Dave’s Monday Blast – July 4, 2022

Happy 4th of July! What a great day to continue our discussion on rediscovering the path to moral equilibrium within our culture. As a nation established upon Biblical Principles, we acknowledge that we have lost our behavioral equilibrium simply because we have abandoned the foundational principles of His Word. We desire to celebrate our freedoms, but find that sin places us in bondage.

God did promise to “heal our land” if His people will “humble themselves, and pray and seek His face and then return from their wicked ways” (2 Chronicles 7:14). Humility is a simple admonition that we need what only God can provide. Intercession seeks His gracious favor for our people, and seeking His face refers to an ever growing personal intimacy with the Almighty God.

Turn from our wicked ways…! How can we live in such spiritual victory each day?

Paul assures us, “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16). If we live in submission to the Holy Spirit, we will still encounter these “desires,” but we “will not gratify” them. Conversely, if we do not “walk by the Spirit,” we will inevitably exhibit the “works of the flesh”: “sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these” (vs. 19-21). 

In contrast with these “works of the flesh,” “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (vs. 22 – 23).  As an apple tree produces apples, so a life submitted to the Spirit produces the “fruit” of the Spirit. This why Paul stated, “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” (Romans 8:5). He added: “To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace” (v. 6).

So…this is why we must be “filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18) so that the Spirit can guide our thoughts, empower us to defeat temptation, and lead us into victorious faith. Then we will “turn from our wicked ways,” receive God’s healing for our “land,” and thus experience and advance the spiritual awakening we need so desperately today. To this point, Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard comments: “The thing is to understand myself. The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. That is what I now recognize as the most important thing”. What then is this idea?

To Kiekegaard’s point Paul’s answer was clear: he chose to “count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8). Knowing means to “experience intimately.” The apostle dedicated his life to knowing Christ and making Him known and called us to do the same: “Let those of us who are INTENTIONAL about our faith think this way” (v. 15).

There it is brothers…the path to behavioral equilibrium…”Walk in the Spirit!”