These two are in
age-long conflict, in antagonism. It is ever so. When you have a fresh experience
of the Holy Spirit, the next thing you find is that you are in a new conflict
against the old flesh-life in yourself. This rising up of the flesh within is
provoked by the devil because he sees the inheritance in view, for when the
Spirit comes, the inheritance comes into view. He has come to bring to the
inheritance. So do not be surprised if after an experience of the Spirit the
next thing you have to face is this conflict with the assertion of the flesh
across the path to hinder your going into possession.
It is only when you have
received the Holy Spirit that you know the conflict of the flesh and what is
the withstanding of the flesh. Those who have not the Spirit have no such
conflict of flesh and Spirit; they are not in that realm, but wholly in the
flesh realm. The Holy Spirit has come in relation to the end, and the end is
the inheritance in Christ, and flesh moved by Satan rises up to frustrate that
end, and to rob you of the inheritance. The peril is that having begun in the
Spirit, you might turn aside to make some compromise with Amalek, because of
the hardness of the way, the greatness of the cost, by reason of the conflict
and forgetting God's word - "utterly destroy Amalek" (1 Samuel 15:3).
"Walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit" (Rom. 8:4).
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