not created with.

His other part (with further gifts and talents) are found in his wife.

Since the two become one, the half of the single man is made whole and complete with his wife.

This is why the wife is honored beyond being a simple sex partner, or an attachment of a man.

Sex is only the beginning of the journey... but sadly the vast majority of people never get out of first gear when it comes to their relationships.

The sex lives of many are like seats on public transit.

The immaturity in men and women is revealed according to popular culture... either on the street in the west, or behind closed doors in the east.

The arrested development is shown clearly and evidently in clothing, more subtlety in attitudes, more overtly in words and actions, regardless of eastern or western culture, throughout the world.

As to the human body's public display... in certain ways it can get ahead of some people.

Insecurity, vanity, pride, feelings of inadequacy, lust, a desire to be loved or admired, depravity, and many more reasons are why, culturally, the human body has been idolized throughout times.

Today, the human body is marketed as a selling point, and perverted in such a way that the spiritual realities beyond the physical are ignored.

Since people typically only believe what they 'see', they disbelieve the spiritual realities behind the relations of intimacy, sex, fidelity, and vows.

To value the flesh is, somehow, equated to valuing the person... and the renting of the body, or its exploitation, is legal and taxed, or ignored while knowledge of such activity is well known.

These are very obvious and basic things, largely saturated into our psyche and made 'common'... and sadly 'accepted'.

God created our sexuality and our desire for the opposite sex in perfection... but people have perverted themselves and the world reflects the consequences of that perversion.

It is when the individual journeys via the Spirit that such things begin to battle growing convictions, breaking popular sentiments usually void of decency.

Such things are included in my long list of thorns found imbedded in my side.

I struggle.

The work of art that is a woman's body beguiles me at times, although my heart and mind loves my the body God has gifted me with (my dear wife).

I am not immune from temptation.

This beguilement can become quite perverted.

My eyes give me away.

It is the start of spring as the writing of this article, and as the weather warms the layers of clothes on women's bodies begin to come off.

The 'precious jewels' of some women are on full display like fruits for sale at the local farmer's market.

Instead of their physical and lesser assets being covered in a way that reveals her understanding of her body's worth beyond the deeper values of her heart, mind, and personality and character.

Instead of keeping herself invested and awaiting the counterpart of her body, her husband, many women are openly divested with little value to their names.

Yet in a world that shows depravity's confusion deeply rooted inside where battles between light and darkness have ceased to be fought, we see a man lusting after another man, and a woman trading a complete counterpart for an incompatible role.

Some people have, instead of denying themselves physically speaking, have denied themselves the blessings of spiritual fruits from Above.

Some people have denied the very construct they have been made to be for confusing arguments clouded in an identity crisis void of God's identity for them.

We do not all share the same gifts and talents, and neither are we all afflicted by the same things that cause others to stumble.

We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 

I do not understand what I do. 

For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 

And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 

As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 

For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. 

For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 

For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 

Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. 

So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 

For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 

What a wretched man I am! 

Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 

Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Yeshua Christ our Lord! 

So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. 

- Romans 7: 14-25

God's grace is not a license to sin, neither does God's grace abandon us to a mire of guilt.

God's grace teaches us that God loves us despite our flesh, the thorns stuck in our side, our human afflictions, our overwhelming struggles, and our times of sojourns into a dry desert.

God's grace, gifted to us through the sacrifice of He who never sinned, is an entry to a comfort that reveals God's peace because of His love, mercy, and grace upon us.

Those called to holiness glory in Him despite the taint of this world.

Pray for the weakness some of us are, at times, overwhelmed with.

Pray for the strength of the Church, of His kingdom firmly established on earth in those vessels revealing thorns that proclaim His mercy.

Pray for me, His servant and your fellow brother in the fight of our lives.

May His Name be forever praised.