Find the Greatest Love of All

Find the Greatest Love of All (By Verna Collins Odoom) 
 "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new." - 2 Corinthians 5:17 (NKJV)
 At the core of the Bible is the great exchange. The death...and the resurrection. Letting go of the old to embrace the new. Dying to self and being born again in Him.
 Being the humans that we are, I would venture to say that we all have engaged in many rounds of tug-of-war as we try to balance the very selfish nature that is innate, with the call on our lives to be more like Him. Why? Because when we accepted God as our Father, the old us - the worldly us - existed no more, and was replaced with the spirit of God. So if that spiritual transplant has happened, why do we have to work so hard each day to bury the desires of the flesh? And once buried, why won't those desires stay buried?
 Many times we pick up those desires again ourselves, without any coaxing, without any prodding, and in many cases without even thinking. We are so used to doing those things that we want to do when we want to do them, that we don't even put up a great fight anymore. Other times we regress and reunite with old desires because they are comfortable...easy even. Change is hard and requires a level of commitment that many of us honestly just don't want to make.
 That's when we have to ask ourselves, "Is my love for God greater than my love for anything else in my life?" It all has to do with our quest to Find the Greatest Love of All. Do I want to please God more than I want to please myself? Or do we push our love of God out of our minds long enough to give in to the desires of the flesh, then seek forgiveness later?
 True, we are supposed to ask God to forgive us after we have done something that we know is out of His will, but His forgiving nature does not nullify our responsibility to do those things that we know are pleasing to Him. In other words, saying the devil made us do something is no excuse. The devil only operates in our lives as much as we allow him.
 Those desires of the flesh may be different for everyone, but we all deal with them. For some it's drinking, for others it's cursing, still others have a hard time kicking the smoking habit, or can't stop sleeping with someone who is not our husband (or wife). Lying, being physically or verbally abusive, being unforgiving and holding a grudge...not setting aside time to pray and study the Bible - all are issues that we have to pray down.
 Galatians 2:20 (NIV) reads, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."
 When I think of God living in me, it truly makes me want to live a better life. We must get out of that mindset that God only sees those things in us that we want Him to see. It's time that we grow up in Him.
 It's kind of like that notion that many of us might have had as children about our relationship with our parents. There were certain things that we may have done or said when our parents were NOT around that we would NEVER have done or said in their presence. But we must remember that as believers, God dwells in us. So He is there through our EVERYTHING. When you think about it like that, do you really want to take the Spirit of the Living God through those things of the flesh and into all [that junk]?
 I don't want to expose Him to those things that are not pure and good. [I need] to resist those things that the "old me" used to desire and used to do.