God sees you when no one else does. He sees the battles you face, the struggles you embrace, and every choice you make. This could sound daunting if you don’t know the Divine Nature of God. There is nothing but love in the heart of God for you. He is your perfect Father, your protector, councilor, provider, and friend. Yes, God calls you His friend if you belong to His son, Jesus Christ. Belonging to Jesus means you are One in the Spirit with Him (1 Cor. 6:17). God loves you with the same love that He loves Jesus (and just as much) because He is your Father if you accept the sacrifice of Christ as your own.
There will always be a temptation to walk in the flesh and not in the Spirit. We won’t be rid of this flesh until we leave our earthly bodies. Our progress is realized when we choose Spirit over flesh in our thoughts and deeds. In every instance, we are given a choice. Life is all about choices. We become the deciding factor in our lives by our choices. God said He has set before us life (spirit) and death (flesh), so choose life (spirit) so that we will live (Deut. 30:19—italics added). If we live according to the flesh we will die but if by the Spirit we put to death the deeds of the body, we will live (Rom. 8:13).
Being tempted by the flesh to think or do evil is not a sin. It’s when we give in to the temptation that becomes sin for us. All sin starts in the mind of our flesh (fallen human nature/default mode). Right thinking = right doing. We are transformed by the renewing of our minds…to the Word of God. We have been given the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16). The Holy Spirit lives in us to guide us in the way we should think and do. It can be easy to miss God and walk according to the flesh if our minds haven’t been renewed to know how He wants us to think and act (just like Him). God doesn’t condemn us when we miss it (sin means missing the mark), but He corrects and disciplines us out of His great love for us, as the perfect Father that He is. The key is to seek His presence—His face in all that we think and do. We do well when we are quick to repent (repent means to change your mind) when we realize we’ve missed it.
The flesh will always serve the law of sin, but the mind serves the law of God through Jesus Christ (Rom.7:25). We must not get hung up or introspective of how we think we are doing in our walk with the Lord. The Bible simply lays it out for us to live a guilt-free existence in Christ:—love the Lord with all of your heart, all of your soul, and all of your mind. Love others as you would love yourself. Seek His face (stay hungry), renew your mind to His Word, stay obedient, repent when you miss the mark ( or even if you’re not sure).
We are to become as little children to enter into the Kingdom of God. Many of us have forgotten what it’s like to be a little child. Maybe we should work on that as a priority and leave the details of our lives to God. A little child doesn’t follow his daddy around the house asking him; “Daddy will you love me, Daddy will you provide for me, Daddy will you raise me”? How that must grieve the Father! Christians have been given the most glorious, hope-filled, and joyous existence—in spite of anything we could possibly face here in this life.
Commune In The Garden 