Two Desires at War — Galatians 5:16–26 | Season 1, Episode 12

Why do you keep doing what you don't really want to do? Why does change feel so inconsistent? And have you ever felt your heart genuinely divided over something?

Paul has an answer — and it's not what most people expect.

In this episode of the Set Free Stay Free Bible study podcast, host Matt Dawson works through the second half of Galatians 5, where Paul names what every believer quietly knows but rarely talks about: there are two desires constantly at war inside you. The flesh and the Spirit. And they never take a break.

This isn't about trying harder. It's about learning to walk in sync with the Holy Spirit — surrendering moment by moment to what He's producing in you rather than feeding what your flesh keeps demanding. The fruit of the Spirit isn't a checklist you complete. It's what grows when you get out of the way.

Using the SOAP method (Scripture, Observation, Application, Prayer), Matt walks through the works of the flesh versus the fruit of the Spirit — and makes a distinction that changes everything. The flesh list is full of outcomes. The Spirit list is full of desires. One is about feeding yourself. The other is about surrender. And only one leads to the freedom Paul has been fighting for all season long.

This Galatians Bible study is for anyone who is tired of trying harder and ready to learn what walking in step with the Spirit actually looks like.

In this episode:

• Why the flesh and the Spirit are constantly fighting — with no days off
• The critical difference between the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit
• Why the fruit of the Spirit can't be manufactured — only produced
• The three-legged race illustration of keeping in step with the Spirit
• What it looks like to crucify the passions of the flesh in real, daily life
• A closing prayer for choosing the Spirit over self in every moment

📖 Passage: Galatians 5:16–26 (New Living Translation)

🔍 Keywords: Galatians Bible study, Bible study podcast, SOAP method Bible study, Christian Bible study, Scripture-first Bible study, Set Free Stay Free, Matt Dawson, walking through the Bible, Christian discipleship podcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

So, why do you keep doing what you don't really want to do? And why does change feel sometimes impossible or at least really inconsistent? And have you ever felt your heart divided over something? Well, as we're going to look at today in Galatians, Paul says there's a reason for that. It's because you actually have two desires at war within you. He calls it out the flesh and the spirit. And guys, freedom isn't about trying harder, but it is about learning how to walk with the Holy Spirit. Welcome to the Set Free, Stay Free Bible Study Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Dawson. We're going to be looking at Galatians. This is episode, I believe, 11. Today we're going to be using the soap framework, Scripture, Observation, Application, Prayer. If you don't know anything about that, I'll put a link in the description to a video I did about soaping through scripture. Actually, there's a PDF you can download for free as well about uh learning how to soap through scripture on your own. Uh but we're in Galatians 5 in the second half of the chapter today. Before we get started, let's pray. Heavenly Father, I thank you so much for your word and the way in which it challenges us. Let it just reveal itself to us today what you'd have us to know and uh give us the wisdom to walk in it. You've set us free. May we continue to stay free. And we pray all this in your name, Jesus. Amen. Okay, guys, we're gonna jump in. Uh, we finished the last episode by talking about how angry Paul was about people trying to do things in their own power, that they've been set free because of what Christ has done for them. And we're gonna continue on today with verse 16 to the end of the chapter, chapter five, um, about what does it look like to live in freedom and what's at stake as you fight to live in freedom. Not by your effort, but by what you're gonna find out is surrender. Here we go. Verse 16. So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won't be doing what your sinful nature craves. Your sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the spirit wants. And the spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other. So you're not free to carry out your good intentions. But when you are directed by the Spirit, you are not under the obligation of the law of Moses. Let me pause there for a minute. I love giving the visual example. You guys remember growing up in the, oh well, you may not remember growing up in the 80s and 90s, but I do. And I love the the old com the old uh adage where there used to be the little angel and devil on the shoulders, you know. Uh I love, I think the Emperor's New Groove and Kronk has the two. That's one of my favorite pictures, is the two, the little angel and devil uh talking to him. But that was a big deal, right? Where you're like, should I do this or should I do that? And the little angel's like, yeah, we should totally love those people. And the devil's like, nah, man, let's go. So this honestly, that was a visualization of something that goes back, I mean, all the way to the to the earliest parts of us understanding Christianity as the Holy Spirit resides in us, that there are now these warring factions that are giving us different desires. Okay, so he goes on to say, the spirit, sorry, the flesh, the flesh has these desires in you that are not at all what God wants. And yet, and yet God has now placed the Holy Spirit in you, and he gives you desires that are not at all what the flesh really wants. And he goes on to say, these two things are constantly fighting. Now, I think that's an important word to distinguish. They don't take a break, they are always at war until your dying breath, until you have a new body in heaven, you are going to be in this battle. They are constantly fighting each other. And I love this. He says, Don't trust your good intentions. Don't trust those good intentions, trust the spirit, trust the word of God. He says, When you're directed by the Spirit, okay, you're not under obligation to the law of Moses, which goes back to the first four chapters of Galatians about their argument about circumcision and living according to the law. Not going to re-go do that, but just go back and catch up on the episodes. All right. Let's go to verse 19. It says, When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear, meaning the outcomes look like this: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like this. This is not a comprehensive list. He says, etc. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the kingdom of God. Verse 22. But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there. Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit's leading in every part of our lives. Let us not become conceited or provoke one another or be jealous of one another. There are a lot of things that we can observe in this text. But I want us to focus in, as we said before, about this constant fighting, about the nature, if you will, of your spirit, your sinful nature versus your spirit nature inside of you because of the Holy Spirit. And he basically is going to give to paint two pictures. Okay. So I want you to notice, we're not going to go through the list again, but I want you to notice everything that's listed in the sinful nature category are the outcomes of decisions. Okay. I want you to notice that. I mean, I think it's really important. Divisiveness, envy, fighting, quarreling, drunkenness. These are all things that, well, how do you get drunk? Well, you have a drink, and then you have more than a drink, and then you have more than a drink, and you have more than a drink, and more, and then you become drunk. Which goes back to why maybe drinking, drinking necessarily may not be the initial problem, but it's the drunkenness that comes because you were following your sinful nature. Does that make sense? The partying, the impure, the impurity, the sinful, uh, the sexual impurity, the all these things are going to come out because of decisions that you make, which goes back to Paul is not arguing against who you are because you've experienced some of those outcomes. He says it has to go with you are feeding the flesh. You are living in such a way that you're feeding whatever those desires are that bring out those outcomes. And let's just face it, every one of that list, I'm not going to go through it, but every one of that list has everything to do with you feeding the desires for you. That's it. It makes it real easy. Every one of the things on that list means that you did what you wanted to do for you and it doesn't matter. That's it. It's about feeding your desire for you, for power to be right, to have pleasure, to get whatever you want, to do what you want. It's all about you. And as long as you feed that desire, those are the outcomes. He says, These are the outcomes of what that looks like. Now I want you to notice it's a very different kind of list when he says, What does the Holy Spirit produce in you? Well, he produces love. Well, what does love look like? Well, love looks like a ton of things. He doesn't go down the results of what love looks like in your life. He's talking about the fact that it's produced in you, meaning that it's a different desire. He gives the desire of patience, of peace, of kindness, of goodness, of self-control, of gentleness. It's a very different list. Practicing and living out gentleness might look very different, right? For for your life in different situations with different people. Sexual morality looks the same. Sexual morality is like this is all sexual morality. I mean, there's a handful of things, but it's that's all sexual morality. No, he says the desire, because you're just that desire is just feeding yourself. The other desire is like, no, no, you have a desire to be patient. Your desires are to love someone, maybe who's hard to love. And so what we see here, and I want you to see the word that that matters, it says that the Holy Spirit produces these things in you, meaning that it's the work of Christ through his spirit produced in you, producing in you the things that you need to follow. So so understand it's not even about him dictating the outcomes as much as it is about, well, when we surrender, I was gonna go on to talk about that in a minute, when we surrender to let the Holy Spirit produce those things in us, our lives are gonna look very, very different. Matter of fact, a living says there's no law against these things. Why? The whole 80% of the book was about following laws, following rules. And he says, There's no rules about this. There's no rules about this. He's like, that there's no rules against the things that God wants to produce in you so that you can live the freedom that he's called you to live. Now, again, how does that happen? How does it look to surrender and live in that kind of freedom where we're walking by the Spirit and with the Spirit? He goes on to say, when we nail the passions and desires of our sinful nature to the cross, meaning there does have to be some decision, there has to be some sort of definitive choice to say, I'm not going to live to please myself. I'm not going to live with me at the center. I want to live with him at the center. So those things get killed. Those things get put to death. There's lots of words that he uses in lots of different letters. Those things get crucified, nailed to the cross, he says. And when we're living by the Spirit, we let the Spirit lead us in every part of our lives. Where we live, where we learn, or we work, or we play, every part of our lives. That's the Spirit, the Holy Spirit leading us in every part of our lives. Not just when you show up at church, not just when you show up at group, not just when you show up at Bible study or you're responding to an email, to someone in church. Like it shows up at work, in your dealings, in your business dealings, it shows up in your relationships, when you're coaching your son's team. It shows up in every part of your life. That's what living in that freedom, living by the Holy Spirit, is going to look like. Now I love uh there's a I think it's the NIV that says, keep in step with the Spirit. And it makes me think of, I don't know if you remember this, uh, I don't even know if they still do it today, but three-legged races, right? There's probably some safety thing that schools don't let kids do this anymore. It's a shame. Um, but the, you know, they would take two kids, put them together, and strap their leg that's touching each other, strap it together. So there's literally three legs, two people, three legs moving, right? And you have to sort of be in sync, right? You can't just go off and do your own thing. You have to be in sync with each other in order to even get anywhere. So I love that visual because it's just in my head, I'm like, oh man, like every day when I wake up, I have these desires about me that I really want to fulfill. And there does have to be a choice: confession, prayer, humility. Like, I don't know. I want I want to do that. I want to do what you want me to do. And then I still have to surrender every moment of every day so that I stay in sync with the spirit. So that we're as we're walking together, we're, you know, it's like in the spirit, I'm at a meeting, and the spirit says, You should pray before this meeting, and you're just like, I don't know if anybody's gonna appreciate that or not. But the spirit said, pray before the meeting. And then you're gonna have this constant battle because to feed yourself, you're gonna be like, Well, I don't want people to look at me weird. I don't want, I don't want to lose my job, I don't want to do, I'm worried because it's about you, versus the Holy Spirit saying, Yeah, pray before the meeting. That's what I want you to do. And so you go, all right. Hey guys, would anybody mind if I just said a quick prayer? Let's pray. You don't have any ideas what doors that opens up for the gospel and for what God wants to do in your life, but we have to be like in sync with the spirit, we have to be like paying enough attention as we fight those two forces that are constantly fighting as we fight those battles to be like, I'm trying to pay attention to what the spirit's saying. You know? Have you ever walked into a conversation where you had a whole bunch of stuff that you were gonna say? I'm gonna tell, I'm gonna tell them something. I'm gonna tell them this, I'm gonna tell them that. I'm gonna tell them, and I got some, I got some stuff in my back pocket, I'm gonna tell them. You know, you had it planned. And you walked into a conversation. I might just be telling on myself, but you walk into a conversation, and man, the Holy Spirit's loud. And everything he's telling you to say is nothing that you plan to say. And you got a choice. Am I gonna feed this? Am I gonna feed me? No, no, I had a doozy. I had something I wanted to say. Or you're gonna go, oh yeah, and you surrender to maybe say what the spirits asked you to say, surrender to kindness, surrender to the gentleness that maybe you didn't plan for, and the conversation goes better than you could have possibly imagined it going. The conversation takes a turn that there's no way you could have made it take that turn. No way at all. But but it requires us to live and walk in steps. So just understand when he talks about living in freedom, he started verse chapter five. It's for freedom he sets you free. Don't the law is gonna crush you. Don't fall for it. It's gonna taint everything like a little yeast in the in the bread. Don't fall for it, don't be misled. Understand the battle that's at stake. It's you against the spirit in you, the Holy Spirit. Who's gonna win? Walking in freedom, living in freedom, staying free requires us, as it says, to since we're living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit's leading in every part of our lives. And here's the last verse, so we don't become conceited or provoke one another or jealous of one another. So much to apply there, even just that last two verses. Okay, God, how what does that look like for me today? To walk in sync with you, to surrender, crucify those passion, those lustful desires, those passions of the flesh, live live in sync with you, and how is it gonna work itself out where it's not all about me? There's nothing to be jealous about, there's nothing to provoke anybody over because my life is centered on you. Let's pray that application out today. Father God, there's so much more to observe in this, but I'm just trying to keep it simple. What does it look like today for us to choose you over us in every moment, in every way, and every day, to not only recognize the battle, God, but to understand the reason we recognize it, so that we can more quickly surrender to your so to your Holy Spirit so that we can quickly surrender to see that the fruit of the Spirit get produced and grow in our life? It's not by our effort. We can't make love, we can't make kindness, we can't make gentleness, we can't forge that, we can't manufacture that in us. God, it's only through you. And what would it look like for us today to not think of that it's all about us, conceited, to not provoke others around us, and to not live in a place of jealousy because we're completely content in you. Man, God, that would just there's so much that could change about our day if we could apply this today. And I pray by your Holy Spirit that you would help us take steps in that direction. We pray all this in your name, Jesus. Amen. Amen. Well, guys, I think I said this was a lepisode episode uh, I think it's 12, by the way. Uh, we have two more episodes left. So I sure hope you stick with us till the end as we continue to finish out this walk through Galatians. And then I'm already super excited about the next one, the next present epistle we're gonna uh dive into together. But hope you guys have a great day. Love y'all. See you back next episode.