There are three; three parts to me. First reigns God in my Spirit and in my heart, Second lives Spirit or Soul; the breath and thought hidden deep within, Third is Self, the Fleshy; sin in-filtered enemy of God, slave to all things unrighteous, condemned to death. These create me, and in me with these three rages an ever present war, perhaps hidden from the worlds eyes, but a constant and unavoidable reality in the eyes of the Spirit.
Self is a vile enemy of my soul, she attacks unmercifully, seeking for some witty scheme to cause my soul to fall for her-to befriend her in her self absorbed world. She once wrote:
“Never has my eye burned brighter, nor my heart raged with such a deep furry, for my inner person, yea my very soul to whom I had made friend and comrade finds herself seeking deeper things, beyond me; beyond what I seek and desire. I pray thee tell me, what has captured the heart of my inner person so much that she dares to stand apart from me-rejecting my flesh and the things that I am in this world; the woman I should be, the things I should do and say. She dares to treat me as though I am some vile, unholy subject of this life, filled with unrighteous desires which are abhorred in the eyes of some supposed higher being. She looses appreciation for the things I accomplish, and does not even care to acknowledge the wonderful things I say, write and imagine, not even the things in which I do good unto other beings. It is as if she wishes to have nothing to do with me.”
-Self
This is the heart of Self; the fleshy, sin in-filtered enemy of God. She is the cause of the heaviness of my heart. She has become my enemy and so the battle rages ever onward, hardly ceasing, even through the dead of night while not even the moon cares to light the heavy dank hood of an almost hopeless brawl. Self, though she claims her innocence, is sin in flesh; her cravings and desires founded upon the lusts in the world, approval of men, and exaltation and praise of herself. In many ways she sees herself as a god: desiring to be treated, thought of, and approved as such. The world; her momentary lover, cradles her promising riches, power, and life, all of which she seeks after through night and day. She is the empress of life, powerless over nothing save natural forces which are in her mind nothing more than chemical reactions unavoidable even so by the most powerful of all Deity. She is flesh apart from the Holy and perfect Spirit: adulterer, master of untruth, wrath, hatred, strife, pride and indulgence. She dares to reject the supreme, pure, perfect and Holy Deity of God rather thinking of herself as an equal if not above this ‘unseen, unproven, master of the universe.’ Not only does she dare to reject the perfect and holy Deity of God, but also has she the audacity to require of my soul the same rejection of God. It is this underlying command that causes the ever raging battles between self and my heart.
If I have learned anything through these last five months, it comes down to this: through devote, faithful, passionate seeking after the heart of Christ you begin to see a vileness of your heart that you would have been blinded to ordinarily. For in discovering the heart of Christ my eyes are being opened to the heart of self-being Me. When Jesus revealed a part of His perfect purity and love, so was a sin revealed in my heart. For the more I grow and mature in Christ I find the war magnifying with ever more battles and various tribulations.
Self is one, but I am two-First Christ in me and then my spirit; both armed for battle. My greatest enemy is not hiding under my bed, tormenting me with hideous whispers through the dark nights, it is not some ugly beast that waits for me in the allies of this city, it is no demon, no figment of imagination-it is hidden, disguised within me often as some angelic wisdom and reasoning. Whereby she takes me by surprise and I find myself giving my heart to the thing of flesh, my countenance of purity and holiness once-again spotted and defiled before God.
The war will not cease until the day He comes for me. The battles may grow graver: of a venomous malice and she will grow wiser through every fray, but may that also be proof of the work of Christ in my heart. It is a lovely thing to see the beauty and perfection of the Lord, but in coherence to that I must also embrace it, rejecting self, understanding in fullness the underlying, disguised wickedness which separates me from God.
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