What the flesh wants is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit wants is opposed to the flesh. They are opposed to each other. (Galatians 5:17 ISV)
These two are in age-long
conflict, in antagonism. It is ever so. When you have a fresh experience of the
Holy Spirit, the next thing you find is that you are in a new conflict against
the old flesh-life in yourself. This rising up of the flesh within is provoked
by the devil because he sees the inheritance in view, for when the Spirit comes,
the inheritance comes into view. He has come to bring to the inheritance. So do
not be surprised if after an experience of the Spirit the next thing you have to
face is this conflict with the assertion of the flesh across the path to hinder
your going into possession.
It is only when you have
received the Holy Spirit that you know the conflict of the flesh and what is the
withstanding of the flesh. Those who have not the Spirit have no such
conflict of flesh and Spirit; they are not in that realm, but wholly in the
flesh realm. The Holy Spirit has come in relation to the end, and the end is the
inheritance in Christ, and flesh moved by Satan rises up to frustrate that end,
and to rob you of the inheritance. The peril is that having begun in the Spirit,
you might turn aside to make some compromise with Amalek, because of the
hardness of the way, the greatness of the cost, by reason of the conflict and
forgetting God's word - "utterly destroy Amalek" (1 Samuel 15:3). "Walk not
after the flesh but after the Spirit" (Rom. 8:4).