Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win. Everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. They then do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Therefore I run in such a way, as not without aim; I box in such a way, as not beating the air; but I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified. 1 Corinthians 9:24-27.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God (אלהים) says:
You will never have perfect joy that is constant unless you exercise self-control. Self-control is of the spirit and not of the flesh. The secret of self-control is eternal life. Knowledge of eternal life brings self-control. Do you understand why?
The flesh has a death sentence on it—dust you are and to dust you shall return. This happened because of sin, it corrupted the seed and sin is in your flesh. And the last enemy I put under the feet of Christ is physical death.
Eternal death, which is of the spirit of a man, has already been put under Christ’s feet. Your physical body is not fit for eternity, I will raise up your spirit and soul and clothe you with the majesty of an incorruptible glorified body but the physical body will be put off like a garment and raised to glorious immortality.
You are not a debtor to the flesh that you should obey its lusts. The flesh will leave you, but you will step out of it and continue on. Absent from the mortal body you are present with Me.
But the flesh knows it has a sentence of death on it, so it will want to grab everything it can now and consume it, enjoy it, and cast it aside as trash and try new emotional highs because it knows it soon will die. Your flesh is on a crash course to get all it can because it knows that it will end in death. And it fears not getting what it wants before its death sentence hits. The flesh fears death for that is its end.
This is the mentality of the world, the flesh, and the devil. “Eat, drink, and be merry because tomorrow you die.” But this is not true. You live forever, and depending on how much control you exercise by your spirit will determine where you spend that eternity. With Me or with the lord of the uncontrolled flesh. And it also will determine your rewards in eternal life, which are forever. Think about that.
I did not give you a spirit of sin and death, which leads to fear of death and thus a grasping to get as much out of life in any way you can, but I gave you a Spirit of love, joy, power, peace and self-control. But above all I gave you eternal life. A magnificent future and a glorious hope that will not disappoint if you run your race with faith into My perfect Will for your life.
But you will never get to My perfect will for your life without exercising self-control by your spirit through My Spirit in you. Self-control is power.
A lack of self-control is humiliation and defeat. It brings shame, guilt and a destroyed life. That is what it did to Samson and that is what it did to King Saul. It turned them from mighty leaders to sniveling masses of destroyed shells of what they once were. And there where the carcass lies the vultures (demons) will gather. That is all that flesh leaves.
But there is always resurrection power. Samson rose back up but Saul did not. Jealousy and selfish ambition to the destruction of others are terrible destroyers. Samson did not have this. His was a total indulgence of every desire of his flesh in other ways. But any lack of self-control in an area of your life will hinder your destiny in My perfect plan for you and your place in the plan I have for your family, city, nation, and in the world. Abraham by following Me blessed the entire world.
You may be thinking that self-control is difficult because you have to be keeping a watch on every area of your life, but I will tell you a basic truth about self-control that makes where you concentrate your attention very simple.
A person who can control (bridle, that is, keep it under a tight rein) his tongue (that is, the words you release from your mouth) can control his entire body. “If anyone does not stumble in the words he says, he is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body as well.” James 3:2. If you think you are religious and doing My Will without bridling your tongue, you deceive your own heart and your religion is worthless before Me. James 1:26.
It is your words and your thoughts you have to monitor, renew, and feed with the right food.
Once your spirit is born again in Christ Jesus, your spirit and your flesh are at war and the soul is in the middle. The mind set on the flesh is hostile toward Me; for it does not subject itself to the My law, which is My Word, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please Me. Romans 8:7-8.
Your soul consists of your mind, your will, and your emotions, and your soul receives communications from both your spirit and your flesh. And your spirit and your flesh are trying to win your soul, for this is where your thoughts are programmed and accepted or rejected. This will fuel and direct your entire life.
Both the spirit and the flesh are trying to get control of your mouth.
The spirit controls if you renew your mind and the soul is transformed.
The flesh controls if you do not renew your mind and your soul is not transformed.
The one you feed the most will become the stronger of the two.
You must feed your spirit with spirit food so you can grow thereby. My Words are Spirit and Life and they are Words of eternal life. My Word will feed your spirit which will than be stronger than your flesh and will control your thoughts and words and, consequently your entire body. James 3:2.
Avoid feeding on flesh food, it will make your god your belly and cause you to destroy your life. Why? Remember, the flesh is on a crash course to death and tries to gratify its every lust. For the flesh the things of the world are never enough, it keeps going after more.
You must identify the difference between spirit food and flesh food so that you are eating correctly day and night. Spirit food is My Word and the instruction it contains applied to your life. It is that simple.
But this means seeking it and eating it as diligently as you do your breakfast, lunch and dinner. You know when you are hungry and you get something to eat, but many people do not recognize spiritual hunger for what it is and try to satisfy it with flesh food, which will not work.
Flesh food is worldly, idle chatter. It is godless conversations, books, and shows. It is obscenity, pornography, suggestive talk, and impure jokes and stories. It is worldly philosophies and scientific theories that say there is no God.
It is also anger, bitterness, regret, anxiety, fear, and hate. These may not sound like things that gratify the flesh but they are all born of selfishness, pride, and fear of death, which are of the flesh and not of the spirit, so they are also food that feeds the flesh and gives it the control over your mind. These are poisonous and are bitter roots but they feed the flesh and find fertile ground to plant in.
By inspiration of My Spirit, My servant Paul told you of this, “I find then the law that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin and death which is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.” Romans 7:21-25.
So what is the answer to this war? The Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus trumps the law of sin and death by the gift of eternal life.
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, I did: sending My own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, I condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in those who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
And what does it mean to walk according to the Spirit? Those who walk according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, that is, only on temporal things that you can see and touch and not spiritual things that are known and manifested by faith.
Those who are walking according to the Spirit, are focusing on things that are unseen but are spiritual realities that can come to pass in the earth. things of the Spirit. For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace. Romans 8:1-6.
Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives. Hebrews 2:14-15.
You must feed on the eternal to overcome the flesh, for the knowledge of eternal life gives you self-control because it sees the reward awaiting you beyond the grave.
The flesh cannot see beyond the grave and hence only can live for now. The flesh is sluggish about fruitfulness, a glutton, a drunkard, a gossip, prone to worry, and does not take well to criticism, correction, or denial of its lusts. The flesh will pull a tantrum if you try to curtail it. It will cajole you into trying something “just this once.” But has no resolve to stop there. The fleeting joys of sin may seem fun to your flesh at first but they will make you miserable in the long run and destroy your bodies and your souls. If your flesh controls your soul it will bring you to ruin.
Permitting anger, immorality, hate, gossip, words of death, hinder your fellowship with the sufferings of Christ. Paul had once put importance in the flesh, the prestige of worldly approval, but finding the truth in Christ that set him free, he wrote that he counted them but rubbish so that he would gain Christ, and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of his own derived from the works of his flesh, which fell short, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from Me on the basis of faith. His goal was to know Jesus and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, which is death to sin; in order that he too would attain to the resurrection from the dead even now. From death to life. Philippians 3:8-11. From flesh to spirit. From fear to freedom. From no control over his mind, will and emotions to self-control in all its glorious beauty, the freedom that My children have in Me.
You must feed to have self-control, and you must feed on eternal life. I have the Words of eternal life. To whom else shall you go?
And how does Jesus, your great good Shepherd, lead you out of the dark valley of the shadow of death (which is the flesh and life focused only on the world, the flesh and the devil, it will die)? He sets a table of plenty before you in the sight of your foes, anoints your head (mind) with oil (the anointing lifts the burden and destroys the yoke of the slavery of sin and death), until your cup overflows (the rivers of living water of the Spirit filling your belly and the overflow going out to refresh a dying world with new growth, new life, eternal life).
Why do you think I told Peter to feed My sheep? You have to feed the spirits of others with spirit food. It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.
Jesus told you He only spoke My Words because He knew they had eternal life in them. “For I did not speak on My own initiative, but the Father Himself who sent Me has given Me a commandment as to what to say and what to speak. I know that His commandment is eternal life; therefore the things I speak, I speak just as the Father has told Me.” John 12:49-50.
I set before you life and death, blessings and curses, choose life that you and your descendants may live. My Words are not idle words but they are your very life, your eternal life, your abundant life now and forever.
Words make a difference. Death and life are in the power of your tongue, and YOU WILL EAT THE FRUIT THEREOF. And it will either be flesh food or spirit food. And between your flesh and your spirit, the one will win control of your soul that is fed the most. And that will determine the path of your life.
In My Spirit’s instruction through My servant Peter of how to advance in the stages of doing My Will from good to well-pleasing to perfect, it all has to do with going up from the flesh level to the spirit level through faith, by diligence to realize the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you will not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. In Jesus, by grace through faith, I have called you to My own glory and excellence and granted to you My precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of My divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.
Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of your Lord Jesus Christ.
Do you see? Self-control comes from knowledge of the magnificent promises that are yours in Christ. You do not want to throw these aside to placate the flesh that will not inherit these magnificent promises that are for you not just now, but forever. There is much to live a godly life for now. So feed your spirit and trump the flesh. And you will have joy in your soul if your spirit takes control of your mind, will, and emotions.
You do not have to do this on your own. I do it with you by My Spirit that dwells in you. He is the helper who will pull the helm of your life with you. And it is your tongue that steers your life. Let Him give you the utterance of Heaven. Tongues is a spirit language and not of the flesh. Get so full of My Word and of the Holy Spirit that there is no room in you for anything else. Like Jesus, the devil will find no place in you. When you are too full to be able to let anything else in self-control is not a problem. Full house and no vacancy.
By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established; and by knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches. Proverbs 24:3-4. Knowledge of eternal life brings self-control. And eternal life is this: to know Me, the One true God, and the One I sent, Jesus Christ. John 17:3. And you know us by the Holy Spirit who I sent to guide you to all truth.
I love you. There is great joy in self-control for you will have the glorious freedom of My children.