Galatians 5:25 If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.

I spent three years writing “Walking in the Spirit”. I wrote it as I walked it out, one experience after the other. I had hoped to use it as a manual to help others in learning how to walk in the spirit. As I read and reread that work I find nothing that explains how to walk in the spirit.

I lived it out, I walked it out but I could not write it out. It is nothing more than a collection of truths. If I had to use one word that summed up how to walk in the spirit, I guess it would be surrender. That word tells you what to do but does not tell you how to do it.

Recently I tried writing a devotional about clinging to an ideal. I trashed it, but one visual from that writing I held onto and will share with you here in this life we live. That is of a young child clinging onto the leg of a father with all joy, love and excitement. The child sits on the father’s foot as dad walks around the room.

In some ways that is a better picture of walking in the spirit than the thirty-four thousand seven hundred and twenty-four words I used to try and explain it. It is in the truest sense us going on that joy ride, where we are nothing more than a passionate passenger. What we cling onto may be different for each of us. For some it may be a doctrine, for others a theology, and for others it may be emotional or even irrational. The issue of what makes you cling so closely to the Father is not as important as the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control you experience while clinging on with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.

Romans 12:16 Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty (snobbish, high-minded, exclusive), but readily adjust yourself to [people, things] and give yourselves to humble tasks. Never overestimate yourself or be wise in your own conceits. AMPC

Once again I defer to the Classic Amplified Bible version to bring clarity to harmony within this triune existence we now share. We share it because we are part of one body, the bride, Christ’s betrothed.

It is difficult enough to find harmony within self, to bring all three parts of our triune existence under subjection to God’s perfect design, but now we must also be in harmony with the rest of the bride at the same time.

In order to do so, then the body and the soul must bring themselves into subjection to the Spirit because the Spirit is God and does not change. We are reconciled to Him, not He to us. The body is flesh and cannot act in any manner which is not consistent with its design, so the burden is placed on the soul to be the unifying force, since it is so closely connected to the body.

1 Corinthians 9:27a But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection:

Since we are under subjection to the Spirit, we ought to know and understand the Spirit’s primary work in bringing the soul into subjection. In original design intent, it is conformance to the image of the Son, Jesus Christ. This is character building, a new creation, a new character which is true and does not act falsely.

That pesky old soul has a lifetime of self-centeredness which changed to God-centeredness, but the survival instinct is strong within us.

Romans 6:3-4 Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

Dead things do not kick and scream on their way to correction.