By Michelle Kidwell

What does it mean to crucify the flesh? It is a question many new Christians have asked themselves. It is in fact letting go of the fleshly ways, and allowing yourself to live a more spiritual life. Crucifying the flesh does not generally happen over night.

Often times it’s the little things we often have trouble stopping.

Maybe its cursing for someone or allowing yourself to fully trust Jesus, when you are facing a challenge in your life. Often we find ourselves with this complex that says we can "fix the problem better" than out Savior.

There have been great Christians who have had to learn to crucify the flesh, men like Franklin Graham and Women like Joni Earickson Tada, but the truth of the matter is crucifying the flesh is something all Christians have to learn to do.

We have to let go of those earthly ties, those fleshly ways that we tend to want to hang on to, but if we want to grow as Christians we have to allow ourselves to let go of that way.

In 1999 I saw Jillian Ryan come to our church and perform the play and the music based on her life experience, and learned just how crucifying the flesh can change a person.

Jillian had been abused as a child, shuffled from Foster Home to Foster Home until a loving family finally adopted her, but even then she could not allow herself to feel the love, it was like she had built a wall and for years she ran from love.

She got into situations that she did not think she could ever be forgiven for, until finally she found herself giving her heart to Jesus, and the transformation was remarkable. The Lord had not only saved her, but had brought her biological brother back into her life, and gave her a loving husband and a beautiful baby.

In my early walk with Christ, I was excited about everything that I was learning, Christ was amazing, but as I grew in my faith I got into this comfort zone that allowed me to fall into the old fleshly ways. I was holding onto some of the same strongholds I had let go of before, thinking that it was okay.

I found myself getting too comfortable in the fact that I was saved, and felt that I could start hanging out with those who were unequally yoked, not to witness to them, but just to hang out, and often times they were the very people who would drag me down.

I have times even today that sometimes the flesh gets in the way, and I allow myself to do something that I know I should not be doing. It doesn’t matter what it is, how small, because I know in my heart I am going against what I believe, and yet I try to justify it to myself.

In Crucifying the flesh I had to learn to let some things go, books that I did not find that fit my Christian ideas were the hardest, things I knew Christ would frown against, yet I found it hard not to read those books. I have always been an avid reader, being able to read from the time I was three and a half gave me an insatiable appetite for the written word, but I had to learn that some things just were not acceptable and that was part of Crucifying the flesh.

In allowing myself to see what it acceptable and not acceptable to read, I have opened myself to many great reads in the Christian genre, I discovered Joni Eareckson Tada, Patsy Claremont, Beth Moore, Max Lucado, Charles Stanley and the list goes on and on.

I have also allowed myself to feel that I can disagree with some of what they say without feeling guilty because even people of faith see things differently.

I used to attend a Women’s Bible Study put on by one of the elderly women in our church, and not being a morning person I sometimes found it challenging to pull myself out of bed early in the morning, and walk the distance from my grandma Nonna’s house to the church.

Nonna’s house was on a dangerous stretch of highway, but I managed to make it to church safely, and found that in crucifying the flesh, not allowing myself to stay in bed, I was getting the spiritual bread I needed, and getting fed in a deep and profound way.

Letting go of the fleshly ways was by no means easy for me, but in the end it was worth it. I was living as the Lord wanted me to live and in the long run I knew I was going to be rewarded with a closer relationship with the Lord by allowing myself to crucify the flesh.

In no way can we compare our crucifying the flesh to what Christ did for us. When we crucify the flesh we are doing so in a spiritual sense, we are allowing ourselves to let go of those negative impacts in our lives, and when Christ was crucified it was physical and mental.

It was our God laying down his life for us, for our sins, Jesus a man incapable of sinning took on our sins, when he was crucified.

When you talk about crucifying the flesh you are talking about letting go of that fleshly part of you that wants you to do those things you know in your heart Jesus does not want you to do.

Crucifying the flesh is a necessary part of the Christian experience, because if you do not allow yourself to crucify the flesh you do not allow yourself to grow in Christ, instead you allow yourself to stagnate, and in so doing you are letting yourself live in a dangerous spiritual way.

Copyright © 2007 Michelle Kidwell. All rights reserved.