Submission to God is the Key

If the Holy Spirit truly directs and inspires your life then you will not fall into the same category as the Pharisees. The key to a successful life is in submitting every aspect of your life to God so that He is the One who is living His life through you. This means that the life that you used to live ceases to be. That means that the degree of control you once had over your own life, is now relinquished.

If you are still in control of your own life, the Holy Spirit is denied access to a great extent. When this is the case, God will show you in a variety of different ways, that living life on your own terms simply do not add up. You may find that you are now suffering, because there were important choices that you should have made somewhere down the line, but you were never alerted as to their importance at the time. When this happens you are likely to get mad at yourself, God and other people; you will take on guilt as you blame yourself for not praying enough or not serving in the church enough or for just being too bad.

But it is not about what you do or don’t do, as such, it has a lot more to do with how much of your being you surrender to the control of God. It all sounds very simple and straightforward, but it depends on how fairly life has treated you so far. If life has dealt you a good hand, you are much more likely to accept God unconditionally - on His terms. But if life seems to have been unfair to you, perhaps even cruel, then there will be a part of your innermost being that will not let go without a fight.

The Assurance of Righteousness

Ultimately, it all comes down to righteousness - according to belief. Righteousness is the assurance that you are alright the way that you are. Righteousness is the assurance that you are loved and accepted. If you do not believe that you are accepted the way that you are at the moment – you will try to attain a sense of righteousness. People try to attain a sense of righteousness according to their behaviour, their works, with an aim to gain the approval of God and/or other people.

Little do people realise that it is their very efforts to be righteous, to be acceptable, that causes their sin-nature to thrive:

⁷ What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, "You shall not covet." ⁸ But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law sin was dead. ⁹ I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. ¹⁰ And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death. ¹¹ For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me. ¹² Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. ¹³ Has then what is good become death to me? Certainly not! But sin, that it might appear sin, was producing death in me through what is good, so that sin through the commandment might become exceedingly sinful.

Romans 7:7-13 nkjv

The Message Bible puts it this way:

⁸ Don't you remember how it was? I do, perfectly well. The law code started out as an excellent piece of work. What happened, though, was that sin found a way to pervert the command into a temptation, making a piece of "forbidden fruit" out of it. The law code, instead of being used to guide me, was used to seduce me. Without all the paraphernalia of the law code, sin looked pretty dull and lifeless,

Romans 7:8 msg

Only the assurance of God’s righteousness, His love and acceptance for us who believe, can subdue the flesh (which the Bible says died with Christ). When the flesh-nature is dead within us – we enter into rest as the peace of God pervades our soul and brings us into intimacy with Him.