Gal.5:16-18 – But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the desire of the flesh is against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, in order to keep you from doing whatever you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law.

Now these verses get down to where we really live in our day to day world. We are still living under the influence of the natural man (our flesh) or we are being influenced more and more by the new man energized by the Holy Spirit. The battle is fought through the things we love or desire which is the very heart of our conversion. This is the most shocking and convincing effect of the gospel, a person who has been born again has new desires. In other words their will has been dramatically impacted by the gospel. Simply stated, we love different things than we used to. We have been liberated to follow our desires, the difference is that now we desire the things of the Spirit. Here is how the BELIEVER’S BIBLE COMMENTARY describes this phenomenon.

“The believer should walk in the Spirit, not in the flesh. To walk in (or by) the Spirit is to allow Him to have His way. It is to remain in communion with Him. It is to make decisions in the light of His holiness. It is to be occupied with Christ, because the Spirit’s ministry is to engage the believer with the Lord Jesus. When we thus walk in the Spirit, the flesh, or self-life, is treated as dead. We cannot be occupied at the same time with Christ and with sin….This verse and those that follow show that the flesh is still present with the Christian; the idea of the eradication of the sinful nature (the influence of the flesh) is thus refuted.”

So how does this look in your life? For me it was a pretty radical shift in what I desired. One day I was consumed with smoking pot and drinking alcohol, the next day I wanted to read my Bible and talk about Jesus. The only explanation is that my nature had been radically changed. How do you maintain this new life? It is really quite simple, you have to feed those new desires.