Mortify All Satanic Seductions

We often become discouraged in the on-going warfare of flesh mortification. This is because Satan is a master strategist, and he knows exactly when to hit you with a missile to maximize the potential for damage. The powers of darkness have studied your life in detail; they know your weaknesses, your hot-spots, your soft-spots, the areas of past bondage, the physical addictions and psychological perversions you were enslaved to while in your pre-converted state of Adam.

Never allow yourself to think you are smarter or stronger than your ancient spiritual foe. He has millions of devils at his disposal to seek out your destruction, and if it were not for God’s prevailing grace upon each waking moment of your life, you would succumb to the flesh in a moment and be inextricably and irretrievably lost. I keep this fact in mind at all times, for it helps me be humble, lowly, poor in spirit – which, in turn, brings more grace to withstand the evil of the day thereof through the power of God.

Always remember, dear saint, that devils are outside your mind and heart, a multitude of seducing spirits seeking entry. Imagine a clean-swept, well-lit castle surrounded by a huge iron wall, with a legion outside ceaselessly planning, crafting, and masterminding besiegement campaigns. They bring with them catapults of money, crossbows of lust, spears of self, flaming arrows of pride. Night and day they encamp outside the walls, sometimes in quiet planning, and sometimes in a full assault that can last for weeks or even months.

Every assault, I believe, has to be first approved by God. This is how the Lord tests our hearts, by allowing Satan to storm the walls and incite our flesh. During these campaigns, the Lord watches how we react: Do we seek to fend off the invaders in our own strength? Do we too quickly succumb to the attack, without any resistance at all? Do we pray for grace? These are all factors God monitors during these castle-warring tests; His next course of action for our lives is built upon our reaction to the assault. When the test has accomplished its means, God commands a cease-fire, and then deals with the saint accordingly.

When a saint has been awakened to the amazing love of Jesus Christ and the power afforded to him as he surrenders his will and walks in the Spirit, He begins to see a divine law come into effect.  All the hosts of heaven come to his aid. A ray of light suddenly comes to expel the shadow; before the face of God all darkness must flee. Walking in the Spirit banishes the power of darkness with instantaneous effect. This walk comes by a careful and consistent method of mortification day after day. If we are faithful to gird-up the loins of our minds, and if we allow God to renew our minds for the purpose of taking each seductive thought captive to the obedience of Christ, we can foil each castle invasion. As we continue to foil the plans and strategies of hell, our heart-purity remains preserved, and God is able to bless our spirits with rich, sin-victorious grace.

Dear saint, this is God’s divine will for your life. Regardless of how wretched you are, and how unfaithfully you’ve defended the castle walls in the past, God extends His mighty hand to you today to start over. In fact, your many failures are an asset! This is because the Lord rejects those strong defenders by religious willpower, who have not yet learned to humbly overcome by His power alone. Religious men may disdain and impugn you for your failure; God, however, wills to promote and exceedingly bless you despite your failures. If you are crushed, grief-stricken, exasperated and fatalistically downcast over your defeats and impregnable strongholds, you are not far from the all-liberating power God. You are in a very blessed place, for it is in this state of brokenness where God begins teaching the holy art of mortification by the Spirit.

Mortification Leads to Transparency

To be transparent is to walk with an undefiled conscience and pure heart. Walking in a state of repentence and mortification ensures such transparency, because both are predicated upon honesty – the one thing God values above all else in His saints.

Dear saint, it doesn’t matter how many times you’ve failed or made a mess of your life; if you can this day accept sole responsibility for your sins, wholly take the blame, and say “I am the man” with brokeness and sorrow over your yet unmoritified passions, I tell you, there is no limit to what God will do in your life. Just be honest with Him, be utterly transparent. Own your sin, bewail your failure, cry out for God to make you more like Jesus Christ. I started down this path some years ago. I resolved to make transparency continually my heartcry and to be ruthlessly honest with God about my depravity.

Well, things got a lot worse before they got better. The Lord brought a firestorm of trials and temptations into my life, and they began to peel off all the layers of holiness and security I had been clinging to. I was brought to utter ruin and despair. I told God that it was impossible, that the Christian life was totally impossible to live out. For refuge, I turned back to the onions and leeks of Egypt, if only to get my mind off God and my indefatigible wretchedness. Indulging in sin just made it worse, for as a wise Puritan once said, “Satan’s apples all have worms in them.”

God’s Spirit was on me like a bloodhound. I can’t tell you how many times I cried myself to sleep as I lay next to my wife and children late at night. My life was beyond wretched and I was a perfect failure. Truth be told, I had suicidal notions; the powers of darkness took advantage of my situation and started injecting fatalistic thoughts into my head.

When at last it became clear that God was not going to forsake me, grace to renew the cry for victory and purity suddenly arose in my soul. Some months after this renewal of hope, the Lord delivered me from all the strongholds, cleansed me completely, baptized me in Holy Spirit and gave me the authority to minister this truth unto others with the same comfort the Lord had given me. In addition, He showed me how to maintain the purity of heart and conscience by the practice of holy mortification led by the Spirit. This is God’s blessed order: He delivers, cleanses, fills with the Spirit, and then He teaches you how to keep the heart clean via mortification. One thing God showed me is that it is better to keep a cleansed home clean, than it is to always have to clean up a dirty home. Mortification in the Holy Spirit by the blood of Christ is the daily maintainance that keeps a cleansed home clean.

Mortification is going to the throne of grace each minute of every hour of the day to fetch power from God to put to death the unchristlike deeds of the body and take captive the unchristlike thoughts of the mind. God’s will for us is perfect victory in these areas, all day every day. But He has made provision that if we fail, we have the immediate power of the cleansing blood of Christ that operates by true repentance and faith – by being totally honest with God concerning our woeful estate. In a moment, you can be restored and put back on the pathway of victory and led into deeper battles of mortification. The house need never get trashed; it can be cleansed instantly, as soon as a fingerprint smudge appears on a window.

The Gates of Death

Dear Christian, do you each day enter the gates of death that you might find life? If you profess to follow Christ Jesus, this is where the Spirit will always lead you. Many imagine God’s Spirit to lead the believer down a flowery, sunlit path of effortless living, of soul-happiness and physical content, without a graveyard in sight. But it’s the broad and heavily-trodden paths in life that lead to an easing of the flesh. Narrow roads lead to cemeteries.

When you pray for God’s will to be done in your life, expect to be tested. Expect for something unpleasant to happen, expect someone to verbally abuse you, to belittle you, expect someone to question your integrity, count on being tempted by the opposite sex, to be at a personal disadvantage, to be inconvenienced, misunderstood, vexed, misconstrued, lured by the prospect of making dishonest gain, etc. These are divine appointments to provoke the flesh to get you to sin and lose your peace with God. Along these lines you can expect a dreadful manifestation, and you will have a grand opportunity to mortify. At that moment, you will find yourself at a fork in the road.

One part of the fork – the broad path – keeps going on in the direction you were heading, to the venting and appeasement of the flesh. The smaller road takes a sharp detour off the beaten path. If you were walking with the Lord up to this point, this is the path Jesus takes. Dear saint, follow Him; He is heading toward the gates.

As you follow the Lord to the gates, the temptation to look back to the main road is there, for it is never far from the graveyard entrance. It beckons you back to life, back to fun, to sensuality, to satisfaction. You can smell the death wafting over the cemtery walls; on the broad side, however, the sweet smell of vibrant life still mingles. You hear the laughter, the merrymaking of flesh and exhaltation of self. The roar of Satan’s fiery missiles suddenly bombard you mind: “Join them! Say something! Defend yourself! Take a second look! Grab the opportunity! Flirt!”

Dear Christian, the next time you are tested, remember the gates of death, for this is where the Holy Spirit leads you. Are you enticed to indulge in an impure thought? Enter the gates of death. Are to tempted to defile your conscience with a second look? Look instead unto the cemetery walls, for the Lord is near. Do you see an opportunity to make some money that compromises your godly integrity? Mortify your members and push the squeaky gate forward. Are to tempted to sin on the internet? The gates of death loom large before you. Enter through them with your High Priest.

As you enter through the gates of death, you lose your flesh life – but gain a new spiritual vibrancy a thousand times over! The gates of death suddenly become the gates of grace. True death, paradoxically, is outside the cemetery, back on the broad highway of unmortified flesh. Within the cemetery, however, there is abundant life, there is protection from the powers of hell, from the tormentors of the mind and soul, from the entrapments of harlots, charlatans and devils.

God surely rewards those who voluntarily lose their life by following His Son into the cemetery. Enter therefore into the systematic, private death of mortification by the Holy Spirit, and God will openly reward you before all those outside the cemetery walls. From the place of death you will manifest life. The odor of death for you will become a fragance of life for others.

Object Lessons in Mortuary Science

It really is startling how many illustrations and spiritual parallels one can find with the things of God and mortuary science and thanatochemistry. God has often given me the most wonderful revelations on scripture while embalming. My profession certainly affords me a wholly unique slant on certain aspects of God’s school.

For instance, as embalmers, we look for good fluid distribution and diffusion as we replace the blood from the vascular system with a chemical that acts as a preservative to the tissue.  A good embalmer can instantly tell which appendages are getting fluid and which are not. If the right leg, for example, is not getting fluid or draining properly, it is probably due to a block somewhere in the illiac region or above. We’ll know because the area in question begins to look differently from the rest of the body and the texture of the skin is different. Something – most likely a blood clot – is impeding the rate of flow. The embalmer’s job is now to discover where the blockage is occuring, raise the artery past the block, and continue injecting from that point on to ameliorate any swelling.

I’ve found in my own walk with Christ Jesus, certain blocks in my spirit that have come about from failing to mortify flesh. Unmortified flesh resists the spirit and causes the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit to come to a temporary standstill until we discover and remove the block. Once the block is removed, the Spirit, like the embalming fluid, can continue through the vessel on its path of preservation.

Formaldehyde solutions sometimes contain hydrating agents called humectants which act in restoring fluid to emaciated tissue for the purpose of rendering a healthy appearance to the deceased. Some humectants come with a built-in dye to restore a pinkish color to the skin as they replenish. Here I think of the dye of the restorative power of Christ’s blood working in conjunction with the Spirit’s grace which flows like a river to spiritually hydrate the child of God.

In addition, we’ll sometimes use another chemical, called an arterial modifier, to reduce blood viscosity and dissolve clots. Modifiers aid in draining interstitial fluid and congealed blood from the veins. A modifier has no preserving quality of its own; it only facilitates the movement of blood.  Similiarly, I see prayer and Bible study as spiritual modifiers: vehicles by which the Spirit of Preservation and Restoration can operate and move most freely.

These are but a few of the many illustrations to be found within the parameters of mortuary science.

Extermination!

At the funeral home where I work, we sell two types of caskets: the sealers and the non-sealers. The “sealers” have a rubber gasket along the length of the lid that is designed keep the casket air-tight when closed. The “non-sealers” have no gasket at all. The gasket works by suction, by metal suctioning against rubber. Think of a refrigerator door closing, the swoop and then the “seal” sound. The purpose of the gasket is twofold: to keep what’s inside the casket to stay inside, and what’s outside the casket to stay outside.

We have windows and doors and walls in our homes for the very same purpose. If we find our home is becoming infested with roaches or mice, for example, most of us will want to investigate where and how they are getting in. Basic wisdom dictates blocking the entry point and then killing whatever pests remain in the house. When you see a line of ants marching along the floor, you can trace the formation back to some breach in a window pane, or beneath a door or through some crack in a wall.

Likewise, if we are yielding our members to sin and are being continually defeated by the lust of the eyes, by bouts of anger and the boastful pride of life, we should see these things as an infestation. And because it is an infestation, trying to kill the sin is pointless if we do not first deal with the breach by which it is entering the heart and manifesting in the flesh.

Some people think that the bugs originate from inside the house, from somewhere within the dark recesses of the cellar or attic. This is an extremely perplexing situation, as the only defense for such is to just spray and squash whenever a sighting occurs. This was all the Old Testament law could do: when you saw a roach, you sprayed it dead. Another roach might appear tomorrow beneath a bathroom sink. Squash that one too. But don’t worry about trying to find out where all the roaches are coming from. They are everywhere, and you’ll just have to live with them like everyone else. As long as they stay beneath the flooring and drywall, count it all victory!

This is sad error. The roaches are actually coming in from the outside and laying their eggs inside the house. The termites enter in from the outside and are drawn to wood. The ants march in from the outside and invade for food. In the Texas Hill Country where I live, scorpions come into our home during the months of September and October. Don’t ask me why.

A rat does not suddenly molecularize out of thin air and appear on the bathroom floor. This only happens in a state of delusion, in a fantasy world, when a person hallucinates. Many believers actually have a hallucinatory idea of sin and the new heart. If rats are spontaneously appearing in someone’s home, what possible defense could there be for the homeowners but for the Old Covenant extermination law?

Thankfully, all the pests are outdoors, the heart is indwelt by the spirit’s new man, and the armor of God is in place to shield the heart by faith. Dear believer, under the blood of the New Covenant, allow the Lord to instruct you in the ways of mortification. He has given us the Holy Spirit as a type of sin-exterminator. He renews our mind so it can work as a sealing gasket for the treasury of the new heart.

When a dirty thought suddenly scurries across your mind like a cockroach, the first thing to do is understand that this filthy bug is on the outside, trying to get in. At once, by faith in the operation of the Holy Spirit, set a defense by closing the gasket of your mind’s door. Permit it no entrance to lay eggs that will eventually hatch into strongholds. Do you see an attractive woman and are tempted to look at her in lust? See this is a scorpion on your doorstep. Keep the door sealed, resist the devil, suffer temporarily in the flesh, and you will have the victory. You will find that when you open the door again, the scorpion will be gone. You will have ceased from sin and won the victory.

Again, are you tempted to assert yourself and argue your rights, to criticize and accuse other people? These are the thought-whispering termites of Satan, seeking to devour and nest in the wood of your flesh. Allow them no carnal accommodation; gird-up the gasket of your mind. Protect your home. Submit yourself first unto God, and when you resist the flesh, Satan will run for his life from He that is within you. 

Satan prowls outside the doors of new homes, looking for weaknesses in the structure, and waiting for opportunities to either barge in through the front door like a roaring lion, or sneak in through a crack in the wall like a roach. Maintain therefore golden thoughts, iron doors of mortification. Go boldly to throne of grace in your time of need to obtain flesh-mortifying power. The sanctifying blood of Jesus Christ grants us such a triumphant privilege! Thanks be to God who always causes us to triumph in Christ!

Heart Wars

If the new heart promised by God in the Old Testament, and given to us through Christ in the New Covenant can become corrupt, it is because of a stronghold that has been established and the root is bringing forth its corruption, and not because of sin just springing up within it intrinsically.

I am convinced scripturally that there is nothing in the regenerate heart of a believer that produces sin, for the “old man” Adamic geyser of corruption was slain with Christ on Calvary. The flesh, however, still lives. It has been hopelessly conditioned in Adam, and is allied to the Satanic temptations of the world’s system and the powers of darkness that still rule the air. It is God’s decree that we collaborate with Him in mortifying its affections and lusts. The wicked spiritual forces in the air cater powerfully to our flesh nature, even after (and especially after) our conversion. Outer defilements constantly entice the flesh through the ungirded mind, and ultimately aim to establish a root in the heart. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus enables us to pull down these intrusions before they can reach the heart to corrupt it. Before we were born again of God, our natural state was to welcome these intrusions, to aid the intruders, and fight for their right to stay and reign the heart.

Satan attempts to go through the ungirded and unrenewed mind of the believer in Christ Jesus with the goal to subvert and defile the heart which God has since cleansed and occupied. By not taking every thought captive, and looking consistently unto Jesus, a stronghold can be formed through a “chink in the armor” and, as result, the believer can once again find his or herself fashioned to and enslaved by a former lust.

The process is perhaps best described in James 1:14-15. The context is temptation. Notice the progression if temptation is not immediately mortified at the entry level: “But every man is tempted (in his mind), when he is drawn away of his own lust (the flesh embracing the temptation) and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived (in the womb of the heart) it bringeth forth sin (the fruit of the conception), and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death (the consequential judgment).” James 1:14,15.

In the Old Covenant, the evil was inside the heart, working its way out through the flesh. God gave the law on stone and the blood of beasts to punish and cover. In the New Covenant, the evil is outside the heart, trying to work its way back in through the unmortified flesh and unrenewed mind. God has given us grace to overcome in the Holy Spirit, and the blood of His Son to cleanse and justify.

Mortify the Mind

The unrenewed mind can be likened as unto a landing strip for the cargo of Satan, which once inducted and embraced, proceed to generate fleshly rebellion in our members in defiance to God’s law. The powers of darkness wage careful attacks with the goal to infiltrate our thoughts and steer our meditation from the loftiness of God to the baseness of our carnality. Popular preachers are quite often used as tools in the hands of Satan to effectuate this very principle: when you hear a minister speak often of physical things such as monetary blessings, houses, automobiles, education, personal ambition, outward beauty, or earthly, carnal obtainments in any measure as a focus for prayer or as a result of godliness, the minister is unknowingly being used by Satan to stir flesh against spirit.

God has given discernment to His children for the purpose of knowing what they are to mortify and what they are to embrace. If a thought or impulse surfaces in your mind that causes you to fixate upon some personal gain to improve or facilitate your sojourning here on this cursed earth, you must identify the thought as rogue and subject it to instant mortification. And the sooner the better, for if we allow a reprieve, the flesh will rise and persuasively advocate the thought’s cause. You will suddenly find it not so easy to banish the impulse to the obedience to Christ as it would have been had you immediately mortified it at inception.

Bring this principle now to the sleek tarmac of our eyes. Many men fight a war with the temptation to lust with their eyes. If the mind has not been renewed in Christ, the inciteful image will be unloaded from the eyeport and brought into the mind for processing. Once in the mind, the image will summon the flesh for advocacy. A war then ensues, with the new man struggling to keep the heart closed off to the impending sabotage.

If the spirit of the mind has not been renewed, and the inner man not strengthened with grace by the Holy Spirit, a stronghold can be formed. A stronghold is a fortress buttressed by unmortified flesh rising to defend a flaming missile from Satan. The Armor of God in Ephesians chapter 6 speaks of the helmet of salvation, of a quenching shield, and of a breastplate of righteousness. A revelatory understanding of Satanic warfare, and how the rulers of darkness seek to infiltrate our vessels via the mind, will shed tremendous light on the putting on of the armor. The armor of God is for mortification, for our protection, for keeping spirits of wickedness from invading our thoughts through the tarmac of our senses, and the Sword of the Spirit is for countering each fiery dart of suggestion with “it is written” as it pulls it down into captivity.

If we are careful to be renewed in the spirit of our minds and seek grace to overcome each assault, we can win a steady victory daily. O dear brothers and sisters, the joy of walking before God with a clean conscience and pure heart is an asset without price, but one we all can partake of without exception, for our God is no respecter of persons. Are you learning something of the holy art of mortification?

God’s Method of Deliverance

The way God delivers a believer from sinful habits is quite unorthodox when compared to the logic and ways of man. Man’s way is to grit his teeth and exercise willpower and keep a stiff upper lip in the midst of abstaining from a darling lust. He memorizes mantras of scripture to recite in the heat of battle, and although at the onset he may win a few skirmishes, he eventually caves back into the lust and indulges to his deep chagrin.

In comparison to man’s laborious struggle, God’s way to overcome lust requires no sweating, no fighting to maintain composure, no teeth-gritting or keeping a stiff upper lip in the heat of battle. God’s method of deliverance from sin is as natural as breathing. When a man is walking in the order God has prescribed for victory, triumph over sin is as effortless as an eagle gliding over a canyon, and as totally pervasive as light banishing darkness. This is because the power to mortify flesh is governed by a divine law.

The law that overcomes the power of indwelling sin is called the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ (Romans 8:2). If you are a born-again believer, you may have walked in the Spirit’s law before, and not even realized it. Think back to a time when you experienced the sudden power, the glorious transcending awareness of God’s ineffable holiness and purity which flooded your being, causing instant demolition of any strongholds of corruption in your vessel. Perhaps it was after a blessed time of prayer, or while singing a hymn in corporate fellowship. You suddenly knew you were in the presence of God; His love and purity saturated your being in a very tangible way and you knew you had been made clean by the blood of Christ and faith.

At that moment no allurement of Satan or the world held any power in your flesh. You were coasting like an eagle over any and all things carnal. No woman’s beauty could dare divert your eyes from the majesty of Christ, and no amount of money or worldly recognition could sway your heart from God’s embrace. You were apprehended of the Spirit of God and tasting but a miniscule portion of what awaits the Redeemed in Jesus Christ in eternity. Indeed, the thought of sinning against this light, against the Holy Spirit’s glorious grace was utterly abhorrent and unfathomable. You tried to imagine how you could have ever yielded to such temptation before! You must have been blind!

Well, “being blind” is actually not too far off. Walking in the Spirit is akin to “walking in the light” (I John 1:7), and putting on the armor of God is akin to putting on the “armor of light” (Romans 13:12). As you basked in the presence of God, the powers of darkness had no hold upon you. The flesh lay crucified. You had the mind of Christ. Your heart sanctified God. Dear saint, do you recall gritting your teeth to keep the victory? Do you remember sweating and fighting and reciting scripture mantras? The victory at that moment was as effortless as breathing, because the love of God in Christ Jesus was shed abroad in your heart like a million suns. The light in the face of Christ instantly mortified all things unlike Him within you. As long as you could just figure out how to maintain this transcendental (because no other word describes it) estate of mortification, you would have unlocked the grand secret of abiding!

However, reality soon returns and the eagle begins its sad descent. You come down from the and sky into the canyon. Shadows – ever so slightly – start creeping in from the corners and elongating. Light fades. Gravity increases its pull. The flesh begins stirring, and here, if not dealt with by the Spirit, it will ominously rise up once yet again to subjugate and strangle and the cycle will have started all over.

Dear Christian, please be not dismayed: the eagle must needs come down for testing, by God’s own decree. Remember that God permitted His own Son to be tested in every point while on earth (Hebrews 4:15); He allowed His flesh to be assailed and tempted, His mind accosted with the pull of self-preservation as particularly evidenced in the garden of Gethsamane. But where the First Adam failed the test, the Second Adam passed with a perfect score. Hallelujah! This Second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ, is now our test-taking example and our mentor in mortification. And much more than this: He is our very life. The very same resource he availed Himself to pass all tests and anoint His public ministry, His Father poured out also upon all His seed at Pentecost.

Enter now flesh mortification by the Holy Spirit. It is God’s will that you and I soar like eagles high above the attraction of the world, the lusts of the flesh and all Satanic rule. And after proving this victory, to show other captives how they too can be set free from the power of the law of sin and death. The resource we have is bold access to the “throne of grace” (Hebrews 4:16), and our ministerial goal is to point others to this blessed place. It is opened to all believers who dare approach it by the blood, by faith, and with bold assurity. The Christian’s heart must be confident in such an approach, so that we can receive the provision we need (I John 3:21, 22; 5:14, 15). Dear saint, a pure heart is a confident heart, and a confident heart receives the petitons of grace it comes to God for.

When the spirit’s light ebbs low, the flesh takes flight, like a swarm of bats leaving a cave at nightfall. The flesh itself is not sinful, but like the mind and the affections of the soul it has been programmed by years of selfish sensuality and disobedience to God’s law. The flesh therefore must be mortified, and the mind’s contents subjected to the Lordship of Christ by the Spirit of God. Our minds must be renewed, girded-up, fortified and occupied.

Satan’s forces are outside the walls of the city, even now, planning a campaign to infiltrate the castle of your new heart via the mind and resurrect the flesh to defy God. God’s armor is given to prevent this very thing from happening, and to preserving spiritual purity through the withstanding of the powers of hell. It cannot be emphasized how important this is to grasp. Once we understand the strategies of Satan, and how he moves by attacking and invading the mind, we will have discovered a crucial element in our successful resistance of him, through submission to God and having the renewed mind of Christ (James 4:7; Ephesians 4:23; Phillipans 2:5).