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Key Bible Verse: Live according to your new life in the Holy Spirit. Then you won't be doing what your sinful nature craves (Galatians 5:16). Bonus Reading: Galatians 5:16-25

I once heard of a mental hospital that had devised an unusual test to determine when patients were ready to go back into the world.

They brought candidates for release into a room where a tap was turned on, sending water pouring out over the floor. Next they handed the patient a mop and told him to mop up the water. If the patient had a firm enough grasp of reality to turn off the tap before mopping up the water, he was ready to go out into society. But if he started mopping up the water without turning off the tap, they knew that more treatment was needed.

You and I would never miss such an obvious step as shutting off the tap before mopping the floor. But the fact is that many Christians live their lives in a way that is—from a spiritual point of view—equally absurd.

Each of us as believers has been given the mop of God's truth. We've been told to use it to help mop up the evil in the world around us. But we can only be useful if we first have enough sense to shut off the flow of evil that pours into our own hearts from the outer arena of battle that the Bible calls "the world" and from the inner arena it calls "the flesh."

—Ray Stedman in Spiritual Warfare

My Response: The primary taps pouring into my life are …

Thought to Apply: It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us. —C.S. LEWIS (British scholar & writer)

Adapted from Spiritual Warfare (Discovery, 1975) by permission.

Copyright © 2006 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine. Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.

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Prayer for the Week

Lord, give me the discernment and determination to make my conduct consistent with my beliefs.

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