Last year I uploaded an article on how to keep your New Year’s resolutions. It can be found here. While studying this morning I found some old notes that inspired me on a similar line. Below are the notes and then some facts I drew from scriptures that are at the end of the article.

What is will power?  It wasn’t made to battle against principalities and powers.  It wasn’t given to overcome the flesh.  It was made so that we can say yes to God, so that we can have free choice.  Of course, I can obey the Bible and do what God says, because God is my ability to win over sin and evil; I draw from Him all I need.  It is not improving my flesh but depending on His strength and walking in the Spirit that gives me the ability.  Because of this, all I need do is believe and receive, and what I have been is the past makes no difference.

Keys to scripturally gain control over your flesh:

• The power of the old man and the flesh was already broken so that I am no longer its slave.  I can do it!
• Do it by faith not works.  Focus on the Spirit and relationship more than outward things.  You are no longer under law (rules) but under grace (relationship & fellowship).
• I walk not in newness of spirit and not oldness of letter.  I am joined to Him in order to bear fruit for God.  The fruit of the Spirit comes only by abiding in constant fellowship with Him and yielding to Him.
• No matter how much I love God and desire to do His will, my flesh is still flesh and has no power to obey the word (which is spiritual) and do what I desire to do.
• Consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God.  Believe that your flesh no longer has the mastery and that you CAN be in control.
• It is not in me (in my own flesh or will power) to do what I want to do.  The willing is present, but the doing is not.  There is a law of sin and death that dwells in my flesh.  Because of this God had to provide an alternate way of victory.
• The only way to not carry out the desire of the flesh is to walk in and through the spirit (this is abiding in Him, joined to Him, walking in newness of spirit and not oldness of letter).
• Jesus did what I couldn’t do and overcame my flesh for me.  Now I can walk out my victory with Him, yielding to Him and trusting in Him in each instance.
• Now I can fulfill His requirements and live in control of my life when I walk according to the spirit and not the flesh.
• I am under no obligation to follow my flesh.
• He who has given life to my spirit will also give life to my body as I yield to Him.  Since I live by the Spirit I also walk by the Spirit.
• My victory over the world (including my flesh) is through Faith.  Faith is the victory that overcomes the world.  Faith is the victory to me being in control over my flesh.
• Through the law I died to the law that I might live to God.
• I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live but He who lives through me.
• The life I live in the flesh I live by faith in Him who loves me and did everything for my victory and is there to walk it out with me and through me.
• I began by the spirit and I walk out my salvation in the same manner.  Since I live by the Spirit I also walk by the Spirit.  He who gave life to my spirit will quicken also my mortal body so that I can live and do what I want to do rather than what my flesh demands.
• This all works by faith.  I see it in the Word, I believe it and speak it over myself.  Then I walk it out.
• A key to victory in walking by faith is to believe it and speak it even before I am living it perfectly.  Faith is the victory that overcomes the world.

Here are the scriptures that the above keys were taken from.

Romans 6:6-7 – Knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.

Romans 6:10-13 – For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.  Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.  Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.

Romans 6:14-15 – For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.  What then?  Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace?  May it never be!

Romans 7:4, 6, 14 – Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God.  But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter.  For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin.

Romans 7:18-20, 22-23 – For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not.  For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want.  But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.  For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members.

Galatians 5:16-18, 24-25 – But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.  For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.  But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law.  Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.

Romans 8:1-4 – Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.  For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

Romans 8:10-12 – If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness.  But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.  So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh—

1 John 5:4-5 – For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.  Who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

Galatians 2:19-21; 3:1-3 – For through the Law I died to the Law, so that I might live to God.  I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.  I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly.  You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?  This is the only thing I want to find out from you: did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith?  Are you so foolish?  Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?