The Spirit of Sin

Galatians 5:16-26

      How many of us recognise that sin is a spirit that can minister to us? And if allowed to, it could minister death to our souls. Lying is a spirit, stealing is a spirit, fornication is a spirit, adultery is a spirit, homosexuality is a spirit, in essence, anything that is not not like God is the "Dead Fruit of Sin". When we go back to the beginning to when the first sin occured, we will see that Eve was ministered to by the serpent. When her mind became open to the possibility of obeying or disobeying God, she chose to disobey Him and then ministered the same idea of disobedience to Adam, and he sinned too. Thus sin and disobedience are the same.

       We all have a choice to either obey or disobey. Sin or not to sin. Think back over your life, everything bad that you did, did you think about it first? A lot of the things that I have done in my past, I can guarantee that the thought was on my mind well before the action was carried out. I plotted then executed. More times than not, we all have done this. I'm here to tell you that this is the spirit of sin. It's always there trying to minister disobedience to our minds and hearts.

    Galatians 5:19-21 gives us a list of fleshly deeds that will keeps us from going to Heaven. All of these things come from the spirit of sin. The Word tells us to bring all our thoughts under subjection to the obedience of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5). This means that any negative thinking needs to be cast out and replaced with thoughts that glorify the Lord. The latter part of Galatians 5 gives us the Fruit of the Spirit of God, which ministers life to us. 

    When preparing for battle, the officers in command will draw up a strategy that they believe will help defeat their enemy. They'll send out scouts to find weak spots and other information, they will look at maps of the area to determine the best point of attack. They'll get advice from their most trusted leaders, and they realise that they are only as strong as their weakest soldier. So they train them for combat, instilling discipline, courage and love for the brotherhood, and teaching them that there is strength in unity.
    We have to be the same in Spiritual Warfare. The enemy is drawing up battle plans according to the maps of our minds. He studies our weaknesses and our past failures because he knows that the way to winning this war is to subdue our minds. He'll feed thoughts of discouragment, self-hate, depression, and all manner of things to create strongholds on our minds, then sin steps in and ministers to our spirits to act on those thoughts. So, we must become proactive in this fight, not reactive. We must use prayer to communicate with God, building up a store room of protection, so that when the enemy attacks, we'll be strengthened for the battle that's being proactive. If we wait until the enemy attacks before we reach out to God, then we set ourselves up to fail.
    The Bible is our map in more ways that one. It allows us to seenwhere the enemy plans to attack, then gives us the Living Word to push him back. We should use the Holy Spirit as our Spiritual Advisor to help call scripture to our remembrance when we are under attack. Our flesh, being the weakest member of the team, should be disciplined to withstand temptation. And we must unify ourselves within the Body of Christ. Once we are able to start recognizing the attack of the enemy, we will know what to seek God for in preparation for battle.      
     I truly believe that the thoughts we feed the most will be the thoughts that win. If we feed sinful thoughts, then sin will win. Sin ministers to our spirits to keep us out of the Will of God. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life (Romans 6:23). Feed the positive thoughts that will give you life. Submitting our lives to Jesus , means that we receive life eternally. When we receive the Holy Spirit, the Fruit of the Spirit has been planted in our hearts, but its up to us to give sunlight and water to those seeds. So my question today is, which spirit will you feed?

 Yours in Christ

©Erica Hill
gracebuiltthis@outlook.com
gracebuiltthiscreations.blogspot.com