Chapter 4, The Enemy Within (Pt 2)

This is the fourth time I've read this book, and there has been no more helpful teaching to fight sin than this section. I pray it will open your eyes to one of sin's strategies as it did mine.

"The flesh has chosen quite an enemy: it is "enmity with God." Sometimes we think of the flesh as our enemy; but it only hates us because God is in us: "The flesh wars against the Spirit in us" (Galatians 5:17). Which is easier: to sit with a bucket of butter-soaked popcorn and watch Tom Cruise on the big screen for two hours, or kneel and pray for five minutes? Tom Cruise wins hands down, because there is literally no competition. What the flesh hates is God, so it resists anything that smacks of God--especially communion with him. The flesh can curl up by your side and watch mindless movies all night long. But let even the barest thought of meditations flutter into your mind, and the flesh goes to Red Alert. Before you get past "Our Father," your eyes, which were glued to the screen, now sag in sleepiness [like mine are suddenly doing as I write this], and your attention, which was so fixed on the plot, now zips around the universe faster than the Starship Enterprise. The flesh's hatred of god explains a lot" (46).

Today, instead of reading my Bible before going to work, I went online to check my email and my blogs, and before I knew it, it was time to go. I tried to make up for it by listening to 1 and 2 Timothy on my iPod, but that's just not the same. I need to be more cognizant of my flesh's desire to keep me from communion with God, and I need to learn to hate it's desire so that I can fight it ruthlessly.