Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.

Romans 8:12-13 (NIV)

I find myself in a season of deep surrender. By this I mean that in my prayer time with Jesus, there is a growing sense there is an area of my heart that has resisted His work.

I find we often do not have language for the work Jesus wants to do in us. Because we are unaware of our hearts and God’s desire to transform them, we assume the work God cares about amounts to Christian service or good behavior. We read passages like the one above and say, “putting to death the misdeeds of the body means not sinning and getting involved.” But if this were so, Paul would not have dedicated an entire chapter in his letter to the Romans explaining to us such an approach to live is not possible.

If you look back on Paul’s progression of thought leading up to this passage, you will see that trying to not sin and be good is part of our flesh. It exists in the domain of our soul that is separate from the Spirit. And because of this, it cannot do anything. The good it wants to do it fails to do, and the very bad it tries not to do it does. This is what life is like when we mistakenly think our job in the Christian life is to not sin and get involved. And it is why many Christian lives are characterized by defeat and not victory.

So what then is our job? It is to surrender to the work the Spirit of God is doing. I recently talked about the fact the purpose of the Christian life is to be conformed to the image of Jesus, and far from mere behavior modification, this involves transformation of who we are on the inside. It involves Jesus going to the deep places and bringing healing. And our job is to let him. This is what it means to “put to death the misdeeds of the body by the Spirit.”

Many of us are trying to be the fruits of the Spirit. We think our job is to be patient and kind and long-suffering and full of self-control and even joy. But all of these things are fruit of the Spirit. They are the result of the work of the Spirit in our lives. Our job is not to be fruit: it is to allow the Spirit to do the necessary work to produce the fruit only He can produce. It is this putting to death of the things within us by surrendering to the things in our hearts and lives he wants to heal.

This is where the rubber meets the road in the true Christian life. It really does not matter what you are doing as far as the Christian life is concerned. All that matters what He is doing. And more importantly, what you are allowing him to do. I find time and time again this makes the difference between a life going nowhere and an extravagantly abundant life.

Let us then do the most important thing we can with our lives this day: ask Jesus what he wants to do in us, and when he makes his will clear through a growing sense there is an area within us we have refused to surrender to him, surrender. There is certainly no. better way to live.