1. The flesh knows how to eat an elephant
The flesh knows that it wouldn't succeed against us if it stormed in to crush our love in one blow. It is subtle, working carefully and deliberately to pick our love apart. The felsh eats away love the way you eat an elephant - one bite at a time.
Indwelling sin takes advantage of our natural laziness and negligence in spiritual things, enticing us to lay aside spiritual duties one by one. It won't at first get God completely our of our minds. But it will talk us into thinking of him less and less making us think we can get by with a little less prayer, shorter or fewer private devotions, until he at last convinces us that we can get along without talking to God at all. Which we can't.
2. The flesh dresses us up in tuxedos and evening gowns
Hebrews 12:28-29 - Le us worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.
God won't accept mere outward worship from us. When we deal with him, he demands our whole heart and soul and mind and strength, not just our bodies, but our thoughts, our longings and dreams, our everything.
To approach him without fear is to approach him without thinking about who he is: the God of the universe, who holds the nations in his hands, who can create and destroy.
3. The flesh sends us down rabbit trails.
In 2 Corinthians 11:2-3 Paul worried that the Corinthians had been deceived and lost their pure devotion to Christ. The flesh wants to sidetrack us from the simplicity of the gospel, so that Jesus is not our all in all. It steers us toward a religious or political or moral cause as a substitute for passion for him.
4. The flesh turns sin into a cuddly pet.
Cuddly pets are sins that we domesticate and harbor in our hearts. We think of them as either too small or too great to take to God, or in some cases we just get too attached to them to let them go.
5. The flesh pumps up our heads and shrivels our hearts.
I think what Lundgaard is trying to say here is that a person with a big head and a small heart can learn the doctrines of sin, yet never be convicted of sin. He can learn the teachings of grace and pardon and the great atonement for sin, yet never feel the peace of God that passes understanding.
6. The flesh gets us to do our own thing
The flesh tries to put out the fire of our love by gradually persuading us to live according to its wisdom, rather than God's. The wisdom of the flesh is to trust in self. God condemns such "wisdom". Isaiah 47:10 - Your wisdom and knowledge mislead you when you say to yourself, 'I am, and there is none besides me.' Independence is the opposite of faith and love. Faith and love trust another.
7. The flesh is a cat that gets our tongue.
Lundgaard tells us that the greatest destroyer of first-love fire is the neglect of private communion with God.
The person who calls himself a Christian, who says he loves God, yet does not seek his company and delight in it, can't be a true lover of God. His own flesh has deceived him. If he doesn't daily give his heart to God and receive God's heart in return, if he doesn't daily renew his hatred of his own sin and his delight in God's mercy, he has no relationship to God.
What you are
when you are alone with God,
that you are
and nothing more
when you are alone with God,
that you are
and nothing more
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