Tug Of War

 Last night I coached in a lineman challenge. One of the events included two athletes squaring off over a car tire. Both put their hands on the rim and at the whistle each tried to pull his opponent toward a line while gripping the tire. Our guys were outweighed 50 to 100 pounds across the board. We did not win a single match. Seven individual matches and seven straight losses. Our guys tried hard, but they were powerless to resist the bigger and stronger guys on the other side.

Every day of our lives we live in a tug of war in the soul. The Spirit tugs against the flesh. The flesh, or carnal nature, tugs back against the Spirit. The stronger one wins. When the Spirit wins, we honor God. When we flesh wins, we sin against God. 

Our question is how we ensure more victories in the Spirit and less defeats in the flesh. 

Do we more often yield to the desires of the Holy Spirit or surrender to the unbridled desires of the flesh? If we do not walk with God, stay in His word, pray, meditate on scripture truth and resist the urges of the flesh we will fail. I have and so have you. We get busy. We neglect devotions. We become spiritually weak. We are powerless to resist temptation. 

I saw this personified last night. One of our competitions was to do as many bench press repetitions as possible. Each of the seven team members took a turn. The last time we competed in that event we only lost by ten repetitions a few weeks ago. One of our best athletes has missed the past few weeks of summer workouts. Last night he did half the repetitions he did a few weeks ago. He was obviously weaker because he had not worked out. The muscles atrophied. It was shocking to see how much strength he lost in those few weeks since we last competed. 

In the spiritual realm if you are not doing the heavy lifting of consistent devotions you will fail. You will be weaker. Less able to stand firm against the wicked schemes of the devil. You will be all too willing to give into fleshly impulses.

Which is winning the tug of war in your soul today? Which one is being strengthened by repeated surrender? How are your spiritual workouts going these days? Are you winning more spiritual battles than you are losing? Which one tugging in your soul is having the greater influence over you?  You know what to do.