If you walk by the Spirit, you will not let those bad desires come to maturity.

You will nip them in the bud.

God-centered desires will get the ascendancy and crowd out those old man-centered and world-centered desires.

You will have victory.

I don't mean no war, but I mean that in the war, the Holy Spirit by and large, is winning.

I think we all know the feeling of wanting to do what's right, but being pulled in the other direction.

That particular tug of war struggle is real. I'm Dan Kroover. In this episode

of Light and Truth, John Piper opens Galatians 5 to show how the spirit keeps that part of us

we call the flesh from gaining ground. This message was originally delivered at Bethlehem Baptist Church on June 19, 1983.

The upshot of last Sunday's message was that when I get up in the morning,

I ought to feel as much concern for your welfare as I do for my own.

And that is devastating to me because it is so incredibly hard.

It's a hopeless feeling to know that you have to make the measure of your love for others,

how much you care for yourself.

And so many of you might have gone out last week feeling like instead of freedom,

Christianity was a very great weight on your back.

And I think this text today, verses 16 to 18 of Galatians 5, is intended to help lift the load

if you feel it weighing down.

The secret is to walk by the spirit.

That's the key phrase, isn't it?

In verse 16. If the Christian life looks too hard,

we must remember it is not primarily we who are called to live it, but rather God called to

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