I love the story of The Lorax, by Dr. Seuss, and one of the most impactful lines comes in an exchange between the Lorax and the Once-ler:

The Lorax: Which way does a tree fall?
The Once-ler: Uh, down?
The Lorax: A tree falls the way it leans. Be careful which way you lean.

I don’t know if Dr. Seuss read the book of Galatians before writing that line, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

We sometimes wind up in a lifestyle we never intended to be in, habitually committing the same sin and scrambling to figure out how we wound up in the destructive cycle. For some of us, it’s anger. For others, it’s lust, pornography, or an illicit relationship. It could be gossip, overeating, occult involvement, or many other things. And Paul, in Galatians, helps us to answer the question, how’d I get to this point?

It’s because we leaned toward sin.

He writes:

When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God.

– Galatians 5:19-21 NLT

It’s all about our trajectory. Andy Stanley called it The Principle of the Path. Dr. Seuss might say, we got to where we are because we leaned in this direction.

Let me slow us down a bit and follow Paul’s logic. When you follow – that is, when you make a conscious choice to stick with the thought that popped into your head… And why did that thought pop into your head to begin with? Because of your sinful nature. Even when we are saved and delivered forever from the penalty of sin, we still walk around in a human body in a fallen world and we have this tendency to be selfish and sinful. When we follow our sinful tendencies, the results are clear…

A life controlled by sin is the inevitable result of choosing to follow and giving in to what our sinful flesh wants.

We just keep falling in whatever direction we lean. If you want to break the pattern and end the repetitive cycle of sin, the pathway has to be short-circuited. But Paul doesn’t say it’s simply a matter of having more willpower or resisting temptation in the strength of the same flesh that got us here to begin with. Instead, he points to the One who can and will help every time we humble ourselves and lean into him.

But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

– Galatians 5:22-23 NLT

If you lean toward sinful thoughts, the inevitable result will be sinful actions, which will produce a sinful lifestyle. If you lean into the Holy Spirit, the inevitable result will be a life filled with the good, fresh fruit that only the Spirit can produce.

So, which way are you leaning? What path are you following? In what direction are you headed? Your very next choice matters. A lot.

 

by Brandon Cox: People are not the real enemies. Paul made that clear when he said,

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Ephesians 6:12 NIV

It may often seem as though people are the problem. We blame the left, or the right; the Democrats, the Republicans; the liberals, the conservatives, etc. But other people are actually the least of your worries.

The Bible describes three primary enemies in your life.

1. The world.

And by “the world,” I don’t mean people in the world. I’m referring to the cultural and philosophical systems of thinking that are devoid of the reality and authority of God. Materialism, humanism, atheism, narcissism, consumerism, and a dozen other “ism’s” are all a threat to walking by faith.

I grew up believing that worldliness was defined by certain behaviors. But worldliness, in the negative sense, is much more about how you think.

2. The flesh.

And by “the flesh,” I don’t mean your skin and bones and physical body, though our flesh may often employ our physical body to fulfill its desires. I’m referring more to the “old you.”

When you decide to follow Jesus, the old you (the flesh) dies and a you are born again as a brand new creature in Christ. But the old you hangs around. Your cravings don’t all change overnight.

I know that I’m walking in the flesh when I’m centered on self, absorbed in protecting and defending my own turf and not thinking or acting like Jesus.

In other words, you’re often your own worst enemy.

3. The devil.

I believe Satan is a real, personal being who is bent on the destruction of anything God creates or loves. And I believe Satan loves two kinds of people…

• Skeptics, who doubt his existence and believe that there is nothing beyond the visible, natural world.
• Superstitious people, who see a demon behind every bush and believe everything bad that happens is satanic.

He either wants to blend in and be invisible to you, or he wants to have all of your attention and focus. Either way, he wins.

Satan (and by extension, all of those fallen angels we call demons who work for him) suggests negative, ungodly thoughts, plagues your mind, entices you to sin and stay trapped, and works to establish godless ideologies in the world around us.

Here’s the good news about all three of your biggest enemies.

They’re already defeated.

When you enter into a relationship with Jesus Christ, you’ll still live in the world, you’ll still walk around in your own flesh, and you’ll still be tempted by demonic forces at play, but all three of those enemies are as good as dead.

The world will pass away and a new world is coming when Jesus returns. Furthermore, “greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world.” (see 1 John 4:4)

And Satan has already been defeated in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. His time is now limited. When God is ready to complete our redemption, he’ll be thrown into a pit for all of eternity.

Your enemies are real, but so is your victory. All that threatens you has already been overcome by King Jesus. You simply need to lean into and live out his victory every day. (Click to tweet this!)

You are more than a conqueror when you follow Jesus Christ. Believe it!