I just want to read one scripture from Romans chapter 5 and verse 10, and it says, For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much more having been reconciled, we will be saved by his life. Way back in the Garden of Eden, just after God made mankind, he gave a commandment to Adam, which then also applied to Eve, and that commandment was that if they took of the fruit that God had forbidden, it would bring them death. Now, even though it took a long time for the physical death to show after they took that fruit, many hundreds of years, there are some things that took place almost immediately.

Firstly, they were filled with guilt and fear and hid from God, and then the fruit that they'd eaten, the seed of that fruit remained in their bodies, so that from that point onwards, they carried within themselves a nature that tended to sin. Now, God banned them from the tree of life after that, because if they'd eaten of the tree of life, they would have lived forever. Probably one of the worst things that God could have allowed would be for them to live in a state of sinfulness forever.

So when God banned them from the tree of life, it wasn't just a punishment for their sin, it was actually a kind of a protection, because God then formulated a new plan to bring them back to that place where they could live free of sin. And he hinted at it when he pronounced the judgment on Adam and on Eve and on the serpent. And this is the judgment that God pronounced on the serpent.

We know, of course, represented Satan. In Genesis chapter 3 verse 15, he said, I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. It will crush your heads, but you will bruise his heel.

That was a prophetic word, speaking forward to when the descendants, the offspring of Eve, who was going to be the son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, was going to crush the head of the serpent on Calvary, Satan. Satan was going to strike back, and by comparison, it was simply a matter of bruising his heel. Though, of course, we know that took the life of the Son of God.

It's our first sign in Scripture, right back there in Genesis chapter 3, of God's work on Calvary, that God had already planned. Now, tonight, I want to speak of overcoming what the Bible calls the flesh. What exactly is the flesh? Put simply, the flesh is a sinful tendency that we are all born with that drives us towards sin.

The apostle Paul described it like this, after struggling to overcome the flesh, trying so hard to serve God, especially to obey the laws of God. And in Romans chapter 7, verse 18, he said, for I know that inside me, that is in my flesh, there is living something that is no good. For I really want to do what is good, but working out how to do what is good is something I cannot seem to discover.

When did it all start? It started when Adam and Eve took of the forbidden fruit. You see, the root of sinfulness had entered into their bodies, was then transmitted downwards from every child that was born from Adam and Eve, and so on down, the whole of the human race. The seed of sin somehow is contained in the genes of the body, so that when the body reproduces, that seed continues to reproduce.

And so, every one of us in this world is born having within ourselves, in our bodies already, the seed of sin. And because it's in our bodies, the Bible uses the term flesh. Now, the flesh and the body are not entirely the same thing, but they are very closely connected, and we'll see that a bit more clearly as we go on.

The seed of sin that is in our bodies will remain within us until we get a new body. We've got to get a new kind of body, and it's got to be a body that's like the body of Jesus. Jesus was born without that taint of sin, because Jesus didn't descend from Adam and Eve.

Jesus was formed by the Holy Spirit in the womb of Mary, and God provided the egg and the sperm. There was no seed of sin in the embryo that was formed in Mary. And so, Jesus was born without this seed of sin, and when Jesus rose from the dead, he was given a immortal glorified body.

Now, the scripture promises us that we are going to be very similar to Jesus, and we're going to have that kind of body as well. And you'll read that in 1 John chapter 3 and verse 2, which says, Beloved, right now, at this point in time, we are already the sons and daughters of God, but it has not yet been made clear what we are going to be in the future. But we know that when he appears, it's referring to the coming of Christ, and we will be like him, because we are going to see him exactly as he is.

And so, Paul describes what happens when Christ returns, and the dead in Christ arise, and we who are alive are caught up and transformed. Transformed instantly, we will get new bodies, different to what we ever had before, because we cannot enter into the heavenly realm with contaminated sinful bodies. So, it's the seed of sin in us.

It gives us that sinful nature, and because it's a seed, it can sprout and grow and produce a kind of a tree that grows within us and affects our whole being. I like to call that the tree of the flesh, and that tree has three main roots. Now, I'm not going to go to prove these to you.

There's plenty of scriptural evidence, which I've taught elsewhere, but there are three main roots, and these roots come about when we allow the natural desires of the body to dominate us and control us. And so, the three natural desires, things that the body does, is self-preservation or defense, reproduction, and nourishment. These are things that we do all the time in order to remain alive.

Well, when the natural self-defense or self-preservation mechanism takes control, it becomes aggression and leads to bitterness and hatred and strife. Our desire for reproduction, of course, leads to strong sexual desire and lust, and our natural body's desire to nourish and build up and take care of ourselves, it leads to a total emphasis on things, on covetousness and greed, to get our hands on everything that we can, what the Bible calls temporal values. That's what the flesh produces, and in Galatians chapter 5, Paul gives us a whole list of some of the branches of this tree, so many different areas of sinfulness that exist in mankind.

Now, through the years, people have tried to overcome the effects of the flesh. Main reason being, when we sin, we feel guilty, because built into us as part of God, our spirits were made in the nature of God. And we know that sin is wrong, we feel uncomfortable with it, we feel guilty.

And so, through the years, people have found a way of overcoming that inner guilt. And one of the first and most common ways, and I covered that previously, is to obey the law, to overcome by the works of the law. Now, the Pharisees boasted in this, that they kept the law.

Remember, Jesus told the story of the Pharisee who stood up and said, I thank God that I'm not like other men, I'm such a good guy, and the poor publican just beat his breast and said, forgive me, I'm a sinner. The Pharisees were very proud and bold and arrogant in keeping their law. And even Paul actually claimed that he could do this before he came to Christ.

In Philippians 3 verse 6, speaking of his past, he says, with regard to zeal, I was persecuting the church concerning the righteousness that is in the law, blameless. Paul says, you couldn't fault me, I kept the law, right down to the last detail. Well, what law was he keeping? He was keeping a restricted number of laws which the Pharisees had put together, which were largely the traditions of the elders.

And what they did is effectively they set external standards that are able to be kept. Now, people who try to go this route, this is what they do. They decide what is sin and what is not.

Well, the Catholic Church are famous for this. They classified some sins as mortal, which means they can take it how, and other sins as venial, which means they are of less consequence. Well, the scripture says if we've kept the whole law and broken one, we're guilty of all.

But somehow the Catholics didn't seem to notice that verse or care about it. Now, many believers try to do the same thing. In some super religious circles, and I grew up in one of these, they give you a list of the things that are sinful.

You've probably heard these, no drinking, no smoking, no swearing, no partying, no going to movies, no wearing makeup, no wearing fancy clothes. Those are sinful. You've got to stop doing them if you want to be righteous and serve God.

There's a group here in South Africa that have been going for years. The ladies put their heads up in buns and dress in these little blue dresses. In fact, in Afrikaans, they're known as Diplo Rokis, which translated in English means the blue dresses.

They all wear the same ugly blue dresses, right down, hems right down to the ankles, nothing showing, mustn't show any sexuality or over femininity, because that's not spiritual. And they think that this is serving the Lord. In many quarters, people have gone to such extremes that they try to lock themselves away from the temptations and desires of the body.

In particular, groups like monks and nuns, they take a vow of poverty, they hide away somewhere in a monastery where they are not exposed to beautiful women, where the nuns are not exposed to men, where they're not tempted. They dress in clothes that make them all look plain and unobvious, and they're trying to suppress the desires of the flesh, and they're calling that holiness. Even amongst other religions, the amongst has been known of a person who will build himself into a little room like this, break himself up so that he's totally sealed off from the world, and thus shut himself off from all temptation of the flesh.

The Catholic Church have a thing they call penance, where you can punish yourself so you feel a bit better after you sin. All of these are false ways of overcoming the flesh. And when we cannot overcome our sin, our best other resolution is to blame somebody else for our sin.

You don't need to teach anybody to do this, kids do this naturally. Johnny, why did you do that? I didn't do it, it was Mary, she made me do it. Oh, that started back in the Garden of Eden, didn't it? And God said, why did you eat the fruit? Adam said, well, you know, it was a woman, she made me do it.

And the woman said, well, it was the serpent, you know, he tempted me. Fast the buck, they call it. Well, modern psychology has actually allowed us to develop that further and to blame shift and find out who we can blame for how we are.

It's the way your parents treated you, it's the way society treated you, it was that bad teacher at school, the way they treated you. They made you into the bad person that you are. They made you want to go out and commit murder and have illicit sex and do all the things that you so strongly desire to do.

If it wasn't for them, you wouldn't feel guilty about all of these things. Modern psychology tries to make you not feel guilty about sin so that the guilt can leave, the flesh remains. Now, when we come to the church, we have to find some kind of teaching on how to overcome the desires of the flesh.

Is it possible for a believer to come to the place where the flesh is no longer active in their lives, where they no longer have this drive to sin, where they live righteously every day, doing the right things in God's eyes and never sinning anymore? Well, you see, if you set a standard like the law, you can keep to those and you can say today, I did not commit these sins. But you see, sin is also of the heart. Sin's wrapped up in your motives, in your very desires and your passions.

The fact that you didn't commit the sin does not mean that you weren't inwardly strongly wanting to. See, that's the difference. You may come to a place where you're no longer actively performing sinful acts, but within you remains the very desire.

You may not be going out there and committing adultery, but in your heart you are looking with lust and saying, I wish I could. See, it's the same thing. It's the sin that's in the flesh that is resident within you.

Now, people have struggled with this through the years. And after Calvary and the church was formed, there came various different doctrines that surfaced over the history of the church that sought to explain how we can overcome the sins of the flesh. Until somebody stood up and coined the term Christian Perfection, also known as entire sanctification.

Now, what is sanctification? The doctrine of sanctification is the process by which sin is removed in our lives. And it is a continual process that takes place all the time. It's overcoming the power of sin, making one holy.

That's what sanctification is. One man stood up and formulated a teaching on this. His main book was entitled The Plain Account of Christian Perfection, and his name was John Wesley.

John Wesley was used mightily by the Lord. He was a great man of God, a great evangelist. Started a whole denomination, which today still exists, called Methodism.

John Wesley lived a life that was controlled. He lived a methodical life, which is where the term Methodism came from. His life was so methodical and so controlled that he actually thought he was a Christian and decided he would help those poor heathen out there who need to learn how to live good lives.

And so he signed up to become a missionary on the foreign fields. And as he was going out on the ship to travel to the foreign land where he was going to be a missionary, he met some people who actually had had an experience with God and had been born again. And knew the truth of the word.

And they shared the gospel with him, and Wesley was born again. It wasn't that dramatic, because after all he was already living a pretty good life. He described it as, my heart was strangely warmed.

It was so emotive. So John Wesley now created the Methodists organization. And he came to believe and taught that we can come to a place where we are completely sanctified, where the sin is removed from us.

He said that in order for us to come to that place, we should come to an experience where our whole life is so filled with love, that we just do everything in love. Well, didn't Jesus say that the greatest two commandments were love the Lord your God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself. And he said, on these two lands hang all the law of the prophets.

So if you can really walk in love, yes there will be no sin. You will not hurt your neighbor because you love them. Everything that you do will be motivated by love.

And instead of thinking of selfish sinful things, you'll be doing the loving thing. No doubt Wesley was a loving man, who felt that in love he didn't sin anymore. He did however say that it is possible that when you are showing love, you could make a mistake.

Perhaps in love you made a wrong judgment. You assess things incorrectly. He said well that's not really a sin, it's just a mistake.

But then he said this is a place that you can come to and experience, but it's not that isn't necessarily permanent. You can fall away from this position. Of course Wesley himself believed that a believer could lose their salvation, so why couldn't you also lose your sanctification.

Everybody of course except him. He was the first one to lay this out and be so bold and even arrogant as to say I've come to a place of sinless perfection. For a long time that was probably the only person who really promoted that doctrine.

But over time as people came to experience more of God, amongst them even Pentecostals, other people that went beyond Methodism experienced the power of God. They again struggled with the sinful nature and many of them came to a place where they began to experience something that was like a crisis in their life that brought dramatic change. In fact many of them described it as being born again the second time.

They used to call it my second conversion. I was converted the first time when I accept Jesus as my savior, but it took me a while to come to the place where I could now go through a sanctification experience or a crisis of sanctification where I now am converted out of the flesh into living a life that is free of sin. There's many different famous authors and writers and theologians through the years who began to experience some of this and eventually they began to accumulate together under a group.

I believe it all started by somewhere in the 1800s by a book that was written by one specific theologian. You can actually download that book from Amazon. I actually purchased it on Kindle.

I haven't had time to fully study it yet, but I had a quick browse to see what they did. They would eventually come together and congregate and form an organization in England in a place called Keswick, pronounced Keswick but it's spelled Keswick if you want to look it up. K-E-S-W-I-C-K became known as the Keswick Convention and the Keswick Convention attracted everybody who subscribed to this idea of a second salvation.

They began to call it the second blessing, a crisis of sanctification. Over time the idea of perfection was one that people stumbled over. How can you say you're perfect? Nobody's perfect and so they changed the term to the higher life movements.

Been around for a long time and it's still there and they teach that you can live free of sin after having had a spiritual experience. Now many of the original theologians and many taught this are probably people you've never heard of. So I'm going to single out one because you've probably heard of him and I want to single him out for a very important reason because I have always considered him to be my first and greatest mentor in the spiritual life.

A Chinese man by the name of Ni Tousheng who was nicknamed Watchman Ni. Anybody heard about Watchman Ni? His books are still available today. If you want to read exactly what Watchman Ni taught about overcoming sin he's got one book that explains it all.

It's called The Normal Christian Life which if you read it doesn't sound normal at all but Watchman Ni made it on what he called applying the cross to the flesh. The flesh has to be put on the cross, must be brought to death. I'm sure you've heard this teaching plenty and you've probably heard it even from us because I majored in a lot of this in our early years and much of my teaching in the past had its roots in Watchman Ni and I loved his teaching and I accepted everything he taught at first until I began to see there's some areas that he he missed it in.

Watchman Ni was not a Spurred Filth or Pentecostal believer. He did not believe in the gifts of the Spurred but he was an amazing scholar, an amazing man of God and his teachings were very powerful. However Watchman Ni majored on what he called the dealings of God.

The dealings of God and now this is the basic concept that we can only get so far in trying to serve the Lord when we do our best and we commit ourselves to him but we find ourselves there in Romans chapter 7 like Paul woe is me, wretched man that I am. He said it requires God to deal with us and to deal with the flesh through the experiences of life. God brings us to a place where he addresses our sinfulness and crushes us and brings us to a death as he applies the cross to the flesh and so we face a series of crucifixions where parts of our flesh are placed on a cross until they are brought to death and they no longer trouble us anymore.

It's a continual process because there are so many different sins of the flesh but we can theoretically eventually come to that place where the flesh in its entirety is placed on the cross. What's the result? Sanctification. Christian perfection.

Sin is removed and no longer troubles us. Now this sounds good and I've believed it for many years but as I began to look into the scripture I couldn't find much evidence for this teaching. As I looked at my own life experiences and the number of death processes that I've been through because I've lost count.

I must have been really sinful because man the Lord has applied the cross to my life so many times. I've had to die to so many things. I don't know if there's anything left anymore.

The scripture says that Jesus died once and he cried it is finished. He did all the dying that needs to be done folks. There's not a thing that we can do to add to the finished work of Calvary.

Now we need to come to a place where we realize we cannot do this. Sometimes we have to like Paul do our best and find ourselves in Romans chapter 7 and in the end we cry out woe is me who will deliver me. I can't do this.

I can't do it. Sometimes it's only when we finally come to that place and let go it's almost like we die on the cross ourselves but we didn't need to because he did it already but we finally stop trying and we say Lord I need your help with this. I need you to cleanse me.

I need you to help me overcome this sin in my life. Now you can call that a death if you like in that you've died to your own efforts but it's not a death as in a crucifixion on a cross where the flesh the sinful nature is crucified. Some people teach that you must crucify the flesh daily.

Well firstly I can't find a scripture that teaches that. Thus you cannot crucify the flesh because you see the crucifixion of your flesh already took place once for all on the cross of Calvary. In Galatians chapter 5 verse 24 it says and those that are Christ's have already crucified the flesh with its inner conflicts and desires.

You say but didn't Jesus tell his disciples take up your cross and follow me? Wasn't Jesus telling them to put themselves on the cross? Take up your cross daily he said and follow me and this is the basis of where people teach that we must crucify the flesh daily. Well now let me first point out to you that Jesus mentioned that not to believers. He mentioned that during his earthly ministry when he was preaching to Jews when Jesus had not yet gone to Calvary when Jesus had not yet suffered on the cross and paid the price for our redemption.

That expression take up your cross simply means let go of your own desires. Yes it's a kind of a death process but you know what the people he was telling to do that were not born again. They were ordinary disciples who were following him.

You must never forget that most of the teachings Jesus gave were not given to the church. I hear people say you know I'd rather believe what Jesus taught than what Paul taught. You need to understand who Jesus was talking to.

He came to present himself to the Jews as their messiah and they rejected him. He became the suffering messiah and the lamb of God and he died on the cross and paid the penalty for our sins. Nowhere in the new testament afterwards after Calvary you find any of the teachers telling you to crucify the flesh.

But you can't. Only God can do that. Oh what can you do? There's actually only one thing that you can do and that's to submit yourself to the correct influence.

Are you going to submit yourself to the Lord and his spirit that dwells within you or are you going to submit yourself to the flesh and the sinful desires? That are in you because whoever you choose to submit to becomes your master and you become a slave. There's a scripture that tells you exactly that. Romans 6 verse 16 says do you not know that to whom you yield yourselves in obedience as servants becomes your master? Whether of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness.

Now is there such a thing as a crisis of sanctification? My answer is yes and no. There is absolutely such a thing as crisis experiences where God deals with sin in your life. But you must never ever see that as a crisis which totally and once for all deals with the flesh and makes it rendered powerless.

Because while you live in this mortal body the seed of sin which produces the flesh will remain in you until you die or until Jesus returns. However sin becomes a habit. As you grow up with that sinful influence you begin to develop habits in your life and we all have different habits.

Because sin is part of our very nature whatever habits we develop always have a sinful part to them. Even people that appear to be doing really good things like charitable organizations a lot of the time they're doing it to make themselves look good which is the flesh. So what may look good is still the flesh.

Now God can deal with our past experiences that caused us to live this way and to produce these habits in our lives. He can bring healing to some of the trauma that we've suffered. We've taught on this quite extensively and God can even bring by his power an ability to actually deal with that sinful habit and to make it stop working.

Whereas before you struggled to control it by God's power you can shake it off. You can shake the shackles off and break free of that habit. People are broken free of all kinds of sinful habits and addictions by the power of God.

Supernatural transformation and inner healing are experiences that we can all have and we did an entire seminar on this teaching you how it takes place. And these things can happen in moments of time. They can be a crisis experience which change your life.

So you say you know what I'm not the same anymore. I've changed. I feel like I'm a different person.

There certainly is such a thing as a crisis of sanctification, of a crisis of the Lord dealing with sinful habits in our life. But the flesh which lies at the root, the motivating force, that motivating force remains in your body. We'll get shortly to what we can do and I've started to cover it already.

Now others they look at the teachings and they say if what these theologians say is true then the flesh in me is dead. Doesn't the scripture say that the flesh has been crucified? Therefore when I am tempted to sin I can't say that's my flesh anymore can I? Because the flesh is dead. It's been crucified.

Therefore why am I still sinning? And the natural conclusion is because satan keeps tempting me to sin. He could tempt Adam and Eve couldn't he? Before they were sinful. He could tempt Jesus who was totally sinless right? So satan can tempt us and he has his hordes of demons to come and tempt us to sin.

And so now when I sin I no longer take responsibility for it. I no longer say I failed to obey the Lord. I failed to live the way he intended.

We say the devil made me do it. You know if satan had not tempted me I would not have sinned. That sounds really good doesn't it? Well you know what I went through that phase in my early years of learning some of these doctrines.

Every time there was the temptation to sin my first words would be well it's not the flesh. So where's it coming from? Okay satan you are the one who's tempting me. I resist you now in Jesus name and you will flee.

Well when I saw people sinning who were believers I came to the same conclusion. It's not your flesh that's making you sin my brother. It's not the sin my sister.

It's satan who is tempting you. You have become a victim of the enemy and a demon has jumped in when you weren't looking and is now possessing you and making you sin. Let me help you by casting the thing out to set you free.

And eventually we're talking more about the devil than we are about the Lord. We're spending all our time casting demons out of everybody. Oh people come up with some caucus when it comes to the names of demons.

Some poor person comes for deliverance and they got a demon of this and a demon of that and a demon of oh some of them I've never heard of. Some of them are real weird sinful things which probably the person never even thought about. You got that demon and you come out.

You know what you're doing? You're doing the same thing as psychology. You're saying please excuse me I'm not responsible for my sin. I'm not responsible for my sin.

Satan made it happen so we'll blame him and I'll continue to say I'm in Christian perfection. I'm completely sanctified. I'm just being attacked by the devil that's all.

These are some of the mistakes that we make. It's the mistakes that theologians have made. It's the mistakes that teachers of the word have made through the years and many of them are great men of God and I do still respect many of them though I can't agree with all of their conclusions, their teachings.

The Bible teaches that the work on Calvary was complete and it was finished. It doesn't have to be repeated and it doesn't have to be assisted. Jesus condemned sin in the flesh once for all.

Romans 8 3 says for what the law could not do in view of the fact that it was weak because of the flesh God sending his own son in the guise of sinful flesh and because of sin condemned sin in the flesh once. How did Jesus do that? He did that by taking all of our sin on himself and he took our place and when he died on the cross he died as you and as me. He died as us.

This is what we refer to as the past tense of salvation. It's a once-only event and it never needs to be repeated and when you accept Jesus as your savior and are born again you enter into the finished work of Calvary and it does not need to be repeated. You have been saved once and for all from the consequences and the penalty of your sins.

God will never hold you accountable again because Jesus paid the price. Now one day when Jesus comes to transform us and to receive us to himself we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is. Then we're going to get new bodies that are free from that sea of sin.

Only then finally will we be sinlessly perfect. This is what we refer to as the future tense of salvation and again it's only going to happen once. But where are we right now? Right now God Christ come to live in us through the Holy Spirit.

You see we are still even though we've been born again we are still unable to overcome sin in our own strengths. He alone can overcome sin by living in us. Scripture I read at the beginning says we will reconcile to God by his death but we will be saved on a continual basis by his life.

You know we speak about eternal life as something we're going to live forever. No eternal life is the life of God living within us right now. When you receive the gift of eternal life you receive that life to come and live inside of you and actually all you need to do now is to invite him to live through you.

This is what we call the present tense of salvation. This is what many call the process of sanctification of overcoming sin in the flesh on a daily basis and it is a continual process which will continue until your life ends or Jesus returns. Now just as the seed of sin in the flesh produced a tree there's a new seed God has put in you but it's not in your body it's in your spirit and that seed of the spirit also produces the tree which I like to call the tree of life.

Now instead of the three functions of the body taking control we have three functions of the spirit which are intuition or the ability to receive revelation, communion or the ability to mix and fellowship with other spirits including the Holy Spirit and wisdom which is the ability to anticipate and look into the future. When we allow these functions of the spirit to take control they produce three powerful forces which will overcome the flesh. Not self-effort, not continually dying and crucifying yourself but these simple things faith, love and hope.

All it takes to overcome the flesh. The scripture says that we must walk in the spirit. Before you were born again you were living in the flesh totally controlled by that sinful nature but when you were born again you entered a new spiritual realm in Christ and you're now living a life in the spirit but the flesh is still there.

We can now still walk or conduct our lives if we want to under the influence of the flesh or we can choose to do it under the influence of the spirit and when you do that the flesh becomes disabled. In Galatians 5 16 Paul said these words let me say this then conduct your life continually in the spirit and you will not fulfill the desires of the flesh as you can allow your body to dominate and you're not going to overcome the seed of sin that's in your body. You cannot crucify the flesh you cannot control the flesh however you can control your body.

You can decide whether you are going to let your body run wild and do what it wants. Bring it under control it's your body has to listen to you. You can discipline your body so that it doesn't control you anymore and if your body is not controlling you anymore the seed of sin of the flesh will stop controlling you also.

Let me give you a scripture I've never given lots of scriptures before but I feel I must give you scriptural proof of everything that I'm teaching now. In 1 Corinthians 9 and verse 27 Paul says but I keep my body under control and bring it into subjection lest that by any means when I have preached to others I myself should be a reject. Now when we allow our spirits to dominate instead of our bodies this is what happens the tree of the flesh starts to shrivel up and die.

The tree of the spirit rises up in its place and it does not require any effort to obey God's laws to find herself doing them naturally. Faith love and hope are powerful forces which will accomplish all of those things in us if we'll give them control. So in conclusion we are all born with a seed of sin contained in our bodies.

This sinful nature drives us to live lives that are contrary to God's laws. When we are born again a new life is placed into our spirits and now we have a power to help us overcome sinful nature. It's like a light shining in the darkness.

When you turn up the lights the darkness decreases. When you turn down the lights the darkness increases. Our spiritual life consists of learning to allow the light to remain strong and bright.

And if you can maintain that sin will begin to disappear from your life. Now this is a process which can increase over time until eventually we may find ourselves in a place where we think you know I can't remember the last time I was really tempted to sin because I'm so enjoying the Lord and his presence. Of course it's a dangerous thing to think before you know it.

Satan will throw something across your path so don't be arrogant about it. Just thank God for it and keep praising. But let that light shine.

In the Old Testament is a scripture which I think describes it so well. From the book of Proverbs in chapter 4 and verse 18 it says that the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn which continues to grow brighter until the day is established. Now all that's needed to accomplish this is submit yourself afresh to the Holy Spirit that is inside of you.

Invite Jesus to take over and to live his life in and through you. When you do that faith love and hope will spring forth come out of you. You're going to overcome all of the sinful nature as that power of faith and love and hope manifests through you.

By which would you rather do? Take on that cross daily and suffer and struggle and say oh Lord this is so hard but I'm doing it for you. I find it so much easier to say Lord Jesus here I am I let go of everything I give up everything for you. You want to call that taking up the cross fine it's got nothing to do with crucifixion there's no suffering involved.

Oh Jesus I let go of myself and my life and my desires and I give it all to you. Now you come and live your life in me and produce in me your motives and your desires and may others see you living in me. It's not difficult to do is it? It's easy every one of us can do it.

Let's bow our heads now and thank you Jesus for your words. Thank you Lord for your spirit that lives inside of us and you said you will never leave us nor forsake us even when we fail Lord you're still there. Even when we struggled and tried so hard even to serve you and failed you never condemn because there's no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

You don't call on us to bear that heavy cross Lord because you bore it for us already on Calvary you suffered and died and faced the affliction and the whippings and the beatings. Why should we do the same? Why should we have to suffer again and have the cross applied to our lives when you did it for us already? No Lord rather live your life in me rather live your life in me. Try it now.

I want you to pray this prayer. Lord Jesus I submit myself now fully to you and I ask you to take control of every part of my life. Lord you know the sins that I've struggled with.

You know the temptations that I've faced. You know the habits that I find so difficult to beat and Lord I can't do this without you but nothing is impossible to you and so I'm allowing you now to do this through me. Those people that hurt me and anger me and I find it so difficult to not be bitter against them.

I know you told me to love them Lord but I can't love them. So I'm asking you to love them in and through me now. I'm asking you to forgive them in and through me now.

Take away all the pain and the hurt that's still there from the way I've been treated. Make you Lord. Make you master.

I'm Lord Jesus. I'm Lord Jesus. You walk this world once again in my body as though it was your body.

I give you full permission to do this now in Jesus name. Amen. As you've done that you're going to be amazed.

Something happens inside of you. Your feelings begin to change. Your motives begin to change.

Your thoughts begin to change. It's not a permanent thing. You are now not completely sanctified but you'll never face sin again but for now you will walk in the spirit and you will overcome and as you go through life you will once again be tripped up by this world system, by the demon powers and we'll be looking next time finally at how to overcome demons.

You need to realize that flesh is still there and all you do is come again to his presence. Say Lord I've tried so hard. I failed.

I can't do this but you can do that. I give you permission to do it now through me. Do it on the run.

Do it on the street. Do it at work. Do it wherever you are.

Just a simple prayer under your breath. I submit myself fully to you Lord. Take control and you'll do just that.

Set you free. Life will be transformed. Then you're going to walk in an overcoming life where sin will no longer have power over you.

Amen.

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