How to Deal with the Flesh around You
There are many writings about how you are going to overcome the flesh within you but few that deals with overcoming the flesh around you. After you have dealt with your own flesh and yielded to the Holy Spirit, still you experience people who are walking according to the flesh. They gossip about you or someone else, back bite each other, they are competitive and jealous, they lack interest in the things of God, and so on. How are you going to deal with such people? Is it okay to just let them make you a doormat or boss around you, cheat on you or gossip about you because they perceive your humility as weakness?
These people do exist and sadly most of such people are inside the churches. However, these people too are in a process of their own. To deal with these kind of people, you have to invest more time in prayer for such people in your circle and pray for God’s will and purpose to come to pass in their lives. Colossians 3:12-13 says, “Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering; Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.”
Offense is one of the fire killers the enemy wants you to have. The devil knows that you have given up the flesh in you, you have nailed the passions of your sinful nature. So he will use those closest around you who are still walking in the flesh to provoke and create offenses in your heart. At all cost, you must say NO to offense and cling on to the Holy Spirit.
Take courage and inspiration with the life of Jesus Christ himself. Many times, the Pharisees tried to offend him in different ways but Jesus never allowed offense to come upon his life because his eyes were fixed on the goal – and that is to save us all from sins. In fact, Jesus said in Luke 17:1-4, “Then said he unto the disciples, It is impossible but that offences will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come! It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him.”
Remember that you are not alone in facing such difficulty. For all who have died to their sins will always be the devil’s target for you are now his enemy. Once, we were enemies of God but now we belong to God through Christ and the devil hates it. He will try his best to execute three things in your life: to kill, to steal, and to destroy – your joy, your peace, your life, your relationship, etc. Which is why you must yield to the Holy Spirit at all times and cover yourself in prayer. God will never leave you or forsake you.
