Everybody wants to fulfill the oracles of God.
Everybody wants to walk like Christ and greater works.
Everybody wants to fulfill their destiny.
Everybody wants to take out the enemy.
Everybody wants revival!
Everybody wants it all!
Though here is the problem, half of everybody that tries to fulfill these things will try to do it in their flesh and the other half by the Spirit. One half trying to do it through religion and one step programs, and the other, by the grace and strength given from God!
The flesh is not just trying to do things with your physical body. The flesh in the bible also refers to our own thinking, ways, motives, desires, mindsets, agendas, strength, self, ability, and own understanding. The spirit is God’s Spirit empowering our mortal-bodies to walk out the will of God, which also entitles giving us a new mind and a new heart in the process of time as we submit to Him day by day, giving us new understanding, instruction, desires, all of the above, and most importantly grace. Grace, in this case is His ability to enable us to do what he is asking! God said he is pleased with no flesh! The only acceptable and perfect thing before Him is His Spirit! And when we walk in the Spirit, we become acceptable before Him and we do not fulfill the deeds of the flesh.
The fight in the Church today is the Flesh Vs the Spirit!
Which one are you? Because there are 2 churches out there, the church of the flesh and the church of the Holy Spirit? One tries to walk out the Kingdom in its own strength. The other relies on God’s strength! Your own flesh is the death of God’s plan in your life. This is why it’s called God’s plan, because HE is going fulfill it, and we are going to follow it. You’re either following Christ or you’re following yourself and calling it Christ.
Let’s go to our base, the Bible.
In Genesis 15 and onward, we see God promising Moses an inheritance as well as a son that God will give him who will carry on his inheritance and blessing. God's original plan was to bless Abraham with Isaac through the womb of Sarah. Though according to the flesh, Sarah was barren. According to the flesh, she was too old to have kids. So, instead of trusting God and letting Him do it in His timing, Abraham and Sarah decided to get their EGYPTIAN maidservant to conceive with Abraham. Egypt represents the world, and God tells us to be set apart from the world. One of the beasts in the world is religion. Keep that in mind.
Hagar, the Egyptian maidservant, gave birth to Ishmael. Ishmael represents rebellion. God told Abraham that Ishmael will rise up against every man and every man against Him, the same for his descendants. The funny thing is, one of Ishmael's descendants was Esau who gave up his birthright and came against his brother in rebellion as well. There are no coincidences in the Kingdom of God! Ishmael's other descendants according to modern history are a part of the history of the Muslim God Allah. These are just confirmations!
God said he would bless Ishmael with a nation. Though he didn't say it would be a holy nation. God also said that Ishmael would be a wild man, spiritually representing the flesh and rebellion. So what was the root of the emergence of all this rebellion and flesh? It was the temptation of Hagar: the temptation to fornicate with Hagar to birth a son in their own strength and not in God’s perfect timing and will.
Hagar birthed Ishmael, the symbol of rebellion! To our revelation, Hagar was the flesh, and Abraham gave into it. Why? It was a quick fix. It was how he, Abraham, was going to fulfill God’s plan for his own life. Abraham pleaded with God, that God would bless Ishmael. Though God rejected giving Ishmael the inheritance, because it was meant for Abraham’s next son Isaac who should have been his first son! Isaac, who ended up being birthed from the elderly barren womb of Sarah, walked in the promise of God for his father’s life. Ishmael and his mother, Hagar, were sent to the wilderness where they ended up dwelling for most of their lives.
Remember this: God fulfills his own plan for you, by His Spirit and only by His Spirit! When we try to fulfill God’s plan for our own life, we end up in the wilderness. Many of us are being tempted day by day to try in move in the Spirit through our flesh. It’s doing nothing but making us strive and toil aimlessly; in vain! It births super spirituality and rebellion in our life!
Abraham strived to have a kid, that God called in His will and timing. It ended up all in vain, all for nothing! Why is this rebellion? Because God says that He is going to do it all by His Spirit, and you are being like Abraham, trying to move in your own spirit, making up your own kingdom of God, your own word of God, and your own version of Jesus, becoming reprobate because carnality is killing us! God says that he is at enmity with the carnal mind, meaning that He is against it! And most of us are understanding things through our own understanding, and we are reaping death because our own understanding is rooted in carnality. Abraham tried to understand in his carnal mind how God was going to fulfill his destiny, and it backfired on him.
The flesh sees things by its own eyes and ears, only perceiving what is in front of it instead of what is inside and in the spiritual realm. The flesh discerns things by external standards. The Holy Spirit discerns through absolute Truth in the unseen realm and knowing of all things, especially the deepest things. This is why carnal Christians can never agree with spiritual ones, because one perception is the way of religion and the other of God!
We need to be like Elijah. When Elisha saw the armies coming towards them, he hit the panic button, but Elijah showed Elisha a better way. Elijah was at peace because of the many angels he saw in the Spirit surrounding them in protection.
When you walk by the Spirit, you will NOT fulfill the deeds of the flesh, and you will be like Elijah and see the hand of God in your life! If Elisha didn't give into Elijah's perception by the Spirit, there would have been division. One in fear and one in faith! We have the same divisions today, all because one does things off of fear and the other off of faith. You can only have faith from the Holy Spirit, and we get it from Him by following Him.
He is not going to give us faith when we are building our own foundation and plan. Fear only comes, or is allowed because we perceive or move by the flesh! Saul moved in fear when he saw the Philistine armies closing in on him and his army. When things came to a pressure point, Saul hit the panic button and moved into the flesh thinking God would back it.
There was a war going on between the Philistines and Saul's army. Saul was appointed to wait for Samuel the prophet to come and make a sacrifice to the Lord on behalf of Israel that they would have victory over their enemies. Though Saul, being led by external standards, being led by the flesh, moved in fear and made the sacrifice himself leaving Israel unacceptable in Gods sight. When the Philistines came to close in on Israel, Saul’s army had no weapons!
This is just like how we try to do things in the flesh! We are left with no weapons, no power to overcome the enemy and his devices. Meanwhile, God says he will cast out the enemy by the Spirit of God! When you do things by the Spirit, it does not matter how many enemies are closing in on you. In the end game, they will all be obliterated. Religion gets so scared of the devil, but the only thing we should be scared of is separating ourselves from God. When we are with Him, we win! Why? Because He wins all the time and He holds the enemy by a string!
So what are we really fighting here, the devil or what? The devil is real but the only time the devil has free-will in our life is when we go our own way! So our enemy is more-so our own way. Our enemy is that temptation of taking matters into our own hands! You want to find peace, let all matters be in His hands, and you just follow His blueprints. How is this going to happen? How am I going to overcome that? No more questions! Just follow Him and he will give you understanding, strength and ability!
When we are in His will, everything needed for every situation is provided for, and whatever situation we are in, we can have peace. When we are in His will, we will always have the peace to know that things will get done. We have to shoot down our own understanding. Our own understanding is the land of death, because when we see things unfolding in our life, and we don’t know what God’s doing or we don’t wait for him to show us, temptation lies at the door, and Hagar is ready to fornicate with you so that you can give birth to a spirit of Ishmael in your heart, which is rebellion. The flesh is the door to rebellion, because God has a way and we decide to go by our own and we rebel because we know deep down inside we were not letting God reveal the plan.
Strength will rise as we wait upon the Lord! That’s why the apostles, many times, would instruct to run this race with patience! If we are not patient to let God build in our life brick by brick, we will end up building our own foundation that can be shaken by any storm, a foundation that is built on hay, wood and stubble. No! We need to be found on the rock! Jesus Christ, the leader, dwelling in the deepest part of our spirit!
Our flesh wants to just know everything now, have everything now, fulfill your destiny now. Everything happens for a reason, and everything happens in its season. Every season has its reason, but if we come up with our own reason, we will be blinded from God’s will and plan. The Israelite's were instructed to circumcise the male of their tribes, that extra skin that baby boys are birthed with. That extra skin is the flesh.
Today, the body of Christ needs a circumcision! Not of the old covenant, but a new covenant circumcision of the heart! A cutting off of our soul tie and dependency on our flesh! A cutting off of our own strength and might! That the outer layer of ourselves would be cut off, and the inner layer of our beings would be revealed to the world.
That the inner layer of our intimacy with God would come out of the covering of the outer layer of our flesh. That our spirit would no longer be a slave to the flesh, but a slave to Holy Spirit! And a free slave at that!
When we are in Him, the burden is easy and the yoke is light. No more fighting against the grain, but a leading of the Holy Spirit through the still waters. That’s freedom! Freedom to be recreated by the one who created me!
We need to get back to simplicity, not just of the cross, but of the Spirit. When we live by Him, we are freed by Him. And when we are freed by Him, we can be like Him! Be free from your soul tie with your flesh and become tied to His Spirit. Cast out Hagar, cast out Ishmael, cast out the bond woman and her son!
CAST OUT THE FLESH AND BRING IN THE SPIRIT!
By Joe Pinto
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