Letting the Spirit Control Your Mind Leads To Life and Peace

Letting the Spirit Control Your Mind Leads To Life and Peace

So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace.
- Romans 8:6 (NLT)

Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn’t pleased at being ignored. - Romans 8:5-8 MSG

Here is the contextual background. In Romans chapter 7 Paul writes of the inner human conflict between good and evil - between the old carnal nature and the new spirit-nature which seems doomed with no hope, to self-destruct and keep the believer trapped.

This is what he says: "I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate." - Rom 7:15

The entire chapter 7 of Romans describes this century's old, agonising human struggle. Is there any hope?

Then Paul shares the very good news as he ends chapter 7 and begins chapter 8 saying, "Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord..." - Rom 7:25

He continues and explains...

"So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you..." - Rom 8:1,2

Let's thank God for dealing with this treacherous problem and learning to walk in the Spirit to be at peace.