Be Ruled by the Holy Spirit

Life can be an ongoing load of stress, needs, worry, and negative feelings. Financial issues, health problems, and personal struggles can keep us from enjoying life. 
 
Anything that rules your life will have power, authority, and control over you. This is a powerful truth that needs to be understood and never forgotten. We live in a world ruled by our senses. What we see, hear, and feel continually demands time and consideration, and most people never escape the demands of their senses. 
 
"And the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful” (Mark 4:19).
 
As Jesus said in Mark 4:19, the world’s cares choke the Word in your life. They can keep the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control from coming to life in you.
 
“For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace” (Romans 8:5-6).
 
Paul declares that a life ruled by its senses is “death.”  This means that a sense-ruled person will have no life, joy, or peace. To a person ruled by his senses, the abundant life that Jesus came to give them seems unattainable. They find God's promises hard to believe. His promises seem distant to a person controlled by his senses.
 
“But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14).
 
A natural man is a man driven by his senses. He may even be born again, but he remains bound by what he sees, hears, and feels. Spiritual things may seem foolish to such a person. He approaches prayer and faith from what he senses. He walks by sight.
.
“But to be spiritually minded is life and peace” (Romans 8:6). The person ruled by the Spirit is not trapped by what he sees, hears, and feels. Spiritual truth overcomes what the senses and flesh tell him. He prays in faith and walks by faith.
 
We have the promise of life and peace. Living a victorious life in this sense-dominated world is absolutely possible.
 
“Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God” (1 Corinthians 2:12). 
 
We have received the Holy Spirit, so we might know what has been freely given to us in Jesus. We must come to a place where we know the spiritual overcomes the natural—where we trust living by the Spirit, see spiritual things, speak spiritual truth, and walk by faith.
 
“If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit” (Galatians 5:25). We received the Holy Spirit when we were born-again, but walking in the Spirit is conditional on us. It depends on how we renew our minds and yield to the Holy Spirit instead of allowing our senses to rule us.
 
Your flesh will always lie. Don’t let your senses trap you. Don’t let your feelings rule your life. Choose to open your spiritual eyes and see beyond this sense-ruled natural world. Choose to speak words of life and faith. Choose to meditate on the promises and not the problems. 
 
Your senses don’t have to rule your life. You can be ruled by the Spirit instead of your senses. You can walk by faith in victory.