My kids love the zoo. Before they started school, their grandma would get a membership every year and take them weekly, sometimes more, while she babysat them when my wife and I were at work. Because of this, they have a sort of routine down for zoo day. They always ride the little train, go down the otter slide, go on the carousel, and they know every fun little stop and where every animal is. I remember a few years ago when my son, Asher, was three years old and he got sick while we were at the zoo. He started getting a temperature and he just wasn’t acting himself. He wouldn’t look much at the animal exhibits. When we would get to something like the otter slide, he would hop out of his stroller and go play, but there wasn’t the same zeal and fun and laughter that normally accompanies it. He wanted to have fun and do all the things he loved. His spirit was willing. But he was sick. His flesh was weak.
Doesn’t this picture hit home for many of us? We set goals that we want to accomplish. We have habits that we want to break. We have a past that we want to stay in the past and a hope that we can push through it into our future. I want to be a better father, a better husband, a more devout Christian, a better neighbor, a more generous giver, a less cynical person. The spirit is willing.
But when it comes down to it, it’s hard to carve out the extra time for working out, for reading that book, for writing that book. It’s easier to buy the cigarettes, to stop at the bar on the way home, to erase the history after the google search is done. We may hate our past, but it’s like a well-worn, albeit tattered, pair of shoes — you know you should get something new, but these are so familiar and so comfortable. Forging a new path takes a lot of work, and being comfortable is… well… comfortable. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.
So the question is this: If the flesh is weak, how do I strengthen it? I’m willing on the inside, but it’s just so hard to get going! How do I overcome the desires of comfort and familiarity? How do I get the zeal to push forward into what I know is right and leave behind the things I know are wrong? How do I steel my resolve? How do I strengthen my flesh?
We don’t. We can’t. The answer isn’t strengthening our flesh, the answer is killing it. Galatians 5:24 says that those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. The reason our flesh is weak is because it’s ours. The reason it’s so hard to do what we know is right is because what’s right is generally not self-serving, and we love to serve ourselves. The spirit is willing because it’s easy to recognize goodness for what it is. The flesh is weak because goodness is sacrificial.
When we kill our flesh, when we crucify its passions and desires, when we nail our greed and self-serving and sinful nature to the cross, it is a giving-over of our desires to God. When we hear this, our minds automatically think that means dashing our hopes and dreams and throwing out everything we’ve worked for in our lives. For some people, depending on what it is they have been working for, I guess that could be true. But more often than not, it really means a redemption of all the struggle and work.
God has a way of taking what’s dead and bringing it back to life in a more glorious way than it had ever been alive before. Jesus was a man, but he came back to life as much more than a man. When we crucify our flesh, our desires die in greed and self-seeking aspiration, but they come back to life in God as much more. The truth is that God created us with our strengths and weaknesses, and God created us with our gifts and talents. If you’ve been using your gifts and talents to get where you are, it isn’t God’s desire that you never use those gifts and talents again. But it is His desire that you use them for more than yourself.
As we start out a new year, it’s a time that many of us are making new goals and gearing up for what we hope is a bright future. It’s also a time that many of us are remorseful about missed opportunities or balls dropped in the past. And many are mourning brokenness and trying their hardest to not remain a victim of situations they had no control of and had no way to avoid over the last year. No matter where we are, we all have the option to stay there or to move forward. We have the option to be all about ourselves or all about the people around us. We can opt to further entrench ourselves into the unfulfilling lull of the desires we have grown to know and hate, or we can let them die and press forward into the things our souls cry out for.
The spirit is willing. Is the sacrifice worth it?
The Endeavor 