Follow The Leader

I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.

Galatians 5:16

Every child grows up learning to play the game “Follow the Leader.” Unknown to children, following a leader is really an instinctive tendency on the part of humans. As much as we might not like to admit it, we are all followers of something or someone.

As his logical, deductive mind did so often, the apostle Paul boils down the “following” tendency into two major categories: we can follow the flesh (energized by Satan, the enemy of God) or we can follow the Spirit of God. To follow one means we are not following the other (Luke 16:13). And we are never in the “neutral” zone where we are not following one or the other. From the point in life at which we develop the conscious ability to make moral and spiritual choices, we are in a following mode. The “flesh,” in Paul’s terminology, is our natural (fallen) human instinct, oriented to self-gratification and self-serving behavior. That’s what we follow if we are not following the leading of the Holy Spirit. The only way not to follow the desires of the flesh is to follow the desires of the Spirit.

Live in the choosing mode today, and choose wisely: follow the Spirit of God.

The wisdom of the flesh is always exclaiming against the mysteries of God.

JOHN CALVIN^a