When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God. Galatians 5:19-21 NLT
The long-running famous game show LET’S MAKE A DEAL gave name to an issue we all have faced many times over. Monty Hall was the game show host, and he would ask contestants to choose between doors to reveal what prize they had won. A breath-taking prize (often a brand-new drool-worthy car) was behind one of the doors, but the other two could hide anything, maybe something quite good, like a new bedroom set, but it could be incredibly disappointing, like a goat. Being faced with the need to make an important choice with absolutely no information or clue to what the choice might reveal is nerve-wracking. What if you lose the true prize and end up with the goat? That situation came to be known as “the Monty Hall Problem.”
That’s not an issue for us in the choice between following the voice of the flesh and the voice of the Spirit. God has laid out clearly for us what’s behind the door, what happens with that choice. Paul tells it straight in Galatians 5:19-21. But The Message version is even more descriptive in words we can’t underestimate:
“It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.”
WOW. It’s impossible to misunderstand the foolishness of choosing the voice of the flesh, the voice of my own unsurrendered desires. We only get misled because the flesh promises quick satisfaction, immediate gratification. We don’t consider that it leaves us empty. The Spirit does require surrender, but it is surrender that leads us to the fulfillment of our true desires. We will never be the exception to the rule. There is no exception. Anyone who lives a life fulfilling their unsurrendered desires will not experience the joy of participating in the Kingdom that is the inheritance of those who choose the Spirit way.
- Jesus, you have been Truth to me about the choices I need to make. Help me cultivate the courage to consistently choose to lay down the flesh that pulls me away from the Spirit.