Things my flesh is not interested in

Praying through
My flesh has no interest in staying up past the point of drowsiness to pray. In fact, not just my flesh but my spirit has no desire to stay up into the wee hours of the night to beg and plead. I wouldn't last 30 minutes. I would however, lose all track of time and happily spend the night actually accomplishing something. But spending the whole night repeating the same request....no thanks. I'll do without and find some way to improvise.

Walking in Love
My flesh is also not interested in learning about love. As far my flesh can tell, love is all about solving other people's problems. That sounds like time and resources that should be spent solving my own problems.

However, if we are to achieve the extraordinary and qualify ourselves for more than just an ordinary life, we must do both of these things. We must be ready and willing to drop everything and obey the leading of the Holy Spirit. Because it is in the denying of our flesh that we honor God. And it is the honoring of God that clears the way for Him to enter into our situations. If there is no denying of the flesh, there is no honoring God. God must be lifted above our flesh. We must prove our allegiance to God is greater than our allegiance to our flesh by making this choice. Praying through and walking in love are two exercises that greatly inconvenience the flesh.

This is where mind renewal comes in. The reason I have spent so many years floundering around ineffectively in my walk with Christ is because I had the wrong understanding about walking in love and prayer. Thank you Lord for giving me fresh insight and revelation on this.

It is currently 5 am (actually 6 am but this is "fall back Sunday.") Less than 20 minutes ago I was sleeping happily. My flesh was content and comfortable. Then something woke me up. It wasn't a loud noise or pain. It was just a gentle exit from sleep into consciousness. It wasn't unpleasant but I do have things I need to do later this morning and it would be best if I was fully rested. So I laid there and tried to go back to sleep. While I was laying there, new revelation came to me about serving the Lord. In a nutshell, the Lord spoke to me about the foolishness of doing everything but the one thing He asks us to do, which is love one another. And how the entirety of His grace and blessings will be showered on the one who walks in love. I thought to myself, "Wow, that's great Lord, thank you for showing me that." and I tried to roll back over and get back to sleep. That's when the Lord spoke to me again and said, "Those who honor me, I will honor and those who despise me will be lightly esteemed." I took that to mean I was supposed to do more than ponder this new revelation. I was supposed to perform some act of honor to the Lord. I was supposed to do something against my flesh's will and seize this very important moment to demonstrate my faith in the Lord. The Lord made it very clear to me that it was very important that I ignore my body's complaints and drag myself out of bed at such an early hour to make sure I properly handled this new insight. This new revelation about walking in love is a vital change in my understanding and will have great impact on me for the rest of my life so it is only fitting that I get up out of bed and act like it's important enough to write down. Here's the added revelation, not only did the Lord give me fresh light on walking in love but He also gave me fresh understanding of the value of obedience. His sharing with me about love was grace. My getting out of bed to write it down was me honoring Him. I feel like I've just passed a test.

I am certain this was a test. I was given the opportunity to honor the Lord this morning and I am so happy to be able to say that I did it! I showed the Lord and every other creature that was watching that I valued the Lord's things enough to make sure they were handled properly. More importantly, I showed my flesh whose boss. I showed my flesh that when it comes to the things of God, we will be crawling out of bed to handle them properly. This is such a big moment for me. Now I'm so excited, I don't think I could get back to sleep if I tried.

This is huge. A lifetime of laziness and carelessness is being erased right now. I can't count the number of times in the past the Lord has shared something with me and I didn't take the time to demonstrate the proper respect for it because it interrupted my sleep or a TV show. Right this very moment, I feel that I have pleased the Lord! This is such an awesome revelation.