When our loudest desires tend to scream in our ears, how do we react? What shall we do when our inner most carnal desires threaten to take over our sanity and plunge us into wilful sin which is in direct disobedience to God? We respond in 3 ways:
1. Surrender (to our fleshly desires) – We give in immediately to the passions of our desires. We succumb immediately to our desire because we feel that we have no control over them, we give in because we think that we are too weak to reign them in.
2. Bargain/Negotiation – We try to rationalize that our sins are okay, that it is less evil or less hateful than how God views it, we say that it is just a one-time event and deceiving ourselves that it is in fact a downward spiral of decadence of self-blaming and self-guilt.
3. Surrender (desires to God) – We should rightly surrender our fleshly desires to God without the fear of condemnation by God or feeling guilty, all desires which are not in obedience with God, we surrender. Practically we can take steps to do so:
2 Corinthians 10:4-5 says “For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ”. We have been enabled by Christ through His death on the cross and subsequent resurrection to be free from the chains of our sinful desires. We thus have the power to not only resist temptation, but to overcome and reign over them, provided we surrender it to God and ask earnestly for help in dealing with our sins, especially the sins which only we and God are aware of.
The battle thus shifts to the mind, by taking every thought captive to obey Christ, we are declaring that: Wait, I should not react in this manner to this thought, it is not Christlike nor is it loving (be it to myself or others). God gives us what we need in order to triumph over sin and not what we deserve from sinning (condemnation and judgement) through Christ. So you must be filled with the Spirit and surrender all control of your life to God and resolve any conflicts (personal or spiritual) through genuine repentance and faith in God, trusting God’s Spirit to direct and empower your life.