The World, the Flesh, and the Devil

     The disciple--the dedicated follower of Christ--must get his values and base his behavior on the Word of God.  He or she must be a student of the Word--and of the whole counsel of God.  It is the Word that God uses to sanctify His people, to empower us to take every thought captive to obedience.  It is the light that guides us for each step that we take; the lamp for our feet on the path ahead.  As we saturate our life with the Word, the Spirit fills us and takes control of our lives.  Whenever our thinking becomes distracted and drawn away from reliance on the sword of the Spirit, we are in trouble.  The battle is fought in the mind.  We are either being transformed by the renewing of our mind through the Word, or we are being conformed to the culture in which we live.  Conformity is the evidence that we have taken our lives off the altar of sacrifice and are following something other than Christ.  Worshiping something other than Christ.
     What are the enemies of the Word-focused, Spirit-relying mindset?  There are three:  the world, the flesh, and the Devil.
     The world wants us to embrace the thinking of our culture.  It encourages us to make decisions based on what the culture believes is right, what our neighbors think, what our friends think.  It asks, "Do you really want those around you to criticize and reject you?  Do you really want to be standing alone in what you believe?  Do you really want to be called a fool, laughed at, left out of things?"  The world seeks to undermine our courage.  It tries to dilute our love and allow fear to creep in.  The approval of men becomes preeminent in our thinking and the approval of God--the reverence for the Lord that is the beginning of wisdom--is set aside.
     The flesh wants us to embrace self.  It encourages us to make decisions based on our own desires for our life.  It often changes good desires into idols.  We have to have them above embracing God's will for our lives. We become Christian pragmatists living as if "the end justifies the means."  It asks, "What do you want?  What would please you?  You know you have to have that in order to be somebody, to be fulfilled.  You have a right to such things.  Anyone who stands in your way is obviously wrong and being unfair--even if it's God.  The flesh wants us to believe that everything revolves around us.  We and what we want--what we deserve--is the only thing that matters.  It undermines our servant's heart.  It enslaves us to the unattainable--having the peace and joy of God without having God as the center of our lives.  We become appetite driven.  And when has an appetite ever been satisfied?
     The Devil is a great proponent of the mindset of the world and the flesh.  He's a master at encouraging such thinking.  He's so masterful that he even uses at times the idea of non-conformity to conform us to his thinking and the way of living he wants us to embrace.  His strategy, of course, has been the same since the beginning.  He always attacks God's Word.  He is always asking, "Is that what God really said?  Do you actually believe that that's what He meant?  Do you really think submitting to Him and obeying His Word is the best thing?  Is He really good?  Maybe God's afraid that you can control your life and make it a success without Him and His guidance and without obedience to His commands?  Really--those who are reviled for His sake will be blessed?  Really--being a servant to others brings joy and contentment?"  Don't get me wrong.  The Devil is into servanthood.  But he's the one who wants to be the Master.  He wants you to follow his texts--the mindset of the world and the flesh, not the mind of God.  And he is content to let you think that you are your own master--because he knows better.
     Are you being conformed or transformed?  There is no middle ground.  There is no "best of both worlds."  You are either daily relying on God's Word to guide your behavior and to establish your values or you are serving the wrong master.  As Jesus said, "the wise man obeys; the foolish man knows God's truth but does not obey. But it's the wise man's life that can withstand the inevitable storms."  As the psalmist says, "the wise man is like a tree planted by the rivers of water; the foolish man is like the chaff that the wind blows away."

  "Thy Word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee."
   "Father, sanctify them through Thy truth.  Thy Word is the truth."

     "With eyes wide open to the mercies of God, I beg you, my brothers, as an act of intelligent worship, to give your bodies as a living sacrifice, consecrated to Him and acceptable by Him.  Don't let the world around you squeeze you into its mold, but let God remold your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all His demands, and moves toward the goal of true maturity."