How to Live as a Whole Christian | Season 05, Episode 5 | Simple Truth Podcast

Have you ever left church on a Sunday, ready to live for God, only to feel pulled apart again by Monday? Part of you wants to follow God, but then a strong thought, a feeling, a desire, or an appetite, it begins to take over. Sometimes you don't even realize it until days later, and you wonder, "Why am I feeling so bad?" You're a Christian. You want to fulfill God's purpose in your life, so what's going on? In today's final episode of Season 5 about the whole Christian, Spirit, Soul, and Body, we'll answer three really important questions. First, what does it mean to serve God as a whole Christian? Second, what is taking my focus away from God when I'm on my own? And third, how do I stop living a divided and inconsistent life? Welcome to the Simple Truth Podcast. I'm Ted Ross. This is Season 5, Episode 5, How to Live as a Whole Christian. And today, we're going to answer three important questions, starting with question number one. What does it mean to serve God as a whole Christian? Okay, which brings us to Simple Truth number 93. Christians dedicate their whole self, spirit, soul, and body to God. And let's look at 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 23. As a reminder, all Bible verses are from the New King James Version of the Bible, so feel free to follow along. Here in 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 23, we're going to see—and we've seen this verse several times in this season—but we're going to see that a whole Christian, it's not someone who's flawless, right? It's not about being some vision of perfection. It's not about not making a mistake, but a whole Christian is someone who increasingly allows God to work in every part of their life. 1 Thessalonians 523, "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." He says, "Now may the God of peace," right? He's talking about God, but he's using this context to say, "Now may the God of wholeness, the God of well-being." Thank to you completely. To thank to you, it's to make you holy, it's to set you apart, it's to dedicate you. And it says, "May your whole spirit, soul, and body," what is whole? It's every aspect, it's all parts. So what he's describing here is that all parts, all of our spirit, all of our soul, and all of our body, that it be preserved, blameless, sustained without fault or without issue, right? Do you treat God like he's just one part of your larger life? We often can. Even when we don't even realize it, we acknowledge God on Sunday, but Monday through Saturday, that's ours, right? We do this quite often. Do you treat God like he's just one part of a broader life where you've got a lot of things and God is one part of it? It's a pretty common thing, I think, in the world today. God's work, it's meant to reach every part of you, your entire spirit, your whole spirit to use the term from this scripture, your whole spirit, your whole soul, and your whole body. That's where God's work is meant to be. Quite often when we're describing this, we describe us having various issues and sometimes we wonder, I committed myself to Christ, I'm filled with His Spirit. Why am I having trouble still? And we often find that if we were to diagnose it that we start to see that we partially commit ourselves to God, but we leave too much still left on the plate, and we don't apply all of it to God and submit all of it. And that's what it means to be a whole Christian. So what is your spirit, your soul and your body? We looked into this throughout this season, but let's go through a quick reminder. Let's start with the spirit. The spirit is where we are God conscious. It's the part of us that connects and relates to God. It's Godward. In other words, it's God facing and it's spiritual by essence. And you can see this in the simple truth podcast, episode 5.2, if you want to learn a lot more about it. Then let's talk about the soul. The second part of us as we saw in first Thessalonians 5.23, the soul's different. The soul is not our spirit. Quite often, we connect spirit and soul, but they're two different parts of us, doing two very different purposes with very different characteristics. But they are both inward in the sense that you just don't see them physically. The soul is the inner life of a person. It's the will. It's the mind. It's the emotions. As we saw throughout this season, there's various scriptures that describe the aspects of the will. It's the mind. It's the emotions. As we saw throughout this season, there's various scriptures that describe the aspects of the soul. And so it includes this idea of the will, where choices are made. The idea of the mind where we think and we reason and we remember, as well as our emotions, where we feel, right? These are the areas where we make our decisions, where we think about our options, where we feel different feelings and different emotions, both positive and negative. The soul is where we are self-conscious, where the spirit is God-conscious. It's connecting to God. Our soul is self-conscious. It's where we understand if we think about our self. It's personal. It is psychological to use the wordly term. You can learn a lot more about your soul if you watch Simple Truth podcast, episode five, dot three. And then the third part of us is our body, right? That's something we're all very familiar with. It's the visible, physical part of a person. It's what lives, acts and contacts the material world around us and it does so through the five senses, right? With sight and smell and taste and hearing, et cetera. The world conscious part of us, right? Our spirit is not world conscious. It's God conscious. Our soul, it's self-conscious. It's within ourselves. But the body interacts with the world around us. It's physical. It's physiological to use the worldly term. And we talked a lot more about this in the last episode. So now let's make the pivot. If this is what our spirit, our soul, and our body is, and we were to commit all of it, holy, entire all of it, let's take a further look at what we mean. So in Mark 12, verses 29 and 30, we see Jesus hit this from a different angle. Here we're going to see that Jesus calls us to love God, right? To love to serve God with our entire person. In other words, serving God, it means no aspect of our life is kept outside of his authority. No aspect, okay? Let's take a look at it. Mark 12, verse 29. Jesus answered him, quote, "The first of all the commandments," and he's quoting Deuteronomy, "is here, O Israel, the Lord our God. The Lord is one." Amen. Verse 30, "And you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. This is the first commandment." He says, "The first of all commandments is this." And verse 30, he says, "And you shall love the Lord, your God. To love, it's to value, it's to choose, it's to devote yourself to God." So God commands this in Deuteronomy and Jesus reminds us in the New Testament in Mark chapter 12, "You shall love the Lord your God, you should value God, you should choose God. You should devote yourself to God on Sundays only." Nope, not on Sundays only. At all times, right? Trying to catch you see if you're on here. "You should do it at all times and you do it with all, with all your heart." That word, "all." It's a simple word, but it's a word still worth defining. So you value, you choose, you devote yourself to God with all, with your whole, with your complete, with your entire, with no part excluded, with all your complete heart, with all your complete soul, your mind, and your strength. I think what's really interesting here is these are all terms we've defined before. So when Jesus says that you love the Lord your God with all your heart, he's describing your soul and your spirit. He's describing the non-visible, the non-physical parts of you. And then he says to also do it with all your soul, which is a part of the heart. There's an overlap there. And with all your mind, which is a part of your soul, and with all your strength, right, and just driving these extra parts of it, Jesus uses overlapping terms. And he's doing so to emphasize a total and an undivided devotion. There's nothing excluded from this. He not only just took all the parts, he didn't just say spirit, soul, and body. He took this and he added this which layers and this which layers and this which layers. So he clearly makes a very, I think, important point. Can you truly give God all while holding back parts of yourself? For Jesus to say that you and I, I'm no eyes excluded, should love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength. Can we love God with all these things if we hold back parts? Is he an only Sunday, Sunday service God, or is he an all-day God? All means every part of us. Nothing is held back. Let's see an example of that. Visuals can be very helpful. Here's pizza, something a lot of people are very familiar with. If I said that I'm going to eat this whole pizza, and for lot of people are very familiar with. If I said that I'm going to eat this whole pizza and for those of you who are listening on audio podcast, we see a plate on a table with a knife and a fork. For those of you who eat their pizza that way, not me. I fold it too much information, but we see a pizza sitting on a plate, a full pizza, all four pieces cut into quarters. And then the question becomes, if I said, I'm going to eat this whole pizza, what do you expect? What do you expect the result to be? We look at this next damage. Is this eating all the pizza? Is this the whole thing? There's still about two thirds of the pizza left. Right. How about this? Did I eat all parts of the pizza? There's still easily about one third of the pizza left. I can't say I ate the whole pizza. I can't say that I've eaten all of the pizza. If that much pizza is still sitting on the plate, this is eating the whole pizza. That plate is empty. I ate all of it. No parts, no portions are held back. The same could be said about how the whole Christian commits all parts to God. Okay? How about loving God with all of your heart, your whole spirit, your whole soul, and your whole body? What parts do you give to God and what parts do you hold back? Here on our visual, you'll see that we have a graphic that we've showed earlier in this season where we graphically depict the spirit, the soul, and the body. Do you give your spiritual fellowship and your intuition and your conscience? Do you connect that with God? Do you devote that to God? Your soul is your will focused on God. Is your mind focused on God? How about your emotions and your body? It's what's used to interact with the world around us, and we interact through our five senses. Does your body obey God? Do you do the things that your soul and your spirit has determined to do? God urges us to commit everything. Spirit, soul and body, top to bottom. This includes a whole list of things that you may or may not see as being a part of obeying God. It includes where you live, that's all. Who you date, that's all. What you listen to, what you watch, all of it. How you raise your children, how you interact with your friends, where you spend your money. God is God, top to bottom. And as Jesus described, we are to love, to value, to cherish, your money. God is God top to bottom. And as Jesus described, we are to love, to value, to cherish, to honor, to acknowledge God with all of our hearts and with all of our soul and with all of our mind, with all of our strength, top to bottom, which means we are wholly devoted from top to bottom to God and we are whole Christians. Let's take a look at Colossians 3, verse 17. Following Jesus as a whole Christian means there is no part of your daily life, no part, where God does not belong. Nothing is kept back from Him. Now, to be clear, God doesn't involve Himself in every part of every day, but there is no part of your daily life where God does not belong. Everything is open and subject to say, "God, what do you want me to do here? God, what would you like here? If you're not going to lead me in this, I'll do what I believe is right. But God, this is all yours. My money is all yours. My life is all yours. My decisions are all yours. It's all yours. My body is all yours. My soul is all yours. And my spirit is all yours. And here's the thing. This isn't slavery. This is freedom. This is transformation. As you submit yourself to God, He delivers you from everything that hinders you. He manifests His power, all the blessings of the gospel. Start to manifest in your life. You become a blessing to others. And most importantly, you start to fulfill the purpose and God's will for your life. He has a purpose and a will. And too often, we feel divided, we feel tension, and we feel stress because we're not where we belong. And God is pulling and He's pulling and He's tugging and He's convincing and He's convicting us because He's trying to get us where we need to be so that we can have peace so that the yoke can be easy and the burden can be light. Praise God. Colossians 3, verse 17, quote, "And whatever you do in word, that's what you say, it's what you express, what comes out of your mouth, how you express yourself, or deed. It's your physical actions, it's the work you do, it's your labor. So whether it's something you say or something you do, do all of it. Everything, nothing, nothing is intentionally excluded. From top to bottom, left to right, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus. To do something in the name of Jesus is to do it for Jesus' cause and to do it by His authority. So why do I feel ready to commit my whole self to God after church? Right after reading the Bible after church, after praise and worship, after praying, I feel like I'm ready to commit all of it to God. But then I lose my focus on my own, as we were describing before, maybe on a Monday or on a Wednesday, or even just Sunday after church. You start to lose focus and you start to find yourself divided, so to find tension and stress. You know it is God's will for you to feel the exact way you felt during praise and worship and during Sunday service throughout the week. That's God's will. That is what Jesus walked in as your example. Jesus didn't have high Sundays and then low Wednesdays. That's not how that worked. He was always doing the will of the Father. He was always connected to the Father. He was always being led by the Spirit and he was reaping all the benefits associated with, "By the way, is God's will for your life and for my life." Every Christian needs to learn how to stay in the Spirit and to stay connected to God throughout the week, every day. When they're away from church, when they're away from other Christians, when they're not reading their Bible, etc. That is God's will and purpose for us. That is being a whole Christian. So it brings us to question number two. What then is taking my focus away from God when I'm on my own? That's a great question. And the answer is found in simple truth number 94. The flesh uses your soul and your body to try to pull you off course. Let's take a look at Romans chapter 8, verses 12 through 14. Here we're going to see that our soul, our will, our mind and our feelings, as well as our body with its appetites, they become channels where the flesh tries to lead us astray. Did you hear me? Our soul, our own soul, our own will, our own mind, our own feelings, our own appetites from our body, they start to become channels where the flesh tries to lead us astray. But they don't have authority over us. That's the key. They can try. They can attempt. They can tempt us, but God gives us authority over it. So let's take a look at Romans 8 verse 12, quote, "Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live." Verse 14, "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God." Praise God. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors. A debtor is someone who owes, someone who is under obligation. And we're debtors not to the flesh, not to our sinful nature, not to our desires that are apart from God. Right? Not to that old man, as the scripture describes it. We are not debtors to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. Or if you live according to the flesh, you will die. Living, walking, behaving, living out our daily life after the desires of our sinful nature, after those old bad habits that we had before that we repented of. Remember, we were buried in baptism. What does it mean to be buried? That means we're putting to we repented of. Remember, we were buried in baptism. What does it mean to be buried? That means we're putting to death those old desires. We're saying the way I was living, the behaviors that I have, those are no good. I choose to live for Christ. I choose to live for God. And water baptism, it symbolizes that very commitment. We even do it publicly, right? We do those things to say that that sinful nature, it's bad. And I agree with God and that these desires apart from God, I will crucify, I will put them to death as the scriptures say, because if we live according to them, we will die, right? It's killing us spiritually. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. If by the Spirit, that's the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit who leads, who guides, who lives in us. If you live, if you walk, if you daily behavior, if your conduct is according to the Holy Spirit, then you put to death the deeds of the body. You crucify them, you kill them off, and you will live. To put to death, it's to refuse to obey them. It's to deprive them of their power. These old sinful nature, it creates these desires and it tries to compel us and tempt us to pursue and to follow after it. And then when we do those things, we ignore the consequences, we ignore the fact that it grieves God and it's hurting ourselves and we pursue after it because we like them, we desire after them. But if we by the spirit put to death those deeds, those actions, those behaviors, those habits, we will live. Which means we do not live by just telling ourselves over and over again not to do those needs. We know they're bad. But the power comes from being led by the Holy Spirit, who will lead us and guide us into all truth and will cause us to put to death those needs. And in so doing, we will live. So if the Spirit is in me, why do I live so differently away from church, you might be asking. I've got God's Spirit. I'm a Christian. It's a Tuesday. It's a Thursday. What's going on? Why do I feel like God is so far away? Why am I having such a hard time? Why do I feel so divided? When I know part of me wants to submit to God, but other parts of me I'm finding doing all these other types of things, these things that so clearly God does not like that I even got water baptized. Let's say to commit to say I won't be doing. You drift when other parts of you try to lead you instead of the Holy Spirit. That's what causes you to drift. You're at church, you're hearing a great message, you're hearing God's word. You're in praise and worship, you're committed. You say to yourself, God is great and I will continue to submit myself to God and I thoroughly enjoy fellowshiping and interacting with God." And then as the days progress, you start to find yourself and parts of you are starting to lead instead of the Holy Spirit. Let's take a look here at the four paths of fleshly control. This is a term that we use here. And what we did is we took a variety of scriptures and we looked at the mind, the feelings, the will and the body. And we looked at the negative aspects of them. And what we did is we created a table here where we look at the strengths, we look at the common issues and we look at kind of the mindset of when these aspects of ourselves, when these components of the flesh, try to take over what effect it has on us and how it can pull us away and steer us away and draw us away from being led by the Holy Spirit. And we often find that while all four of these can impact any one of us, we often find ourselves having natural tendencies to some more than others. You'll see here, for those who are listening, you see that we have a table and at the top we have headers. In the first column we talk about having a strong mind. And as you may remember, the mind is a component of the soul. The second column talks about having strong feelings, also a component to the soul. The third column is having a strong will, component to the soul. And the fourth is a component to the body, which is the strong appetite, something we all share. You may remember that the soul often describes our personality. And for some of our personalities, we may be more strong minded than others. We may be someone who has a high IQ, maybe we have a big extensive education. And so we rely on our mind, and we train and we exercise our mind. And often it can make us strong minded. Or for some of us, it may not be about the mind, it may be about our emotions, about our feelings. And we feel very strongly. We're very compassionate. We have very strong feelings. And so we often have a natural tendency or we operate in our emotions. For some of us, we're very strong-willed. We have very strong sense of what we're going to do and what we're not going to do. And we have a lot of discipline and a lot of focus and we are strong willed. And for some of us, we're very in tune with our body, and we feel the strong appetites that can come through our body. So what are these things? Because all four of these things are perfectly natural. It's perfectly natural. We all have a soul, we all have a body, and we all can feel and sense and experience these items. The problem is when these items take you away when the flesh uses these channels to draw you away from submitting to God. So let's take a look. Let's start with the mind. What are the strengths of having a strong mind? It's a good thing God made you. He made your soul. He made you to have a mind. A strong mind makes a person thoughtful and analytical. They can value clarity and understanding. They are careful before making decisions, right? There's someone who weighs that out. You could find proverbs that describe the importance of being clear, of understanding, and of thinking, and showing a level of diligence before decisions are made. These are not inherently bad things. And as I'm describing this, I may very well be describing you, a person who values these items more than many of the others. So what are some of the common traps of being a strong minded individual? Well, first of all, you can overanalyze. You can spend a lot of time and energy thinking and rethinking on something where it actually starts to get in your way. Your IQ could be so high that you've already thought through a hundred different ways something could happen and you find that you get what they call analysis paralysis. You don't do anything with it. You're just still analyzing and analyzing and reanalyzing again. That is an impediment, especially when it comes to obeying God or being led by the Spirit. You could be somebody who hesitates without certainty. If you don't feel entirely certain for a decision, you may find yourself that you don't want to make a decision, right? Strong-minded also relies heavily on what can be explained. Not everything with God can be explained. When you became born again, something happened to you. It happened spiritually. Your mind wasn't necessarily a participant in it. Something happened and then your mind started to look and say, "Oh, I'm experiencing something." There was definitely evidence to your born again experience, but it's not the type of evidence that your mind was used to. You didn't necessarily find it in a book or study three steps to become born again and then go do it. It was a spiritual occurrence. And quite often, as we see in scripture, with people interacting with Jesus or all throughout the Old Testament, that you'll find that if you rely heavily on what can be explained, you will miss a part of your experience with God. This person whose strong mind it struggles to trust what is not understood, and yet we're asked to have faith. If I were to summarize the strong-minded individual and specifically the path of the mind that causes deflesh to have control in our life, it would be this, quote, "My mind must understand before I can trust or obey God, and that my friend is not right." Let's take a look at feelings. Let's move and shift to strong feelings. What are the strengths of having strong feelings? Well, compassionate, sensitive. Those are good traits, aren't they? Emotionally perceptive. We're in a world that values right now emotional intelligence, also known as EQ. So whereas our first column can often be described as IQ, our second column, the world might call EQ or emotional intelligence. Strong feelings means you're deeply affected by people and their circumstances. You can show compassion, you could be sympathetic, you can very much connect with somebody, and those in many ways are good values. You could say this way, "God put those things in our soul for that very reason." And this may be describing you as an individual. You may not be as strong-minded as that first column, but you could see yourself as having very strong feelings. So what are some of the common traps for those of you who have these very strong feelings? Well, first of all, you may react before the truth settles the soul. So you may find yourself reacting to something. You have all this deep affection and all this sensitivity and it causes you to do things or take steps before God's truth really weighs it out. And sometimes you'll find your soul is very unsettled and so you're chasing after things when God wants you to be still, let your soul settle, and then come to an understanding of God's truth and then obey that. So the emotions in some ways can get in your way as you're trying to be led by God's spirit in this instance. You treat strong feelings as confirmation. We have seen before in previous episodes that just because you feel something doesn't make it God. In fact, we had a whole discussion about testing spirits, and spirits will give you all sorts of feelings, and yet we know that we test those spirits against God's word and against confirmation by God's Spirit so that we're not running to and fro and chasing after things and chasing after our emotions, but we are submitting to Almighty God and we are doing His will and we will see it because it will bear the fruit of the Spirit. Someone who has strong feelings, one common trap is that they hesitate when their emotions conflict. They know what they should be doing, but their emotions are telling them something separate. And again, your emotions is not your spirit. Your emotions is not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a person. It's the third person of God. And that Holy Spirit interacts with you through your spirit, and he wants you to obey him. And if your emotions are wavering up or down, whether you're super high in your emotions are wavering up or down, whether you're super high in your emotions or your super low negative emotions, they may be louder, a louder voice than God's spirit, because you'll find that your soul, if it's not disciplined, if it's not renewed, your soul can have too loud a voice and you may have a hard time hearing God's voice over the loudness of your own soul, in this case of your own emotions. You may doubt God when His presence is not felt. That's one thing I know I've experienced in my life where I'll say, you know, I really felt like God is here, so God must be here. Well, I don't feel God is here, so God must not be here. God's here. God's here whether you feel it or not. Praise God. God doesn't need your emotions to bear witness one way or the other. He is God. And just when you think God's not here, God shows Himself to be here. Or just when you think God is here, you'll realize that that thing that you were feeling, it wasn't necessarily or entirely God. Don't let your emotions confuse you. Your emotion is not spirit. It's emotions. There's value to emotions, but don't confuse that with God's spirit. If I were to summarize strong feelings when it comes to, as one of the paths where the flesh could try to exert control and try to confuse you and steer you away from obeying God's Spirit, I'd say it this way. If I do not feel it, it must not be real. O Contrary, just because you feel it or don't feel it doesn't make it real or not, those are just emotions. Those are just emotions. Those are just a facet of your soul. Strong will. Let's take a look at that. Some of you say, "Well, you know what? I'm not so strong-minded as a person. I don't see myself in the strong feelings, but maybe strong will. Maybe that's something that shows in your person. Maybe that's a natural tendency that you as a person lean to that could try to deceive you or divide you or take you away from obeying God's spirit. So what are the strengths of a strong will? Determined and persistent, right? Able to lead and endure difficulty, a strong will can really hold out, know what they're supposed to be doing or feel like what is right and then commit to it with a lot of discipline. They often are very strong when they're committed to something. Once they believe it, they will never let it go, right? Like a pit bull, they'll lock on, they'll hold on, and they'll never let it go. Some people see themselves like that, like a determined pit bull. Some folks even would even describe themselves that way, right? See a lot of this in the military and other kinds of places. So you might see yourself as a strong willed individual, someone who gets very determined and very persistent. They know what is right and they will pursue that. Well, what are some of the common traps of being a strong-willed person? Well, you could resist change. Sometimes God is saying to you, "Listen, I understand that's how you used to be doing things, but then the Holy Spirit will say, 'But this time you're going to do things differently.'" And you want to be sensitive to the leading then the Holy Spirit will say, "But this time you're going to do things differently," and you want to be sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit. So if done wrong, a strong-willed person can resist the change. They can resist what God is doing this day. A strong-willed person can delay obedience until they're personally motivated. Whether you're motivated or not motivated doesn't change anything. You should be doing it. Once your spirit becomes confirmed on something, you should motivate yourself. Whether you feel like doing it or you don't feel like doing it, you should get on it as they say. Confuses determination with obedience, right? A someone who has strong willed can confuse being very determined to do something with obeying God and doing something. Just because you feel very determined to do something doesn't mean God. In fact, quite often it could be the contrary. It's something that maybe you formulate in your mind. Maybe that's something that you think is right. And in the end, as the scripture says, could be destruction. It's really important that you get the mind of God as the saying goes. It's really important that you start to submit yourself and that you do the five disciplines so you could really be sensitive to what God is saying and then put your will to action. Then become determined because you're being determined on truth. You're building a house on the rock. You're not building a house on sand just because I'm very determined or I feel very emotional or my mind has thought it through. If I'm building on sand, it's irrelevant, isn't it? It doesn't matter what the mind thinks. It doesn't matter what the emotions feel, and it doesn't matter where your determination is. What matters is what the Holy Spirit is saying, and then we should commit our mind, commit our emotions, and commit our will to doing the will of God. It can be self-directed. It could be stubborn. It could be controlling, right? That's what can happen. Those are the common traps of a strong will if it doesn't submit itself to God. So if I were to summarize what a strong willed person could be and how it's one of the past, let's say the flesh, trying to control or trying to interfere with God's spirit in your life, it'd be this way. Quote, "I'll do it when I decide to, in the way that I decide. If that's what's coming out of your mouth, my friend, that is not obedience to the will of God. That's just a strong will. And if you think your will is stronger than God's will, you had another thing coming to you. Don't even try it. Don't even test it. Saul became that way, right? In the book of Acts, Saul was determined, so determined to do what he thought was obeying God, that he was literally murdering Christians in the process and God knocked him off of a horse. You do not want to have to be knocked off of a horse to obey God. The fourth area is strong appetites. So where the first three were describing the components of the soul, this one now is just describing the body, something we all have. And when we think about what a strong appetite or a strong desire in the body, there are strengths to it. When you have strong appetite, you're energetic, you're responsive to life's various experiences. When you really enjoy something, you're really enjoying something. You enjoy God's many gifts. God gives good gifts to people. He has good tasting things for us to enjoy. He gives us a nice bed to rest in. He gives us the ability to enjoy pleasures, to share, laugh, to enjoy various aspects of the world around us. The world is not evil. God has given us facets of the world and He's blessed us with it and blessings to enjoy. And that is a strength. A person who appreciates their appetites, they appreciate comfort, they appreciate beauty, they appreciate food, rest. There's such a long list of items in here that a person can appreciate, and those are legitimate things that we should be appreciating. But as you can imagine, there's common traps with this too, because appreciating comfort, beauty, food, rest, et cetera, above the will of God, that is unacceptable. So what are some of the common traps? Well, a person with strong appetites, they could be seeking relief from emotional discomfort through physical pleasure. So they're dealing with something emotionally and what do they do? They start acting it out physically. We find that certain even kinds of addictions can fit these categories where they're using physical stimulus to try to mask or to hide issues that are occurring in their soul, something emotional or something mental or something in their will and they're using it to hide those aspects of it. Someone who has strong appetites, they obey urges before considering the spiritual consequences. If it feels good, do it. That was an expression I was often used in the 1960s and the 70s. That's not a good expression. That is not a Christian expression in any way, shape or form. If it feels good, it just means it satisfies an appetite of the body. That's literally all it means. It doesn't mean it's God. There are things that you will do in life that obey God and they will feel good. And there are things you do in life to obey God and they won't feel good, but they're still right. And you commit yourself to doing it and you will see the fruit of the Spirit and you'll see the results of obeying God and they are good things. But the idea that you have an urge and before you even consider its spiritual consequence, you chase that urge, that is not God. And that is not at all how God wants you to live your life. And if you are living your life, way, you need to repent from it. Because that's not the way God formed you or created you, just to chase after everything that gives you some form of pleasure or some form of comfort. That's not how God wants those things, they're killing you. We just read in Scripture, "If you live according to the flesh, you will die." It's killing you spiritually. You do not want those things and you don't want to live that way. So when it was strong appetites also, avoid sacrifices, they avoid discomforts, they have a hard time fasting, right? It's hard to abstain and to deny the desires of the flesh and yet quite often we see scripturally that it is good at times to deny the desires of the flesh so that you can hear God and obey him by his spirit. So when there's strong appetites, they confuse what feels natural with what's right. So just because it feels a certain way, doesn't mean it's right. And they will confuse the two quite often. If I were to summarize a quote that defines a person who's pursuing strong appetites, it's this, quote, "If it feels good to my body or if it brings relief, and it must be good for me." And the answer is, it is not. And quite clearly, scripturally, it is not. So these brothers and sisters are for paths to fleshly control. These are items that we looked through scripture and we found that show of which many of us have different tendencies towards one or the other or all at various times. But it can give you an understanding of how these things can be deceptive, because this list of four items is not God's spirit. This is a list of four items, three of which are the soul, one of which are the body, which can mimic, can confuse, can deceive, can hide, but these are desires of our selves. These are desires of our flesh. And if we find ourselves being ruled by these four items, any or all of these four items, it will interfere getting the way of us obeying God by His Spirit, which is the secret to joy and to peace and to comfort and to blessings, to all the good things that God has for you. That is where I want you, brothers and sisters, I want you enjoying the fullness of the blessing of the Gospel of Christ, which Jesus literally died on a cross for, so that you could be restored, you could be renewed, you could be strong, and you could have all the blessings of God manifested in your life instead of these earthly little things where you're chasing after things and you're chasing after emotional satisfaction or what your mind has figured out or what your stubbornness is doing. This is not where you want to be. There's no good thing that comes from any of these things. The good things come from above. The good things come from God. So let's take a moment. You might be saying, "Okay, I get it. I get it." That was a lot of words, right? "God wants all of me." You get the point. You get it where we're coming from. But you might be asking, "How can I serve God without losing my own personality? How can I still be myself? I'm not trying to become some kind of mindless drone. And I understand. I completely understand that. So how can I serve God without losing my own personality? Well, let's be clear. God's not trying to erase your personality. He's not trying to turn you into some kind of mindless follower, right? What is he trying to do? He wants you to overcome the sin nature that's inside of you. He wants you to become the unique person he created you to be. He doesn't want you to be this person who every time you have an urge and every time you have an impulse, you just chase right after it, right? You know, some of you had a dog and if you pick up a ball and throw it, that dog can't even control himself or herself. That dog just takes off and it could be into something dangerous for crying out loud. But that dog is chasing that ball with just one mind, just one focus. There's nothing outside of it. You are a living, breathing human being. You were a person mating God's image. You were a person who was meant for great and fantastic things. And you're not going gonna do it if your mind and if your emotions and if your will and if your body and its physical appetites are just steering you over whatever ball flies past your face and you chase after it. We know there's a devil. We know there are demons. We know there is evil in this world, which among other things will be tempting us with these desires and with what the flesh will want to do. And it is your charge, it is your order to not be led by these desires, but to hear God, to have your spirit be alive and to hear God and be led by his spirit, so that your mind and your emotions and your will and your appetites, that they are brought under subjection to Jesus Christ Almighty and that you are living a life in which you are fully submitted as a whole Christian to the will of God and enjoying all the benefits associated with that so that you can then fulfill your purpose in life. That my friends is what you were called to do. And if you were wondering why on a Sunday you really feel God's presence and you really know what you want and you really commit to God. And then over the course of the days, you start to find yourself losing and being divided and losing distraction. It's because those four items are starting to draw you away. And there is absolutely hope for you. There's hope for all of us. The Holy Spirit doesn't want to remove your mind, to remove your feelings, remove your will or even remove your desires. The Holy Spirit will teach you and me how to bring them under God's truth. To take the other parts of ourselves, the soul and the body, and to submit it under the Spirit, which is being led by God's Spirit. You will always uniquely be you. There's nothing that can change it, and God is not trying to make you not you. God is trying to take you and he's trying to cause you to walk according to his spirit and he wants you to increasingly fulfill your purpose in life and become a great blessing to others. God didn't call you out of darkness into his marvelous light to heap all sorts of things onto your fleshly desires. He did it so that you could submit yourself. You could be disciplined and you could submit yourself and you can see his will and you can obey it in your life. And that is the promise of God. And that's not something I came up with. It's something that we see all throughout Scripture and that's why we are doing this podcast and that's why we're teaching these topics. So that brings me to question number three. How do I stop living a divided and inconsistent life? stop living a divided and inconsistent life. Glad you asked. Simple truth number 95. Bring your whole life under God by following, renewing, and obeying. Let's start with Romans 6 verses 12 and 13. And here we're going to see that what you consider and follow each day, it shapes how you think and how you live. Romans 6, 12, quote, "Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey it in its lust." Verse 13, "And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness to God." Praise God. It says, "Do not let sin reign. Do not let shortcomings, do not let falling short, do not let disobedience to God. Praise God. It says, "Do not let sin reign. Do not let shortcomings, do not let falling shorts, do not let disobedience to God reign over you, do not let it exercise control or rule you like a king. Sin is not in charge. Jesus died for your sins and he was buried in you, rose again the third day and he has given all power to us to overcome that sin. All four of those columns that we saw there before Jesus died for all four of them and he rose from the grave and when he did he said all power has been given to me in heaven and in earth. He submitting ourselves to Christ having Christ in us he has empowered us to overcome each of those items. We are not to let sin reign in our mortal body that we should obey it, that we should listen, that we should submit to sin's direction. We don't need to listen to sin's direction. We don't have to obey sin. Jesus died that we'd have to obey sin. There is great power that comes from God and it is power over sin. It says, "And do not present your members." Your members are your body parts. Don't present your body. Don't present yourself, right? As instruments or tools or weapons of unrighteousness to sin. But present yourselves to God. Offer yourselves to God. All of us, our whole body, our whole soul, our whole spirit, offer all of us to God as being alive from the dead, as people who died to our old selves. Baptism, of course, is the example of that. As people who died to our old selves as being alive from the dead, so that we died, our old nature died, we died to the reigning of sin. And we are now alive from the dead because God resurrected us with Christ in heavenly places. And we are now allocating our members, our body parts, as instruments, as tools, as weapons of righteousness to God, of righteousness, of what's right according to God. That's a big comprehensive list of obeying God by His Spirit and of doing what is right. That's what we yield our members to, not to sin, to try to reign over us. It used to reign over us. But instead, we yield our members to, not to sin to try to reign over us. They used to reign over us, but instead we yield ourselves, we present ourselves, we present ourselves as weapons or tools of righteousness to God. Do you want to stop feeling so up and down each week? Commit all of yourself to God, not just on Sundays, and it starts with seeking and following the leading of the Holy Spirit. That's what we saw in the earlier verses. Let's take a look at that. Galatians 5, 24 and 25. So we just saw the importance of committing. And now we're going to see the importance of following, following who? The Holy Spirit. Okay. So here we're going to see in Galatians 5, 24, that a divided life, it becomes a more whole when Christians stop following their strongest impulse and begin looking to the Holy Spirit for direction. Galatians 524, quote, "And those who are Christs have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. And those who are of Christ have crucified. To crucified means to put to death. And what do they crucify? What do they put to death? The flesh with its passions and desires. We put it to death, not physically. I'm not putting myself to death. I'm not committing suicide. But I am crucifying. I'm putting to death the flesh. We saw a list of four categories there, which were four paths in which the flesh tries to saw a list of four categories there, which were four paths in which the flesh tries to divide us, tries to confuse us, try to lead us astray from obeying God by His Spirit. And in that, we saw that we could be strong-minded. That's an area that we should put to death. We have a mind, but we should put to death being strong-minded against God's Spirit. We saw strong emotions. We should put those to death against God's spirit. We saw strong willed. We should put a strong will to death so that it submits to God's spirit. And we saw the physical appetites of the body, which we should put to death so that we could obey God by his spirit. It says, "You crucified the flesh with its passions. Passions are powerful inner impulses, urges and desires. So, so strong cravings. The flesh has impulses and desires. Your mind wants to chase after something. Your emotions want to feel something. Your will has determined something and it doesn't want to stop doing it. It's stubborn, right? Your body has appetites. It desires after those things. All of those things God has given us power over. All of those things, if we'd be led by the Spirit, we will overcome, because all of those things are the desires and the impulses, the passions and the desires of the flesh. It says, "If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. To walk is to keep in step, to follow the Course, to be guided by. We are to live to conduct ourselves to daily behave according to God's Holy Spirit. We're to keep in step with the Spirit. The Spirit goes left, we go left. Spirit goes right, we go right. To follow the Course to be guided by God's Holy Spirit, because that's what He wants, isn't it? Doesn't He want to be our God and for us to be His people? Don't all sheep hear His voice? Right? Don't we hear the voice of the good shepherd and follow it? That's what God wants out of us. We hear the voice of the good shepherd. We don't hear the voice of our own emotions. We hear the voice of the good shepherd. We don't hear the voice of a strong mind or a physical appetite. So that's not the voice we follow. Jesus died for us. He died and he became our shepherd and he cares for his sheep and he'll care and he'll lead us to pasture. There's so many great things that God will do for us. He died and he became our shepherd and he cares for his sheep and he'll care and he'll lead us to pastor. There's so many great things that God will do for us. His yoke is easy and his burden is light but we need to submit to him. We need to submit to him in our soul and our body. When your soul and your body, they pull strongly against you. Who gets the final word? If your soul, your body saying, "Let's go this way," and God says, "I want you to go that way. Who decides, right? Your flesh may speak loudly, but the Holy Spirit should always take the lead. And it helps to renew your soul to submit to your spirit, right? So remember how we were discussing this. And in the whole Christian, we're putting it all together in this episode. Your spirit's alive and it communes with the Holy Spirit. And in your soul soul you're making decisions and by renewing your soul that gives you the ability to then understand what God is doing by his spirit and makes it easier to follow God according to the Holy Spirit. So let's look at Romans 12 too. Here we see that a divided life, it can't become consistent while the soul continues thinking and behaving according to all of its old patterns. Rome is 12-2, and do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Don't be conformed, don't be shaped, don't be molded by the world, right? Don't be molded by those desires and those appetites. The world consistently tells us to do wrong things. The world gives us many avenues to do wrong things in. You could do it physically, you could do it digitally. There's a long list of ways the world embellishes and empowers us to be able to sin. But instead of being conformed to this world, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Be changed inwardly into a new form, by the renewing, by the renovation, by the making new again of your mind, right? Your thinking, your thoughts, your understanding, your judgment. What old patterns of your soul make it difficult to follow God? We all have some, right? What old patterns of your soul make it difficult for you to follow God's Spirit? As God's truth renews the soul, you become better at recognizing and following the Spirit. The five disciplines really come into play here as we pray, as we meditate on God's words, we read God's words, we fast. As we seek to be led by God's Holy Spirit, we renew our soul. We start filling our mind not so much with worldly things, but with Scripture. We start to fill our will with doing God's will. And we see the benefits of doing God's will, which kind of gives us evidence, which then makes our mind more interested, right? We start to take control over these facets of our life. We start to discipline around those appetites. There's nothing wrong with having a nice meal. There's nothing wrong with enjoying the things, the blessings that God has done as Earth. But if you're living a life chasing the things of this Earth, if you're living a life chasing and trying to satisfy your physical appetites, first of all, you'll never be satisfied. Secondly, you're going to do all sorts of wrong in the process, because you don't chase things, you chase God. And when you chase God, he'll give you things. And when he gives you things, they're not going to destroy you because they're just the blessings of God and you can enjoy them. Let's take a look at Romans 12, one. So we talked about committing to God. We talked about following the Holy Spirit. We talked about renewing our soul. So in Romans 12, one, we're going to see that proof of a whole Christian is when that inward commitment increasingly becomes physical obedience. Here we talk about obeying God. Romans 12, 1, "I beseech you there for a brethren by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service." I beseech you, Paul writes. I urge, I encourage, I appeal to you, service. I beseech you, Paul writes. I urge, I encourage, I appeal to you, right? That by the mercies of God that you present, that you offer yourself for God's righteous use. What has this episode been? I urge you, scripture urges you, your spirit urges you to offer yourself for God's righteous use. A living sacrifice and offering to God that's holy, that's set apart from sin, set apart from that old nature, set apart from being strong-minded, strong-willed, strong-emotioned, or chasing after physical appetites, and devoted to God, which is your reasonable service. It's only fitting. It's only proper in response to the mercy, the grace, and the love that God has shown for you and for me. Is your surrender to God something you just feel or is it something that you actually practice? Because it's important for you to not just feel it, but to go ahead and do it. A living sacrifice, they show their service, their reasonable service, they show their worship to God through daily physical obedience. Their person who is not just a hearer of the word, but they are a doer of the word. So what should I do now? Okay, a whole Christian serves God fully. All parts are involved. We saw it with the pizza. I know that I need to now commit my whole self, right? Spirit, soul, and body to God. I know I need to follow the Holy Spirit. Instead of whatever my strongest thought or feeling or desire or physical appetite is at the time, I know I need to renew my soul with God's truth, because it's going to become a lot easier to submit and to follow God's Spirit as I renew my mind, as my will becomes conformed, as my emotions start to fall in line with God's will. As I start to renew my soul, I start to find myself easier to discern and to understand what is God and what is just my own soul. And then I need to obey God, which means through my daily choices and my physical actions, I will do what I know is God's will. But what can I do this week to actually try this out? Try this out for the next seven days. Our seven-day challenge. Day one, commit your whole self to God. Maybe pray something like, "Dear Father, I present my spirit, my soul, and my body to you. I want to be a whole Christian, and so I will dedicate all of it to you. All things are involved. The whole Christian, I commit it to you, Father. Ask God to show you maybe one thought or feeling or desire, an appetite that often tries to take control of you, depending on your personality, your natural tendencies, it could be something very different from someone else. We saw that list with four columns. We saw the four paths and you could find yourself in all those columns or really focused in on one of those columns. So refer to the four paths of fleshly control in our previous slide to give you maybe some better understanding, something you can pray about and meditate and try to get the mind of God regarding. In days two through seven, try to follow the Holy Spirit specifically in that item. When that pattern appears, pause, pray, and submit yourself to God. Obey God in it. Take those scriptures that you've been reading and admit yourself to it. In days three through seven, renew your soul. In this case, take that item, find it in Scripture and start to repeat Scripture back to yourself. It could be something about your will and your stubbornness, maybe. It could be something about your minds and about you submitting your mind to God and realizing you don't know everything and that God knows a whole lot more than you ever could and that you will submit yourself. And you don't have to fully understand everything to obey God in it, right? So you read Scripture, you remind yourself scripture regarding that issue and you believe that scripture. It starts to renew the soul. It starts to have a very good effect on you. It starts to have a very effective change to you because as you start to repeat these things, you start to get with it. You start to say, "Wait a second. I want to be a person who obeys God. I want to be committed to God's spirit, soul and body." So God bless you. God bless you as you commit your whole self to God and you are led by God's Holy Spirit throughout all parts of your life. And so next episode, we're going to move from season five where we talked about the whole Christian to season six, the blood and sacrifice of Jesus Christ. So before you can fully live for Jesus, maybe you're going to want to understand what he accomplished for you through his blood. So subscribe to follow the rest of Season 5 and to get notifications for Season 6 and keep watching for more simple, biblical and essential truth.