A New Spirit: The Ezekiel series, part 67 (36:27)

Last week I talked about how I did my parental duty and instilled the love of star wars into my child. Now let me talk about one of the stupidest things in star wars. And it comes from the same place that all of the stupidest things in star wars come from: the new Disney movies. This one is flies right into the face of common sense.It comes from the inner turmoil experienced by the villain of Episode 7: Kylo Ren. Kylo is on the dark side. He seeks to prove himself a true, fully committed disciple of the dark side throughout the movie, and throughout the film he makes some comments. One of them is: Forgive me. I feel it again. The pull to the light.Throughout the film, Kylo is dealing with this “quote-unquote-temptation” to turn good, and this is one of the lines he uses.Now, to write a line like that betrays any understanding of how the human heart actually operates. We want to be good, but we wrestle with the temptation to be bad.Like it says in Galatians 5: the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh…to keep you from doing the things you want to do. The Bible says we “want” to do good, but it’s our sinful desires that pull us back. But Kylo wants to be bad and wrestles with a temptation to be good. It’s completely backwards. It’s like saying, “Pray for me, I’m really tempted to eat this salad when I know I should order a double cheeseburger.”There is not something naturally inside of us that pulls us toward righteousness and away from evil. What is inside of us pulls us to the flesh, to our natural instincts, toward selfishness and evil, toward…the dark side.We aren’t tempted toward the light. The decision to pursue the light does not come from something within us naturally; but something that is given to us by God.To be drawn toward the light requires God to put a new heart and a new spirit within us. Which sounds like what we’ve been studying as we go through the book of Ezekiel, and it’s something you’ll find out about today on the Cross References podcast.0:00 - Introduction3:00 - The Spirit11:00 - The Spirit Empowers You14:15 - The Spirit Seals You17:30 - The Spirit Guides You27:00 - The Spirit is a Point of Connection Between You and God32:00 - Next Time34:15 - A Note about Hearing from the SpiritIf you want to get in touch with me, send an email to [email protected]