“For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” Paul of Tarsus- a man who didn’t do what he wanted to do.
Until I saw the HBO special, Band of Brothers, I didn’t know anything about the 101st airborne. “Normandy” and “D-day” were vague ideas in my mind from a history class that was longer ago than my memory would easily stretch. The paratroopers that jumped behind Hitler’s front lines were novel to me. Omaha beach made sense to me (though I couldn’t tell you where it was), but jumping into an area in which one would be completely surrounded by an enemy who is bent on destroying you was unfamiliar and intriguing.
I couldn’t get enough of the soldier’s stories and I needed the soldier’s stories to further take me into the stores of the people who lived near Normandy’s quiet, disregarded towns. Towns with unvarnished signs that didn’t have the charm or notoriety of the signs around Paris or Marseilles. There were people who had lived in those areas for generations with little desire to be anywhere else, even if they could.
As I watched (and later read) about the trooper’s battles to liberate the people in Northern France from their Nazi occupiers, I started to pray attention to what it must have been like for the people who lived in those small towns. They were overrun by a “superior” force they couldn’t overcome. Some tried to fight, I am sure, but lost. Some watched as the Nazis took their land and confiscated their goods with a sense of resigned hopelessness. Some saw the inevitability of the power of the new regime and tried to grasp some of that power for themselves. One way or another, everyone was under a new set of masters and those new masters spent their time making sure their subjects knew that fighting back was futile.
After the Nazi’s took control of the area, they brought with them a semblance of what the German regime might call “peace.” It was a diseased peace, but a type of peace nonetheless.
That diseased peace was shaken the night the Allied forces dropped into the occupied territory. The silence of the many nights before was replaced with the deafening sounds of anti-air flack and shots fired from bunkers hidden from view by the darkness.
The allied soldiers triggered an inevitable war as they entered enemy territory and the “peace” that reigned was shattered.
. . .
I don’t know what I expected life in Jesus to be. Words like “love” and “peace” are (rightly) talked about a lot so maybe I assumed that everything would be lovey-dovey and characterized by I’ll-never-be-anxious-about-anything-again peace.
I am not sure if anyone ever told me that the moment that the Spirit of Jesus entered my life that so much of what I wanted before would be pushed back on, opposed. How do I put this without sounding strange? The best words that I can find is that a new war started within me. A war I didn’t expect. A war I didn’t mean to sign up for, but a war that I needed more than I ever knew.
A war that is fought against the corrupt desires that I long to hold on to. A war that is fought by One whose heart’s desire is that my heart’s desires would be whole again. A war fought by the Spirit of Jesus to draw me out of my diseased desired and diseased peace and into the fullness of life he offers. The same fullness of life he lives and is fighting me to give me.
I am not sure if anyone ever really told me that life in Jesus, following Jesus, is war. Not a war that I could or would fight on my own, but still a raging war where the desires that come from my corrupt nature are being acted upon by the Lover of my soul. Where there was once only diseased peace, now there is opposition…where I don’t do what I want to do, but the Spirit is working in me so that (one fine day) I will be able to do everything I want to do all of the time.
Only the regime of selfish pride and destructive desires will be vanquished from my heart and all that will be left is the freedom of the desires of Jesus. Desires that will be more life giving than I could have ever imagined any of my former selfish desires ever could be.
Today, though, it is a war. Today I still want to be known by people around me as “someone special” though real life is being free from that compulsion. Today, I can be more interested in trying to creatively control all aspects of my life rather than entrusting myself to a Father who knows what I and those I love need better than I could ever envision. It is, no doubt, a war within me.
But, the good news is that it is not a fair fight. The Spirit of Jesus is not threatened by my desires from my sinful nature. The Spirit isn’t outmatched or even evenly matched. This is a war where the outcome is already determined. The moment that the Spirit of Jesus dropped behind enemy lines in my heart was the day the war began to be over. In one sense, It was over when it started. Even when I sleep, even when I do not have the heart to help him with the fight, he is taking over territory that is occupied with my own diseased desires and diseased peace.
It is not a fair fight. And one day there will be no more diseased peace in our souls. The war will be over and those of us who are connected to Jesus will know nothing but freedom to express ever desire we ever have because every desire will be a delight to Jesus…and to us.
Philippians 2:13 “…for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” (ESV)