Why Do I Feel Like There’s a Battle Inside of Me? | Season 05, Episode 1 | Simple Truth Podcast

If you love God, why does it still feel like part of you is fighting against him? You want to read the Bible. You want to pray. You want to worship and obey God. But another part of you still gets pulled back into the thoughts, the temptations, and the patterns you thought you'd left behind. And that can make you wonder, why am I like this? Did anything really change when I got saved? In this episode, we're going to answer three questions. First, why do I feel so divided inside of myself? Second, if I still struggle, am I really a Christian? And third, how can I solve this by surrendering my whole self to God? Welcome to the Simple Truth Podcast. I'm Ted Ross and this is season 5, episode 1. Why do I feel like there's a battle inside of me? And today we're going to answer three questions. So let's start with question number one. Why do I feel so divided inside? This is a question many Christians ask. And the answer is simple truth number 78. You may be one person, but you have a spirit, a soul, and a body. So let's take a look at 1 Thessalonians 5 23. As a reminder, all Bible verses, they're from the New King James Version. So, feel free to follow along. And here we're going to see you're not one-dimensional. You're made up of a spirit, a soul, and a body. And that can create conflict inside of you, especially when it comes to doing the right thing. 1 Thessalonians 5:23, quote, "Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." Says, "Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you." The God of peace, that means the God of rest, of wholeness, of a restored order. One of the many things God works to do in your life is to restore order. It's to restore his relationship with you, to bring back wholeness. You're feeling a conflict because part of you is restored. Part of you is reconciled. But other parts of you are holding on to some of your old ways. And that's what we're going to learn in this season about being the whole Christian. He says, "Sanctify you." That means may the God of peace set you apart, make you holy, consecrate you. So, there's a work that was done when you became born again, but God is going to continue to work inside of you to be able to continue to transform you, to convert you, to set you apart, to make you holy. It's a strong word. And to consecrate you, to set you apart to God for his purpose. And that is the conflict that you're feeling. He says, "And may your whole spirit," okay, spirit, that's the first part of this list. What is a spirit? A spirit is an inner part of you. It's the part that senses and communes with God. You got that? It's a part of you that senses God and communes or fellowships with God. The part that can hang out with God. And your soul, Paul writes to the church of Thessalonica. Soul, it's our inner life. It's where we think, we feel, we choose. Okay. Interesting. So we've got spirit which is a part of us that connects to God that senses and communes with God. But we also have a soul which is where we think, feel, and choose. Notice these are two separate parts inside of us. And third, we have our body. What is our body? It's our physical body. It's the part of us that contacts the world around us, right? Often thought of in the course of the five senses. It's how we see and we hear and we taste and we touch, right? And we're going to discuss this in more detail, but Paul prayed that the God of peace sanctify you completely and that your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless right at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Have you ever wondered why part of you wants God while other parts of you don't? You're starting to get some insight right here in 1 Thessalonians 5:23. There are three parts of you and they could wrestle for control of you. So let's talk about the parts of a Christian. Let's drill a little more into this. In fact, through the course of this season, we are going to drill into what is your spirit, what is your soul, what is your body, and how do the three interconnect so you become a whole Christian. It'll explain some challenges you've been having, and it'll give you some solutions as to how to overcome them. So let's give you a little bit of a primer to start. Your body, your body is the visible physical part of a person. It's the part that lives, acts, and contacts the material world around us. And it does so through the five senses. Right? The ability to see, the ability to hear, to touch, to taste, and to smell. This is how our body interacts with the world around us. I started this list with body because it's the part that most of us can most easily identify with. Everyone knows what a body is and it's easy to define. So when you think about from the perspective of the Bible, when the Bible talks about your body, it's talking about something that is world conscious, right? The body is interacting with the world around it. It's something that's physical or to use another modern term, it's about things that are physiological, right? the dimension that's physiological that relates to your body, that part of you as a Christian. The second part is the soul. Now, we're getting to something that people may or may not understand, right? We've seen modern media and pop music or pop culture. And so, that word soul gets thrown around. In fact, people even describe music as having soul or that's a soul type of music. And so, soul is something that becomes more important to define biblically. The soul is the inner life of a person. Specifically, it's your your will, your intellect, also known as your mind, and your emotions. This is where we think, we feel, we choose. It's also known as our personality. So, you may look at me and say, "Hey, Ted, what kind of person are you?" Maybe you're outgoing, right, Ted? You speak up. You try to make jokes. They're not always funny, but you try to make them. And so what you're seeing is how I express myself and you're seeing aspects of my will, my intellect as well as my emotions. You are seeing my soul, right? And so when we think of a soul biblically, we think of it as being self-conscious. So where the body is conscious of the world and interconnecting with the world, the soul is conscious of itself. It's personal. It's psychological. That would be the term that often they use in the modern world. They talk about the psychology of someone. They talk about psychological aspects. Okay. Now, the spirit, the third part that Paul was describing to the church of Thessalonica, and you'll find these throughout scripture, Old Testament and New. The spirit, we're talking about the God-facing part of a person through which we commune with God. That's means to fellowship. where we sense God's leading also known as intuition and where we discern right and wrong which is also known as a conscience. So it becomes important to have some basic understanding of these terms so that you can start to parse and understand. You know quite often and you've heard me express this before where you'll talk to somebody and you'll say what do you need? And they'll say I need Jesus and and that's right you do need Jesus but what what part of Jesus? Are we talking about sanctification or justification? Is something need to be reconciled? Like what specifically are we drilling into? The Bible is very clear and very discreet and it can give a lot of real good understanding, a deeper knowledge, a deeper insight. And so the whole point of the Simple Truth podcast is to help you understand some of these details. And this is a very important one by you understanding what makes up your body, your soul, and your spirit. Like what's the heart? What's the flesh? What do these things mean? And when the scriptures are describing them, what are they intimating? What are they connotating? Where are they driving the point of that scripture? It becomes really good for you to understand not only the Bible, but for you to better understand God and understand yourself, which is really the point of this podcast. When we think about the spirit, we're thinking about the part of you that's God conscious. It's Godward, so to speak, where the body is physical and the soul is personal, the spirit is Godward. It's connecting to God and it's spiritual. It's the spiritual dimension of it. Okay. Okay, so here's a a primer on body, soul, and spirit. Here is the example graphically. So when we think about a body, right, we think about these five senses. And really what the body does if you think about it is the body is a vehicle. It carries you around. That may sound funny, but the body carries the soul inside of it, right? The soul, it's your will, your intellect, also known as your mind, and it's your emotions. So your body is your physical presence. But with it, you know there's something deeper than just your body. You've got this soul because you have this personality that you can't find. You can't find it somewhere in your body. Where's the will? Is it in the arm? Is it in the leg? Right? Where are the emotions? Where are those housed? The reality is the will, the mind, the emotions. They make up the soul of a person. It's their personality. It shows their behaviors. And then we see the spirit. The spirit where we discussed before, it's your fellowship, your intuition, and your conscience with God. Now to add a little more depth to it for you to understand, we add the idea of the heart. So when the Bible talks about the heart, what is the Bible talking about? Well, it's talking about the inner person. It's talking about your soul and your spirit. So when we think about spirit, soul, and body. And we discuss this concept of the heart. It's the combination of the spirit and the soul. So when the Bible talks about my heart, it's not talking about my body. It's talking about the inner person. both my soul and my spirit, my will, my intellect, my emotions, as well as my spirit which is fellowshipping, having intuition and having a conscience before God. And the whole concept behind that is that it's describing the invisible part of you where the body is the very visible one. But you'll also notice in scripture which describes the idea of flesh where heart has almost a neutral meaning. When you describe the heart, there could be a quote good heart, good intentions. Your soul is going in the right way. You're being led by the spirit. But it could also talk about a bad heart. Somebody who has evil intentions who's doing wrong. When we talk about the flesh, the flesh never has good intentions. The flesh has to do with the body and its desires, right? It's unregenerated desires and the unregenerated part of your soul. So when we see heart, we think of spirit and soul. And when we see flesh, we think of body and unregenerated soul, unrenewed soul. Why is that important? Because when we discuss the conflict that's happening inside of you, what we see is that when you became born again, God made you alive from above. He's connected with you and through your spirit, he's communing with you and he's working to transform your soul and your body. And so you start to see the conflict because your soul with all of its bad habits, all of its bad behaviors and all the desires that it picked up throughout the course of your life, all the quote unquote wrong, the sin, your soul starts resisting the work of the spirit. And really what it is is that your spirit is coming against your flesh. Your body and its all of its natural desires and cravings as well as your unrenewed soul. So your soul is not the problem. The part of your soul that's the old man, the old part of you, that's the problem. The new part of you is fantastic because the new part of your soul submits itself to God, thinks on godly things, right? It focuses and has passions and desire after God. So this in its essence is the parts of a Christian. And we're going to see a lot more about this. So let's take a look at Hebrews 4:12. Here we're going to see that sometimes we feel divided because our spirit it's being awakened, right? It's awakened to respond to God. It happened when we're born again. Our spirit is starting to say, "Listen, I want to do what God wants to do, but our soul wrestles with selfish thoughts, selfish desires, and the desires of the flesh." Hebrews 4:12, quote, "For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword." That sounds sharp. piercing even to the division of soul and spirit and of joints and marrow and as a discerner of the thoughts and the intents of the heart. Notice what we described there by looking at our last couple of slides by discussing really what a spirit, soul, and body means. What's the heart and what's the flesh? Now we can gain a lot more insight on scriptures like Hebrews 4:12. He says, "For the word of God, God's spoken or revealed message." You could be reading the Bible. God could speak to you. The word of God, it's living. It's not words on a page. That's why when you read those words with faith, you start to feel a presence. You start to feel stronger. You feel encouragement because, for lack of a better term, your spirit is exercising. And so, your spirit is starting to be reminded of who you are. Your soul is starting to say, "Wait a second. My thoughts were all off. This is who God is. Thank God for these things. That's why we go to church. That's why we praise and worship. That's why we read our Bible is because it builds us up spiritually and it reminds us of who we are and what God wants. Then God will even start talking to and fellowshipping with us through that. Right? So God's word, it's living and it's powerful. To say it's powerful means it's active. That means it's effective and it's working inside of you. Praise God. And it's sharper than any two-edged sword. Sharper than anything you've ever seen, any razor that exists in society today. And it pierces. It pierces. That means that word penetrates deeply. It means it reaches through. It gets right in there. It goes beyond your body and it goes into the hidden part of you. It goes into the heart. And it says that it pierces even to the division of soul and spirit. So it's piercing to divide even between that part of you that's connected to God that hears God and your soul which at times has old behaviors, old habits, desires after sin etc. So you see that God's word divides between soul and spirit. To divide is to separate, to distinguish because when you are being led by God, you want to be led by the spirit. Your spirit needs to connect with God's spirit. You need to be led by the spirit. continue to walk in the spirit as we'll discuss later in this episode. Instead, what happens too often, people are being led by their own soul. They're being led by their unregenerated past, their own desires. To use a quote from the Old Testament, a vision after their own heart, which means that they had a thought and they go, "This thought that I had, it must be God." No, no, no, no. It was your thought. And sometimes it comes from inappropriate desires. And you say, "Well, I had the desire, so everything must come from God." No. We're going to see throughout scripture, you have a spirit and you have a soul. And is your job to be built up in the spirit for your soul to be renewed so that you know what is God and what is simply an imagination of your own desires, imagination of your own sinful heart, for lack of a better term. And it says that God's word is a discerner. That means God's word is able to evaluate, able to expose what is true of the thoughts and the intents of the heart, which as we described before is your soul and your spirit. Do you feel divided and do you feel unable to explain what's going on inside of you? Sometimes do you really want to do what God wants you to do and you take pleasure and sometimes you just feel so much resistance against it and you have no interest in doing it or you know something is wrong but you have strong desires to go chase after it. You're divided inside of you. That happens. You may not understand it but God's word God he knows what's happening in your soul and in your spirit. and God's word could reach in, discern it, give you clarity and understanding, and most importantly, help you overcome it. Because if you want to be blessed, you want to with your soul, be determining to do God's will, as it says in Psalm 103 where David writes, "Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and all that is within me." He's telling his own soul to get with the program and go after it to basically say, "Hey, soul, obey God's spirit." And that comes through the renewal. Romans 7 verses 22- 23. Here we're going to see the battle inside you. It's real. It's real. I I know we're going through the course of an episode and we're describing something, but that's something you're living. That's something you're experiencing. And I know I'll do my very best to use words to try to describe it and to try to summarize it. But you know it. What I'm going to try to do is we're going to go through the Bible. We're going to go through scripture. We're going to take a look at the definitions of words to help you be able to put to words those things that you're feeling and most importantly as we get to question number three to show you how to solve it. The battle inside of you is real. Your spirit and the renewed part of your soul, the part of your will, your intellect and your emotions that is getting with the program, that's getting with God's program. They delight in God. They delight in God. While your body with its passions and desires and your unrenewed soul, also known as the flesh, it feels pulled by sin because of the sinful nature, because of the temptation around us and because of temptations put before us by the devil, by evil. Right? Romans 7:22, quote, "For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man." Right? But I see another law in my members, Paul writes, waring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. My members. Interesting. So Paul writes here, "For I delight." To delight is to take pleasure in to gladly agree with. Right? I gladly agree with the law of God. Those are God's principles and standards. What is good and what is right. Paul here is not talking about the Old Testament law. He's talking about the principles and standards that God established. What is good, what is right, right? It's very clear in the context of Romans 7. And they do so according to the inward man. That part of me, my spirit and my renewed part of my soul. They delight in God's principles and God's standards. They delight in seeing right things and in doing right things. But I see another law in my members. He says he's now looking inside of himself. He's seeing the parts of a Christian and he's seeing his body and he's seeing his unrenewed part of his soul. He's seeing his flesh and he says, "I see that law in my members." Those are the parts of the body where sin is expressed. That's what he means by members. And I see it waring against the law of my mind. To war against is to fight against, to oppose. What he's describing is the conflict that you and I can face. He sees a part of him that loves God and pursues God. And he sees other parts of him which oppose God. This is what Paul is describing. And he says, "And it brings me into captivity." Because he's setting the stage here in Romans 7. It brings me into captivity. It tries to lead me away. It tries to bring me under control. He says that sin in me, that sin in my members is trying to bring me under control. Have you ever wanted the right thing, but you struggle with doing wrong things? The struggle is real. The Bible describes it. I'll describe it. Your friends, other Christians will describe it. It doesn't mean your desire for God is fake, though. Do you understand? Be encouraged. God knew you were going to struggle. The Bible understands you're going to struggle. And there's a reason for the struggle. Because your spirit is alive and connected to God, but your soul and your body, they've got work to do. They need to be renewed. They need to be sanctified as we saw. They need to be converted. You need to be transformed. And as you are doing the work of God, as you're performing the actions that we're going to describe in this episode, you become more and more like your example, Jesus Christ. And you walk more and more in fellowship with God. Remember what Jesus said on the earth as the son of man. He says, "I and the father are one." Jesus didn't have that struggle. Yes, he had temptation. Yes, he was resistant. He was in a body, but his soul was renewed. He had the soul of the son of God. And that soul meant that he was going to be choosing God's will and committing himself to the will of the father. And he is our example. And we could do it, folks. We could do it because he said we can do it. Praise God. So question number two, if I still struggle, am I really a Christian? Yes, you are. And the answer is in simple truth number 79. God made you alive in your spirit and is now making you whole. Praise God. Ephesians 2 verses 1-5. Here we're going to see that before Christ, you were not struggling spiritually because your spirit was dead. There was no struggle. There was no fight. Now there is a fight. Now the spirit is alive. And the soul, the unrenewed part of the soul and the body, they don't like it. They don't like that you've got God in you. They don't like that you want to start abandoning the things you used to do. They don't like that you want to repent from things inside of you that were embarrassing, that God was against, that were harming you and hurting you. So, there's a struggle inside of you. And you are choosing which side you want to be on every single day. Praise God. God made you alive and the struggle begins. And here's the thing, you are going to win if you stick with it. We're going to talk more about that. If you just stick with it, if you just stick with it and you pray God for forgiveness when you make a mistake and you ask him to empower you, you will overcome all things because God is good. He is true to his word and he has power through the gospel. The death, the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ is all the power you need. You don't need new grace. You don't need new mercy. everything. All power was given to him in heaven and in earth because he died for your sins and your shortcomings. He was buried and he rose again on the third day. Praise God. And that as it says in Romans 1:16, the gospel is the power of God to salvation to everyone who believes. Stick with it. You will overcome everything that hinders you. God has called you to be saved. He's setting you apart to be holy. And he will cause you to overcome every wicked thing that would resist you. And he will do that in Jesus mighty name. Amen. So he says he made you alive who were dead in trespasses and sins in which you once walked according to the course of this world according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit which now works in the sons of disobedience. Ephesians 2:1 says, "And you he made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins that were dead." It's spiritually dead. You weren't physically dead. You were always alive. When you became born again, you didn't physically become alive, but you spiritually became alive. As that expression born again means, you became born from above. This is what Jesus was describing to Nicodemus, right? And so he said, "What's going on? And how could a person be born again? Can he re-enter a mother's womb? No, he's not re-entering his mother's womb or her mother's womb. But that person is becoming spiritually alive. So you were dead. You were spiritually dead. You were separated from the life of God because of your trespasses. Those your offenses that was things that you were failing from what's right. You were knowing what you should have done and you chose to do otherwise. And your sins where you fell short, right? those harmful bad behaviors that you were doing before. It says in which you once walked. That means you lived. It was the pattern and direction of your life. You were not doing good things and you knew it. And it became very obvious when you came across God and you said, you know what, I want God. And then God gave you God. He made your spirit alive. But then a struggle began. Praise God. And that's a good struggle to have because you're spiritually alive. And the spirit now wants to take over what's happening in your life. It says according to the prince of the power of the air, right? Of the course of this world. That's the era, the prevailing pattern of life. So he said, you once walked according to the course of this world. You once lived according to this era, this worldly era, what's prevailing around us. We see all sorts of inappropriate things in our societies around us. Doesn't matter what country you live in. I'm sure you're seeing all sorts of things and they're not right. And so you were once walking according to that, but then your spirit became alive and said, "This is not okay." Do you wonder if I still struggle? Did anything really change inside of me? And the answer is yes. Before Christ, you were spiritually dead. Now God has made you alive and you're in a battle to serve God with your whole self. Ephesians 2:3. Here we're going to see your struggle. It's proof that things have changed. God is separating you from the world's ways and you need sanctification. You need a renewal of your soul. Ephesians 2:3, quote, "Among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. But God who is rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us even when we were dead in trespasses made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved. It says among whom among the course of this world right among these sons of disobedience we also conducted ourselves. We also lived our lives and we did so according to the desires of our flesh according to the desires of our body. all of its desires and cravings as well as the unrenewed part of our soul. We were fulfilling the desires of the flesh and the mind and were by nature children of wrath just as the others around us in the world. But God, it says in verse four, so it describes this really tough situation of the world and its error, this prevailing behavior that's inappropriate rejects God and distances itself from God and from God's will. A God who is rich in mercy. Mercy is kindness towards the guilty. God shows kindness towards them. Yes, God told them what to do. Yes, God's trying to convince them otherwise. And yes, they keep rejecting. But God is merciful. He shows kindness towards them because of his great love with which he loved us. Even when we were dead in our trespasses, he made us alive together with Christ. To be made alive together with Christ means you were united with Christ's life. And that happened when you became born again. That happened when you experienced God, you received it, and then your spirit became alive. If you want to learn more about this, check out the Simple Truth Podcast, season 2, episode 1. Do you see desires in yourself that make you question your faith? That make you wonder, hey, am I really even a Christian? Because why would a Christian have this kind of desire or think these kinds of things or do those kinds of actions? Yes, you are still a Christian. Those old desires are real. They're a part of your soul and the desires of your body, they are there in you. But you also have a spirit. You have a new life that God has given you in Christ. And the struggle is real. And God wants you to be led by that spirit to submit to his will and to do the works of the spirit so that you no longer start doing those things. And you'll find those old desires start to disappear, those old temptations. There is absolutely absolutely hope. If you were stuck in something, could be addiction, could be a bad relationship, could be desires, could be pride, arrogance, lying, you name it. Jesus died for your sins. He was buried and he rose again the third day. And there is so much power in the gospel that if you would believe, if you would trust in God, if you you'd listen to God, if you'd seek God, you can overcome everything because that is salvation. It's to be delivered from anything that would hinder you. And that is literally why the son of God came to this earth to save you and to save me. Praise God. So let's take a moment. If God made me alive in Christ, why doesn't the struggle just disappear? Because salvation begins with new life in your spirit, right? Being born again. But now we move into sanctification. We have a transformation and a conversion that has to happen inside of us. And it's going to continue as God renews our soul and as God teaches us to present our bodies to him. So it starts off in the spirit, that Godward part of you, your God consciousness. And then as you start to read your scriptures and go to church and praise and worship and do the things that build your relationship with God, it starts to renew and convert the soul. And then you start to see yourself presenting your bodies to him. And this is what we're going to start to drill into. The new life begins in your spirit, but God is making your whole self holy, set apart, consecrated, sanctified. And that is where the course of the struggle comes from. We see here now in Romans 8:28 and 29, very famous verse that people often quote. We see here that God is using the struggle to teach you to submit to him to help you to overcome the flesh, which as you may remember, it's the desires of the body and the unrenewed part of your soul put together and to make you more like Jesus Christ to be conformed into his image. Wow, it's powerful. It may sound heretical. It's not heretical. Throughout the scripture, it describes Jesus as being our example. Check out Simple Truth Podcast 2 and you'll see Jesus is our example. He came to this earth to be the firstborn among many brethren to be our example, our pattern. And he empowers us as a friend, as a savior, as the Messiah. He empowers us to be conformed, to be like him, so that when people see us, they see Christ in us. And we get no credit. It's all the work he did. Thank God. And it starts with repenting and believing the gospel. But as you walk your walk with Jesus, as you take up that cross daily and you follow him, he conforms and he renews more and more of your soul and you start to people start to see and they go, there's something different about you. It's Christ in you. Praise God. And with through which all the blessings of the gospel manifest in your life. Okay. So, Romans 8:28, "And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose, for whom he foreknew, he also predestined to become conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren." It says, "And we know that all things work together." To work together means to cooperate to bring towards an outcome. All things are cooperating to bring something towards an outcome in your life. They all work together for good. That means beneficial for those who love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose. Called to those who are invited, those who are summoned, those who are appointed by God. That's you. If you're listening to this episode, you are absolutely invited. You were summoned. And you're called according to his purpose. That's God's plan, God's intentions, right? You're invited. You're summoned. You're appointed by God, not to run into the world and do whatever you please. You're appointed to fulfill God's plans and God's intentions in your life. If you want to resolve the struggle inside of you, you want your whole spirit, soul, and body to be aligned with God's plan. with God's intentions, with God's will, and then there will be a perfect alignment of peace. As we saw before, he's the God of peace. He's the God of restored order. And you will have restored order, spirit, soul, and body, walking this earth, doing God's will. You'll have resistance, and you'll just walk right over it. You'll walk in the power and the favor and the blessings of God. It's a wonderful thing. And that's God's purpose for your life. And we all have different unique plans and intentions depending on where you live and who you are and what's going on and the plan God has for your life. There are distinctions and there are differences. And yet for God has it for every single one of us. Praise God. It says for whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed. So he foreknew us and he predestined us to be what? Conformed. Shaped into the form or likeness. So God predestined, he purposed for us to be conformed, to be shaped into the same form and likeness of who? Of his son? Jesus Christ. That he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Which means Jesus is the firstborn. And then you and I are the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh. Right? He is the first. He is the first pattern. And then we are built after him like a mold, right? He is a mold and we are molded into his image. And so he's the firstborn among many brethren. After his resurrection, he then started to make Christians across all nations. And so much so that he's making Christians through all of us. Have you ever wanted God to simply just take the struggle away? I understand. It's a struggle. No one likes it. It's uncomfortable to say the least. And yet God is using this battle inside of you to shape what still needs to surrender. God is taking this struggle and he's allowing you to struggle because he wants you to pursue him through the struggle and then he'll start to remove parts of the struggle the more and more you align with his will with his plan with his intentions. So you need to then start off in the spirit and then start working through start renewing your mind, renewing your soul so that you can then and you're feeling this resistance. You're feeling this struggle inside of you because God keeps saying, "I get it. Come closer. Come closer to me." God's saying, "Pull closer to me. Build your relationship with me. I have a plan. I have intentions. I have a will for you. And it's not to run around doing whatever you want on your own. I want to be close." He says, "I want a close relationship. I want to be in you and among you and around you as the scripture describes. So, he's using this battle, this struggle inside of you because there's things that you and I still need to surrender. And if you want to learn more about it, check out Simple Truth Podcast, season 2, episode 3 on why God calls you into the wilderness. Philippians 1:6. Here we're going to see that God started the work of salvation in you and he will not abandon the work of sanctification, you know, the renewal, the conversion in you. Philippians 1:6, quote, "Being confident of this very thing, that he," it's God, who has begun a good work in you when you became born again, that was a great work, he will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. He says being confident to this very thing Paul had full assurance of the thing that we're reading right now that he who has begun he who started he who initiated that work right that good work that's beneficial it's upright it's for God's purpose he who initiated that God who initiated who started this beneficial and upright work inside of you a work is a deed an action or a labor so he started this in motion didn't he? He's going to complete it, which means he's going to finish it. He's going to accomplish it. He's going to carry it through to the end. Praise God. And he's going to do it until the day of Jesus Christ until the second coming. If we're around for that, right? Do you feel discouraged because you don't change as fast as you'd like? Well, God always finishes what he starts. But the question is not, should I give up or am I not a Christian? Don't give up. and you are a Christian. The question is, how do I surrender to get through this season faster? How do I get through the struggle? How do I get out of this? Cuz God didn't call you to sit in this struggle. Your spirit's made alive. It's time for sanctification. It's time for conversion. It's time for renewal. That's what he's calling you towards. So, it brings us to question number three. How do I surrender my whole self to God? And the answer is simple truth number 80. Surrender your whole self to God by renewing your soul. Let's take a look at Romans 12 verses 1 and two. Here we're going to see surrendering your life to God is not just a feeling or an intention or a one-time decision. It means offering your whole self to God as a living sacrifice. Wow. Romans 12:1, quote, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service." When Paul says, "I beseech you," he means, "urge you, I encourage you, I appeal to you." He says, "Brethren, brothers and sisters in Christ, by the mercies of God," basically saying, "Because of everything God's done for you, I urge you, I appeal to you to do what? Present. Present your bodies a living sacrifice. Offer, make your bodies available. Place your bodies before God as a living sacrifice." That means your life is continually offered up for his purpose. continually offer your body, your soul, your spirit up to God for his purpose. He'll do nothing bad to you. He will purge you of things. He's going to crucify some things in you. And as he does it, he brings and replaces it with peace, with wholeness, with strength, with prosperity, with health, with goodness. Because God is good. He doesn't give any bad gifts. He'll always give good gifts. Your earthly father and your earthly mother, they knew how to give good gifts. How much more does your heavenly father know how to have give fantastic gifts? Praise God. Which is your reasonable service. That means it's only fitting. It's the only proper response to his mercy. It's only fitting to offer your life continually to God because Jesus died for your life. He was buried and he rose again the third day. Do you want blessings, but you don't want to yield your thoughts and your actions to God? Transformation in blessings, all the promises of God, all the blessings of the gospel, they come when you yield your whole self to God. That's what we're seeing here in Romans 12. Honestly, that's what we see throughout the Bible in the Old Testament and New Romans 12:2. The battle inside of you dramatically improves when you stop fitting into the world's mold and you start surrendering your soul to God. Romans 12:2. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. It says, "Do not be conformed. Don't be shaped. Don't be molded by something outside of you. Specifically, what it's describing here is that your spirit is alive to God, but your soul has been carrying the patterns that were shaped by the world. When you were born and as you grew up, you started learning bad habits. You saw bad behaviors. You may have seen something on the internet or saw something eye to eye. You may have tasted something or touched something. You start to become enticed and led away by those things, things you know you need to repent of which God is empowering you to repent from so that you can then fulfill his will and his purpose and his plans for your life. And as you do, you start aligning with God and you become whole and he makes you more like Christ in your life where you start to gain power and strength and redemption and health and you fulfill God's purpose. It's a good thing. He says, "Don't be conformed to this world, but instead be transformed. Be changed inwardly into a new form. Not the form of the world, the new form, the form of Christ." Right? And do so by the renewing of your mind, the renovation, the making new again of your mind, your thinking, your thoughts, your understanding, your judgment. As we saw before, the mind or also known as the intellect, it's a part of your soul, right? So renew your soul. Renew that mind. to renew how you think, what you thought, what your thoughts are about, your understanding, how you judge things, how you discern those things, and prove what is good, acceptable, and perfect according to God's will. You're born again. So, why do your thoughts still feel shaped by the world? Well, your spirit's been made alive, but your soul still needs renewal, and the way to do it is through God's truth. And that's where the five disciplines come in, which was season three, wasn't it? the five disciplines for Christian growth. A discipline, as a reminder, is something you repeat to improve yourself over time. That's what the word discipline means. And in the Bible, we see five disciplines that are worth repeating. You and I should be repeating these disciplines. These are practices that God uses to renew our soul, to resolve this struggle, to build up the spirit and to diminish the strength of the flesh and to build our relationship with God, to make us closer to hear him, to understand him, for our soul to then follow him, right? The five disciplines for Christian growth. As a reminder, if you want to learn more, check out season 3, episode one of the Simple Truth Podcast. In fact, all of season 3 is about the five disciplines for Christian growth. Number one, read the word of God out loud daily. Number two, meditate on the word of God and the gospel specifically daily. Number three, fast to humble your soul before God. Number four, pray without ceasing. And number five, be led by God's spirit. A discipline is not something you naturally want to do. It is how you present your whole self to God and allow him to renew you from inside out. Do you understand? These aren't disciplines where like, "Oh yes, of course, we all just love to do all of these things." You have flesh. Your flesh will resist you. But as you do it, your spirit becomes stronger. Your soul starts renewing. It becomes easier and easier. Right? It is how you present your whole self, spirit, soul, and body to God and give God the ability to renew you from the inside. As you read scripture out loud, as you meditate and you consider what he says in his scripture, as you fast to humble your soul, as you pray to God, right, with all the different forms of prayer, and as you seek to be led by the spirit to hear his spirit and obey his spirit, it renews you from the inside. And as you renew, the struggle starts resolving, right? He's renewing that soul. Your relationship starts building and it becomes easier and easier to submit yourself to God. Galatians 5:16 and 17. Here we're going to see how do we overcome the pull of the flesh? How do we overcome that thing that's resisting God's spirit and the spirit in our life? It's not by pretending it isn't happening. It's not by self denial or some kind of discipline with our will. It's by walking in the spirit of God. Galatians 5:16, I say then, Paul writes, "Walk in the spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh." Verse 17, "For the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh and these are contrary to one another so that you do not do the things that you wish." He says, "Walk in the spirit." to walk. It's to live, to conduct yourself, to order your daily life in the spirit according to the Holy Spirit, right? The sacred breath of God. He says, "If you do this, you shall not fulfill, you won't carry out, you won't accomplish, you won't practice, you won't do the lust or the desires of the flesh." And remember what we saw before, the flesh, the desires and the cravings of the body as well as that unrenewed part of the soul, the will that wants to not do God's will. the intellect, the mind that has thinking and thoughts that are contrary to God's will and the emotions that are just all over the place. Right? So he says, "For the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. The flesh desires and is in opposition to the spirit and the spirit is against the flesh and these are contrary. That means they're opposed. They're set against. They're in conflict with each other. You feel the struggle because your flesh and your spirit want different things and they're both inside of you. That's why there's a struggle inside of you. And it says so that you don't do the things you wish. How do you surrender when flesh tries to pull you away from God? Well, you draw near to God through the five disciplines. You read, you meditate on God's word. You pray, you fast, you seek to be led by the spirit. You listen for and you obey his spirit in your life and you keep choosing his will over the desires of the flesh. 1 Corinthians 6:19 and 20. You'll see here your body is not separated from your Christian life. It is God's temple and your life has been bought by Christ through the gospel. 1 Corinthians 6:19. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you whom you have from God and you are not your own? Verse 20, for you were bought at a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit which are God's. It says, "Do you not know that your body, remember what your body is, right? This part, this physical part, the part that lives and contacts the outside world. Your body is a vehicle as we described earlier. Everything we described in our opening connects to these scriptures and other scriptures. Your body, it's a temple of the Holy Spirit. What does it mean to be a temple? It's a dwelling place. It's a sanctuary of God. Your body contains your soul and your spirit. And it is a temple. It's a dwelling place. It's a sanctuary of God. It's a temple of the Holy Spirit, his sacred breath, the spirit of God. And it says, "And you are not your own." Do you understand that? You are not your own. It takes some repentance and accepting to say, "I'm not my own. I thought I was running my own life. I thought I was a grown adult, let's say. I thought I was in charge. I've experienced things. I know things. I know who's in control here." No, you are not your own. That means here that you're not self-owned. You don't belong to yourself. You belong to God. What's your way of escape from the battle that's happening inside of you? How do you get out of this? How do you succeed? How do you grow? How do you thrive? The answer is to bring your whole self, spirit, soul, and body to God. Your spirit was made alive. We saw that in Ephesians 2 verses 1-5. Your soul needs to be renewed. We saw that in Romans 12:2. And your body presented as we see here in 1 Corinthians 6:19. Bring your whole self to God. So, what should I do now? Let's talk about the 7-day challenge. If you want to see great results over the next seven days, if you want to overcome, if you want to start fixing and solving the struggle that's inside of you, if you want the spirit to gain strength, to gain spiritual muscle, for lack of a better term, and start to see the works of the flesh and the struggle and the lack of peace and the fear and the doubt and the unbelief, you want to see that go down in the next seven days. Try this. Day one, surrender your whole self to God. Pray for God to sanctify your spirit, soul, and body. Pray a prayer that Paul was praying right in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5. Then surrender. Surrender the parts that feel weak, divided, or resistant. Give everything over to God. See, too often we'll say, "I'm a Christian. I'm born again, and I go to church on Sundays." But Monday through Saturday, that's my time. Sunday is God's time. you know, Monday through Saturday, that's me because I'm self-owned. But you're not self-owned. We just saw that in First Corinthians. You're not self-owned. You're bought with a price. It is your job to actually commit your whole spirit, soul, and body. Why are you feeling such a strong struggle? Because you're trying to be under your own management. You need to submit your spirit, soul, and body to God. And when you do that, it's under God's management, which is always how it was intended to be. And when it's under God's management, the God of peace, it's wholeness. He lines it all up. He restores order. He brings everything together. He shows you your purpose. He strengthens you. He empowers you. He prospers you. He builds your health. He does all these things because you're lined up with him. Spirit, soul, and body. Surrender all parts of you, especially those parts that feel weak, that are divided, or they're resisting God. It's not going to be easy, but absolutely, you could do it. You can choose to do it. Days 2 through 7, give yourself more spiritual muscle. Draw near through the five disciplines. Read God's word. Meditate on his scriptures. Fast. Pray. Seek to be led by the spirit. Start small. You may have big ambitions. Every day I'm just going to only read. I'm only I'm going to fast seven days a week. I'm going to read the whole Bible over and over again. Start small. Commit. Get in there. It's much better to repeatedly do something than to have big ambition. Start one day and then collapse for the next six or seven days. Each day, read some. Meditate. Look for a time to fast. Pray daily. Seek to be led by God's spirit. Watch season 3 of the Simple Truth Podcast, episode 1, to learn more about these five disciplines. Days 3 through 7, practice walking in the spirit. Right? Notice when your flesh is trying to pull you away. Try to be discerning. Try to be mindful. It's not always easy. You may be at work. You may be dealing with kids. You may have parents that you're dealing with. You may be at school. Whatever it may be, these are all worldly distractions and they will try to resist you. So try to be mindful. Try to keep your mind on God. Try to remind yourself. Try to pray without ceasing as the scripture says. Try to be in fellowship and connect with God. Try to take time aside to reconnect with God. and come back into your responsibilities and your duties. Right? Notice when the flesh is trying to pull you away. Take a pause, pray, and fight to obey God's spirit as opposed to what your flesh is trying to get you to do. I pray that God bless you and God keep you as you attempt this 7-day challenge. I pray that God bless you as you surrender your whole self to God in the coming months. I pray God bless you to draw near through the five disciplines as you read and as you pray and as you meditate and as you obey God's spirit. And I pray God bless you as you practice walking in the spirit through this. And don't miss next episode because if the battle inside of you involves your spirit and your soul and your body, then what is your spirit and what happened to it when it became saved? And that's what you're going to find out. So go ahead and click here to see the next episode in this season and feel free to like and subscribe for more simple biblical and essential truth.