Galatians 5:16 This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.
Sojourn is defined as a temporary stay. It does not feel like a stay does it? It feels like a journey and when it is used in the bible it is most often used in reference to traveling in a place that is not your home.
We are born into this world and for the longest time it is all we know. This world is our home but yet we are promised that it is not. It is all we know. This is the life we experience every day. Yet the promise is a new life, an abundant life, but it is here in this world where we are born. We are still here temporarily yet the amount of time that we spend “in the Spirit” makes us feel like that life is where we are sojourners.
I have spent hundreds of hours writing thousands of words and hundreds of pages in describing how to “Walk in the Spirit”. I lived out that writing over years and when I got through, I felt I had not explained anything. Words cannot replace doing.
This world we live in is a familiar place. It is literally all we know in sight, sound, taste and touch. It is sensual. This verse in Galatians says as much. Walking in the spirit is a denial of those senses, or at least those things that our senses lead us to do. Walking in the spirit is the closest thing we have as Christians to being home. It is all we have in this world that belongs to our home to come.
We should experience as much as possible this “Walking in the Spirit” while we are in this strange land so that when we go home, we will be at home.
Very well said, dear brother. Before I went to South America, I did so much research that very little about the culture or language took me by surprise.
However, what I was not prepared for was the experience of the place itself: the Andes, the vast high plateau of Bolivia, the immense salt flat in Bolivia, the extreme altitude of some of the cities and the jungle. So, when we get to our true home, what wondrous surprises await us there?