Think Again!

Chapter 10: The Difficulties of Life • 91

So we work hard, pursue degrees, and try to be famous so we will be loved and admired, but become workaholics and narcissists. We try to please everyone and avoid hurting their feelings so we will be cherished and appreciated, but become co-dependent . We demand to be in control of our environment and become passive-aggressive . We fight aging and death, becoming obsessive about our appearance, what we eat, and how much we exercise. We try to protect our families at all costs, and become compulsive or paranoid . Waging war by the flesh is easy to spot: it is full of desperation, anxiety, and disorder. It is constantly scrambling and never at peace. Modern-day America is the most worry-prone culture in history, with 200 classified forms of mental illness. 52 We attempt to compensate for our fears with shopping, work, food, recreation, video games, drugs, achievements, and other addictions. God loves us so much that he will frustrate our attempts to fight with weapons by the flesh. When we pursue adequacy on our own, he takes us through the desert . When we explore answers on our own, he allows us to experience confusion . When we seek security on our own, he allows us to go through hard times . When we secure pleasure on our own, he shows us the destructiveness of sin so we realize it’s not as fun as we imagined. As we go through the desert, confusion, hard times, and destruction, he forges us into Christlikeness, providing we are willing to cooperate with him in the process. 53 Weapons with Firepower The weapons of the flesh are too weak to conquer the problems of life. We need weapons that have supernatural, divine power. We can pursue inner calm and poise by controlling our outward circumstances (by the flesh), or we can find inner calm and poise through inward conditioning (cooperating with the Spirit to forge