Your spirit is love, peace, joy, patience and all that good stuff. Your flesh is selfish, grumpy, carnal, foolish and mean.
You need to side with your spirit. The best and most efficient way to do that is with your words. Say yes to your spirit and no to your flesh. If you are tempted to watch pornography, open your mouth and say “I am a spirit, I am full of life and love and peace and purity”, you say “no flesh, I am not submitting to your selfish, impure, ungodly desire, you do not get to control my life and push me into immoral thoughts. Flesh, you are crucified, and you have no strength to tell me what to do, I am more than a conqueror, I am a new creation”.
The more you resist your flesh, the weaker it becomes. The more you submit to your flesh, the stronger it becomes. Learn to resist – make sure your flesh knows what it can do, and what it cannot do. It will eventually stop trying to pull you off course all the time. You may not realize this right now, but your flesh will eventually submit and follow along.
As you keep the Word in your heart by reading, by listening, by submitting, by speaking – you will win, your spirit will win, it will start to lead, and you will be like the Christians that Paul said “by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern good and evil”. In other words, the more you use this, the more you speak this, the more you submit to the spirit and resist the flesh, the better you get at it. You train your flesh to resist evil. Your body will stop craving a cigarette, to sleep in on Sunday morning, to watch porn or inappropriate TV or listen to gossip and lies.
Keep fighting, keep resisting.
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