This morning as I was spending time in the Word and in prayer, I was reading the first part of Mark chapter ten. Basically, the passage is about marriage and divorce. The Pharisees came to Jesus as they did on so many occasions in an attempt to trap Him with a question. In this passage, the question was posed, "Should a man be allowed to divorce his wife?" Just as He did at other times when the Pharisees questioned Him, Jesus responded with Scripture.
In our lives, we would be wise to respond as Jesus did in every situation. We need to ask ourselves, "What does God's Word say?" Then we need to follow God's Word and not our own will. The Psalmist said, "Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee." For some Christians, they do not know God's Word. They have not invested the time in studying and meditating on God's Word, and therefore, they are unaware of what it says. But for many more, they may know God's Word inside and out, but there is no application in their lives. Many times we know what the Word of God states, but we try to ignore it or make excuses for not adhering to it in a particular situation in our lives. For example, in this passage, our flesh does not want to be married anymore. We are tired of trying to work it out, so we make excuses to get around God's command. And we do this with numerous other situations in our lives as well. When someone hurts us, we don't want to be patient, kind, or long suffering. Instead we want revenge. We want to seek our own profit and not the profit of others. We know what God's Word states, but we want to yield to the desires of the flesh, instead of submitting to the Holy Spirit.
Living after the Spirit is really simple. Our minds tells us that it is hard. In our flesh we desire to do whatever makes us happy at the moment. But most of the time, if we are listening, we know what the Spirit is saying, it is just a matter of our will submitting to the will of the Father. We have been given the power to do His will through Jesus Christ and the work of the cross. If the Holy Spirit is living in us, we have everything we need to do God's will, it just comes down to the choices we make. We have everything we need at our disposal, and all we need is to decide - are we going to follow after the flesh or are we going to submit to the Holy Spirit living in us? It is pretty much that simple.
Heavenly Father, my prayer is that I would respond as Christ did in every situation in my life - "What do the Scriptures teach?" I pray that I would submit to Your will in every area of my life. I pray that through the power of the Holy Spirit living in me, I would walk Your path and not my own, that the choices and responses I make, both great and small, as I go throughout my day would bring honor to my King.
