How To Kill Your Flesh

I was watching an episode of House recently. You know, the show with the jerk genius diagnostic Doctor who treats people really bad but does his job really good? Anyway, the patient in this episode had an awful infection that was eating the flesh of his hand. They decided to amputate his hand before the infection could spread. The thought was that if they cut off the hand, the disease would be gone since it wouldn't have anymore flesh to feed on.

Reflecting on that, I was thinking about the Bible telling us to crucify or kill our flesh. There is a never ending battle that takes place in us between our flesh and the Spirit of God in us. A war, if you will. Our flesh wants to do things that only satisfy our human desires and the Spirit of God wants us to do things that please God and make us more like Christ.

I look at this way. We each have a certain amount of "living space" in us. Like a house. So let's say we are a 1000 square foot house. In this house there is a struggle over who is going to live there. Flesh or Spirit. Before we become a Christ follower, that whole living space is occupied by our flesh. Everything we do is motivated by what makes "us" feel good. When we decide to start living for God, the Spirit of God moves in and wants to take over that living space. Now our motivation is supposed to be to do what pleases God. Easier said than done, I know.
But here is what I have discovered.

Our sinful flesh and the Spirit of God cannot live together. And so the battle for that living space rages on.

What do we do?

There is a simple concept we can apply here.

What we feed grows, what we starve dies.
If we "feed" our flesh, it along with its appetite will grow.
If we starve it, it will die.

If we "feed" our spirit, it will grow.
If we starve it, it will die.

We feed our flesh by giving in to things that are only for our personal satisfaction. In other words, we choose to sin.

We starve our flesh by resisting and avoiding temptation and sin.

We feed our spirit by reading the Bible, praying to God, going to church, hanging out with other Christ followers, listening to teachers of the Bible, and by making choices that are pleasing to God, our heavenly Father.

We starve our spirit when we don't do these things.

The patient in that episode of House had his hand cut off so that the disease wouldn't have anymore to eat. It was starved to death. We need to do the same in our lives and remove the things our flesh feeds on so that it will die.

Ask yourself this, "What am I hungry for? Things that feed my flesh or things that feed my spirit?"

If the answer is the flesh, it's time to make a decision to starve it to death so that you can grow spiritually in God to become more like Christ.