How Do I Control My Flesh? | Ron + Hope: Unfiltered

Hey, everybody. How you guys doing? I am very excited about this podcast. I'm going to be handling it by myself, and when I do it by myself, you know, last week I was with Travis Green. A couple of weeks ago, I was hoping I'd doing it together. She is taking care of mom and dad, so pray for her different place in life. Right now, we're trying to manage that well, having to make a lot of difficult decisions concerning some elderly parents who have had some major health difficulties lately. And she's been their primary caretaker. So we're trying to find out how to manage that. The way it looks now, isn't it amazing that my life's no different than your life? We all face the same struggles and we all have to use the same word of God to go and get our answers. And we all need the same grace of God to give us the supply that we need to get through these things. But this is Ron and Hope unfiltered. Pardon me. Real raw and relevant, and I want you to roll with me today. I'm going to take a couple of podcasts and I'm going to do something I really, really, really. Me and Hope wanted this to be fun and wanted it to be banter. We wanted you to peer into kind of how we relate to one another as husband and wife. We were determined that it be unscripted. But, you know, been doing over two years of these things. And when we are together, you know, that's very easy to do because honestly, that's the way we function day to night. We live that way. She's an amazing person to live with and be married to, but in times where we, pardon me. Where our schedule just doesn't allow us to do it together, I sit here and my thing is I'm a teacher, and most podcasts that are doing really well are conversational. And I don't want to turn my podcast into Bible studies. I have the vault. I have YouTube. I have Facebook Live. I have the services. We have tv. There's plenty of ways that if you have any appreciation for the teaching and preaching that I bring, there's plenty of ways for you to get it. I don't want this just be another thing where Ron teaches. But there's been something that's happened in my local church the last couple of weeks that made me feel like I'm scratching an itch a little bit. And if you just hear me out, I think I want to spend a couple of weeks, couple of podcasts, just me, if you would let me. This is a little bit different twist. Certainly nothing to laugh about on the difference between flesh and demonic activity. Not taking a swipe at anybody. I'm just convinced most Christians really don't read their Bible. I don't think that's a one generational thing. I think, period. I think most church people get most of what they get from their pastor. I don't think that's good. I think even if you're not a Bible scholar or I'm not saying that you got to find an hour or two every day to delve into deep Greek word studies, but I think there at least needs to be a devotional life that every man and woman has on a daily basis to just enhance your relationship with God, to connect, to stay close, to stay fresh with God. But as far as really reading the Bible, I'm not convinced. I think now people are more biblically illiterate than they've ever been. And you can see that by, you know, the way they talk, the arguments they make. You can see by the side that they come down on different issues. They have no idea the lifestyle of God versus the worldly lifestyle. And so a lot of that I blame on preachers because the Bible says students become like their teacher. If the teachers aren't showing that there's a deep appreciation for the real meat of the word of God, then the people that they lead probably will not have that either. So there's a lot of it that I need to turn around and point fingers at. We, the people who stand in pulpits are preaching ankle deep stuff. So everybody's walking in ankle deep stuff. But there is meat in this book that will change and revolutionize your life forever and cause you to see things, peer into things, discern things that are unimaginable to those who've just never had a chance for somebody to take this book and break it down. So Sunday, excuse me, let me go back three Sundays ago on the West Coast I was preaching and we streamed and I did a thing talking about make no provision for the flesh. In other words, I'm talking about 180 a turnaround. Those of you been watching it, you know, others you don't know, and that's fine. My podcast group is a lot different. In some ways I've been talking about 180 a turnaround when you're at a place in life where something needs to turn around. And usually if God doesn't get involved, it's not going to happen. So I've been going into what are the true biblical steps of a turnaround. You know, you need your marriage turned around, you need family turned around, you need money turned around, you need business turned around. You know, you need. You need a habit turned around. How do you do that? And the last one that I talked about is when you need a turnaround from a personal weakness. In other words, a personal weakness has sabotaged your life, taken you to a place of calamity, taken you to a low place, a place of loss. Well, how do you turn around? There are different kind of turnarounds. So how do you turn around from a place of personal weakness? And my personal weakness has sabotaged my future. And now I'm left here with broken pieces and rubble laying everywhere. How do I pick up the pieces and have a brighter day tomorrow? And so I started talking about that, and I started talking about the power of the flesh. I could tell in the room when I started talking about the power of the flesh, it was a little bit of a different sound. Because we think all good things come from God and all bad things come from the devil. And we have that dividing mark. But a lot of people don't understand because preachers preach what I call stay with me here. I'm going somewhere very. I think it can change your life. There's this gospel of dualism that I hear preached that just drives me nuts. Turn on preachers. The devil is defeated. The devil is defeated. I went into the enemy's camp. I took back what he stole from me. You know, Jesus is Lord. He's under my feet. Well, you go to another church. We gotta fight the devil. We gotta go to war. He's got a war against the devil. We got to. We gotta overcome the devil. And I'm like, okay, what is it? Is he defeated and Jesus is Lord, or do I gotta get up and fight him because Jesus couldn't handle him? Do I have to get up and finish something Jesus couldn't finish? The fact is, the Bible is clear. There is no good God and co equal bad devil. And they fight every day, and you're the prize. And that comes across in the preaching. And even though preachers may not come out and say there's a gospel of dualism, listen to their words and the way they approach the devil, the way the songs are written about the devil. He's after me. He's coming to get me and I got to fight him. The Bible is clear that God exalted Jesus and gave him a name above all names, that death, hell and the grave have been defeated. The keys of death, hell and the grave have been snatched out of Satan's hands. And Colossians 3 says that God defeated Satan in such a way that an open spectacle has been made out of him and God mocked him. There is no way you can read your New Testament. And with the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ not understand that Jesus work is finished, the enemy is defeated. Death, hell and the grave have lost. The sting has been taken out of death. Oh, death, where is your sting? Everything Jesus needed that was vile and evil and corrupt from the demonic dark world, he. He defeated it in the act of death and resurrection. Period. It's the blood plus nothing. You don't add anything to it. There's no conduct or behavior to add to it because the blood was inefficient. So the shedding of the blood was the end for the enemy. Okay, now. Okay, Pastor. I'm fighting something. Yes, you are. Yes, you are. You're in a very intense battle and you're going to be in that battle till you go to heaven. Now let me tell you, there are three things that I heard all the time in the church I'm growing up. If these are new to you, that's all right. I'm going to explain them. Pardon me. I don't know. I'm having to clear my throat. They called it being saved, sanctified and filled with the Holy Ghost. I could come to a lot of my constituency now, especially a lot of my west coast constituency, which a whole lot of them are newer Christians. And I know they've heard of salvation, but you know, you talking about sanctified and filled with the Holy Ghost, they may not even know what those terms are. So we're taking them there. But saved and sanctified and filled with the Holy Ghost when I was raised was you have this experience of grace, but there's this subsequent experience of grace called being sanctified. It was an event, they had altar calls for it. I remember the second night of camp meeting when I was a kid. Sawdust floor, camp meetings, a tabernacle, no heat, no air. Place would be filled with a couple of thousand people come from all over to those mid July. Why do you have them in July in an open air in the South, Camp meetings, the second night was always preaching on sanctification. Then they would have an altar call to be sanctified. Well, I ran to those altar calls a hundred times because this is what they told me was going to happen. That sanctification, and this is a theological term, was a total eradication of my sin. Nature. In other words, if you've really been saved and you've been sanctified, you're going to live holy and you're not going to want to sin anymore. Well, I come down to get sanctified, and by Tuesday, I done screwed up. I come down to get sanctified again sometime. By Sunday night, I done screwed up. I come down to be sanctified, and next Sunday I needed to be sanctified again. And I just finally got to the place. Just in wisdom, not in theology, but in wisdom, I'm like, something's not right. Because nobody came to God with more sincerity than I did. And the fact is, they would say, if you really still want to do all those things, then you really don't love Jesus. And that is really just a lie. Because the fact is, I love Jesus with all my heart. And the fact is, I was also still struggling. I was still struggling with things I allowed to become habitual sins in my life, and they became much more difficult to shake. When my life was fine doing them, I had no problem with them. But now that I was saved and I wanted to live a life pleasing to God, I was having a difficult time putting these things in my rearview mirror. And I love Jesus, and I had a problem. Let me tell you a second thing. There is a difference between weakness and wickedness. There is a difference. It has to do with intent. I will bend over backwards, break my back, do whatever I got to do to help somebody with a weakness. I know what it is to have weakness. He's been touched with the feelings of our infirmities. There's nobody in the world that doesn't have a dominant weakness. You have dominant strengths, but you also have a dominant weakness, and nobody talks about them. The Bible calls it the sin lay aside every weight. And the sin, the 1, the 199 of them, you got past in a week. But there's that one that you've been dragging for 20 years, the sin that so easily besets or sets you back. There's that thing that usually has gotten such a foothold in your life that it is a very. It's an intense battle to overcome its desires and the conduct and behavior that are the fruit of those desires. Weakness is. I know I'm doing wrong, and I have no intention of changing. And those folk right there, I'm going to go ahead and just let them have the fruits of their labor. But when somebody is crying out for freedom and there is a weakness that they've been overcome with, let those who are Spiritual. Take the brother who has been overcome in a weakness and restore him, lest you yourself be tempted. So I'm all about taking somebody struggling with a weakness and covering them in their weakness. Not a cover up, but covering and protecting them and incubating them from outside persecution while God has the time to do his work of grace in their life. Okay, this is good stuff. Now, if my enemy is not the devil, I want to tell you something. You have one. Romans is known as the greatest dissertation of the explanation of the grace of God in the Bible. It is the Apostle Paul's climactic literary work. It's an amazing book. And they want to talk about chapter five and six, you know, salvation by grace. And then they want to go to chapter eight. Who can separate me for the love of God, but love of God, that is in Christ Jesus. But they got this ugly chapter seven and they don't know what to do with. Talks about things like captive Christians. Yep, sure does. It talks about war within my members. It talks about sin, still dwells in me somewhere. It talks about my fleshly desires warring against my mind, bringing me into the law of captivity, leading me to death. Oh, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me? He's already been saved in chapters five and six. Well, my teachers would tell me he goes all of a sudden to talking about before he got saved. No, he does not. You can't take seven and jerk it back at chapter one. He's saying he's got saved and he is still struggling. And then he finally comes through with some answers in the first part of chapter eight. And then at the end of chapter eight, he's living this glorious life in God, free from condemnation. I want to study the chapter. Nobody studies and nobody reads. And I want to prove to you my point that you are in an intense battle. It is not so much the enemy that has the power to take you down, it is the flesh that has the power to take you down. Now, next week, here's where I'll go. Flesh can quickly deteriorate into demonic activity, okay? So it has to be repented of. It has to be fought. The fact that you are struggling, you are not a bad person. That means you have not given up. And let me read a couple of things to you right here. I hope that you'll stay with me. I hope that you're not bored. Now, let me show you the contrast here. Let me back it up. Walk in the spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. He's not contrasting God And Satan. He's not contrasting Holy Spirit and demons. He's contrasting your born again spirit, man that came from God and your flesh, which is your body suit. Look what he says. Walk in the spirit and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. You already are learning things, okay? This guy right here has lusts. I'm saved. And this thing right here has want to's. And Ron Carpenter's been serving God since the fall of 1986 with an absolute undying passion. As much as I can. And right now, these things have lusts and have desires that if I turned them loose, you wouldn't want to listen to me. Speak no more. Okay? Right now. Well, Pastor, that's so disappointing. I thought you were beyond that. Beyond having a body. The lust of the flesh. Nobody talks about that. The flesh has lust desires. It has want to's. Let's keep reading. Now, the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. So the lust has want to's that are contrary to my born again nature now that I've been saved. And my born again nature has a want to that is contrary to what my body's wanting to do. The two are contrary. They do not like each other and they are against each other. So you got to already understand God is not pivotal. Struggle with God versus devil. He's pivoting the struggle as a war between spirit and flesh. So the war is not external, it's not out there. The war is inside of you. And so if you're going to overcome these things, you're going to have to overcome them from within. I always talk about the kingdom message is to rule your world. But before you can rule your world, you've got to rule you. You got to rule you before you can rule your world. I love teaching like this. But if you are led by the spirit, you're not under the law. That's a whole other teaching. Now, the works of the flesh, all right, you have fruit of the spirit and you have fruit of the flesh. They didn't call it fruit, they call it works. But you shall know a tree by its fruit. I can tell if you are spiritual fruit. I can tell if you're fleshly by your fruit. The fruit does not lie about the tree. You know the root that's under the ground by the fruit that's hanging on the vine. So basically he's saying, here is a dead giveaway. You're about to date a fleshly man. Here is a dead giveaway. You're about to marry a fleshly woman here is a dead giveaway that whenever you're in this crowd, these are the things that break out. So that is a crowd you need to remove yourself from. Are you ready? I'm going to read them to you. You're going to be surprised. The works of the flesh are evident. They're not hidden, they're evident. Here they go. They are adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery. Sorcery is not talking about a witch and a magician. It's talking about deep ability to manipulate, deceive, twist and manipulate. That's in your flesh, not a demon. We haven't even talked about a devil here. This is just still flesh. Hatred, contentions, contentious people all in their flesh. Jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envies, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like of which I tell you beforehand. And as I told you in times past, those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is. The kingdom of God is not the place heaven. The kingdom of God is what Jesus brought into the earth. Behold, I want my kingdom to come. I want my will to be done. Okay, so he brought the kingdom into the world. His kingdom is what? Righteousness, joy and peace in the Holy Ghost. So those who practice these things in their flesh will never have righteousness, joy and peace in the Holy Ghost. You can't be in your flesh and wake up full of joy. You can't be in your flesh and be peaceful at times. One of the greatest ways I know that sinned is I grieve my spirit. In other words, I lose my peace. I hate it when I've sinned. Why? Because of the internal wedge I feel with God and the grieving that goes on in my spirit. I can feel my spirit just going, ugh. Okay, so these are the works of the flesh. They are evident. Now let me go back and tell you how this thing right here works. Okay? Romans 7:16. For what? 15. What I'm doing, I don't understand what I will to do that I do not practice. And the thing I hate, I do. Well, that doesn't belong. Really. Right after chapter five and six, the apostle Paul made a mistake that should have been written. He has been saved, and he is diagramming his struggle. The man who wrote over half the New Testament is opening himself up and saying, let me tell you where our struggle is. And it's a masterpiece. This changed my life because I was about to give up that the Christian life was livable because I thought to really love Jesus, you don't want to do those things no more. And that is just not true. It's no longer me who is doing it, but sin who dwells in me. Now, see, people don't want to hear that. If you've been saved, if I want to do right and don't. And I got things I don't want to do, but I do them. He said there's still some sin in there. Okay, well, where's it at? My spirit's been born again and perfected. So where is the sin one? Let's keep reading. I know that in me, pardon me, parentheses, that is in my flesh, nothing good dwells. Nothing good. No good thing. There is nothing productive. There is no good thing. There is no God agenda in my flesh. Now, I came from the Holiness Church, and some of the folk in my. And my journey there are watching me. Good. But I'm not going to back off this. You know, they wouldn't let the girls cut their hair, and they didn't want people to wear makeup. They didn't want ladies to wear. Most of the rules were against. The ladies didn't want to wear jewelry. You know, the men had to wear, you know, sleeves, a certain size. There was even certain colors. You never were allowed with your colors. And the lady's dress had to come down a certain length. And it just dawned on me, what are they trying to do? They're trying to save the flesh. Let me tell you something, spirit. You have been saved. You must be born of water and the Spirit. Jesus told Nicodemus, so you're born again of the Spirit, and it's perfected. So the first part of you in your trinity, spirit, soul and body, you have been perfected. The second part of you is your soul. It's your mind, will, emotions, intellect, knowledge, experiences. Okay? That is being saved. When you go down to the altar and you make Jesus your Lord and Savior, your mind and your flesh has not been touched. And until you've renewed your mind, the lifestyle will not change. That's why Romans 14, verse 1 says, Be patient with those who have weak faith or accept those who have weak faith without passing judgment on disputable matters. People new in the faith do disputable things. Don't judge them, love them, and give them time to grow. Don't expect somebody to get up from the altar and act like you who've been serving God 33 years, because when you do, they haven't grown there. They haven't gotten to that Place of freedom. They've not gotten rid of all their baggage. So now what you've done is you've forced them to be a hypocrite because they can't show it to you. So you've taught them how to hide it. Preach. Ron Carpenter. Okay, there's still some sweat. Nothing in my flesh is good. The will to do good is present with me, but how to perform it I do not find. So my want to and my performance are at odds with one another. Okay. For the good I will to do, I do not do. And the evil that I will not to do. That's what I practice. Now, if I continue to do this, I agree that sin still dwells in me. He said that twice. I find then a law. Wait a minute. We done gone from sin and we've deteriorated to a law. Now I find a law that evil is present with me, the one who wants to do good. Whenever you get ready to make a God decision, the flesh always wants to give you an option. I find then a law. A law. The one who's about to do good, evil is right there present with me. Boy, people don't preach that. This is a Christian. Are you ready? For I delight in the law of God according to my inward man, my born again spirit. But I see another law in my members. Listen carefully. Warring against my mind, bringing me into captivity to the law of sin, which is in my members. I see my flesh sending desires to my mind, bringing me in captivity to the law of sin. Are you ready for this? It's my original cliche, captive Christians. There are people who don't even believe there is such a thing and it can even exist. I'm reading it straight. I have this law in my members, warring against my mind, bringing me into captivity. I'm born again in my spirit, but the rest of me is locked in a struggle and I am bound. Listen to the cry, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me? That's a cry. This is a cry for a man who's already accepted Christ as his Savior. He goes down into eight, chapter five. And there's the answer 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. To be spiritually minded is life and peace. Be careful what you consume, because what you constantly consume will consume you. I try to be so careful with my phone because I don't want to consume so much of my phone. That my phone consumes me. I don't watch a lot of tv. I know some people that can't get out from in front of a screen. Because what you consume all the time will turn around and attempt to consume you. Whatever your eyes are full of, you're full of. Because the eye's the lamp of the body. Solomon said, I think Ecclesiastes 10. I will put no evil thing before my eyes. This is where I go back to 2015. Those of you who've never heard my teaching on Mind World, I realized whether or not I fulfill the lust of the flesh or the lust of the spirit, the desires of the spirit come down to my mind. My mind's in the middle. Flesh is sending signals. Spirit's sending signals. My head's in the middle. And it gets to make the decision. If any two of you agree, it shall be done on earth. Whatever the mind comes into agreement with is what is carried out. So the desire that is stronger wins. So the desire you want to lose, you have to starve. The desire you want to win, you have to feed. People are going to church now, once every six weeks. You're not starving your flesh, you're starving your spirit. The flesh will win. People are not reading their Bible. People are flipping through social media. You're not starving your flesh, you're starving your spirit. How did I end up here? Why am I crawling out of this bed again? Why do I end up with this type of guy, this type of girl? Why did I do that after I said I wouldn't? Why have I gone back to this lifestyle? Because you're starving the wrong one and you're feeding the wrong one. I realized he who sets their mind, that word set is a medical term, as in setting a broken bone. So the Bible is saying that your mind is broken and you have to set your mind on whatever it is the spirit desires. So I take this right here and the Washington, my mind by the washing of the water of the word. So this right here becomes a cleansing agent. It's not something that you read as religious duty. It's not something that you memorize out of religious duty. It is a washing agent to wash your mind because you are inundated with corruption and filth and worldliness and secularism and Antichrist spirit all day. There's got to be some point where you take this and renew your mind and wash your mind with the water of the Word and set your mind on what the spirit desires. When you do that, your mind becomes aligned with your spirit and you will find as you grow, doing right will become more natural than doing wrong because the desires of the flesh have been so weakened that they're under your feet. And you know what it is to live free. A victorious life. And you may struggle with an occasional weakness, but you have driven wickedness far from you. I'm going to continue this next week. I've stopped at a half hour on the dot and I'm going to go into the difference between weakness and wickedness and try to expose it to you. Because we've also got, I think, a faulty concept of demonic activity because of all the movies that are out on it. And here again, I'm going to come back to the church. Hollywood is putting out all kind of craziness when it comes to the spirit realm. And pastors never talk about. They're scared to touch anything spiritual. They want to give you a cup of coffee and they want you to be comfortable. There is a spirit world whirling around your head that is waiting for the opportunity to take you captive. And you've got to be aware of that. The Bible says, beware of the enemy's devices. What is the difference between your flesh demonic activity? Come back with me. We'll finish it up next week. Listen, this has been Ron and Hope, but really just Ron today, Unfiltered. Give me one more week of the serious stuff and me and Hope will get you back laughing again with the funny stuff. Tell somebody about this who's in a struggle. Tell somebody about this who says, you know what? I've quit on church because I can't live that life. Nobody could live that life. That's why Jesus had to come live it for us. And we embrace his life because he's the only person that lived it perfectly. And so I just want you to know there's grace for you. I want you to know there's freedom for you. But you've got to understand how God built you, that you are a trinity built in the image of your heavenly Father, who is a father, Son and a spirit. You're a spirit soul and a body. And you got to understand how all those things work. And once you understand that freedom's on the way. I love you and I care about you. Running Hope Unfiltered, Real, raw and unrelev. Don't relevant. Don't miss next week. Love you guys. I'll see you then.