Path to Peace 2 - Living the Divine Will

This is a continuation from Path to Peace 1 - Learning the Divine Will 

The essential "me," the spirit me - you cannot destroy it; you cannot kill it. I will live on forever. God has designed a body to carry the essential “me” around. But we must live in the understanding that we have a flesh-nature while we live in this mortal coil.

The sin principle, working through the flesh-nature, wants to stay alive and keep on kicking. My irrepressible flesh-nature still wants to do things “my way.” I do what I do because I like to do it (for pleasure) or I feel that I must (for fear - to avoid the penalty).

The flesh nature is armed, empowered, and in agreement with the sin principle; it has a processing system which has been armed by The (World) System. Good news: we can undo the thing before all is done.

Love the sinner (me), hate the sin (the affect of my actions). And let me state for those who say that once I am saved I am no longer a sinner: why then do I still sin? Let he who does not ask for forgiveness in his prayers to the Father cast the first Rock. I did not say that I love to sin, but there is something within me that certainly is continuing this horrific process. 

Put another way, Burger King is still open for business but we have to decide whether it will receive our business. If we decide to allow it, then the carnal-mind - the flesh-nature, enabled by the laxity of correct spiritual response - will drive traffic and produce evil. We must re-direct that traffic by a process called the renewal of the mind.

 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God. For if you live according to [the dictates of] the flesh, you will surely die. But if through the power of the [Holy] Spirit you are [habitually] putting to death (making extinct, deadening) the [evil] deeds prompted by the body, you shall [really and genuinely] live forever. (Rom 8:13 AMP)

You must mortify not the flesh (our sin producing machinery), but mortify the deeds (actions). The flesh is a foregone conclusion: it shall return to the dust, and like a spoiled child who knows it will not get its way, it strives by the principle, "If I must suffer and perish then so should everyone and everything around me." If there is any doubt that this occurring, simply blink twice and look at the state of most affairs within and around us. Even the sham and mockery of what is called love is unraveling as people inexorably take an "I'm getting mine, to hell with you" attitude (note: Christians should flee this mindset).

We mortify the deeds of the flesh when we agree with God that He's right, when we stand still within the presence and grace of God and look at it and say, "that is wrong, and I surrender it, and especially my desire to do it, to you, My Lord, Healer, and Saving Grace." And when it takes us off of our course again, away from the direction of seeking shalom - peace with God - we turn our faces to Him and looking at Him we say, "that is wrong, and I surrender it, and my desire to do it, to you, My Lord, Healer and Saving Grace." And little by little our love for Him will break our hearts... and the attachment of the sin to our heart, and it will lose its power over us, overwhelmed by the gentle, burning love of a kind and beautiful creator God.

Self-peace comes when I do what I love and zealously avoid what I do not (“to thine own self be true”). Truth-peace comes when I am content with what God calls truth and I do that that which He loves and avoids and abhors what He does not. The Prince of Peace is the ruler of my heart, and I then know shalom, Soul-peace.

Continued in Path to Peace 3 - Less Me, the Divine Will 

Originally Posted Oct 25, 2018, revised July 19, 2021