Walking, living faith

How easily the busy-ness of life takes me away from the peace that is in Christ.  There is always so much to do.  My prayer is that I would walk in step with the Holy Spirit.  It struck me lately that our Christian faith is very active--a walking faith.  "But I way, 'Walk by the Spirit'"  Galatians 5:16 reads.  "Carefully then how you walk" (Eph. 5:15)  "Walk in the light" (1 John 1:7).

I went back to Galatians 5.  It talks a bunch about walking by the Spirit and not gratifying the desires of the flesh having "crucified the flesh with its passions and desires" (Gal. 5:24).  Then "if we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.  Let us not become conceited, provoking one another" (Gal. 5:25).  O Lord, help me walk and live by the Spirit.

The word "conceit" stood out to me.  "Hmmm," I thought, "pride....What does that have to do with it?"  I read the Jan. 22 morning entry to Morning & Evening by Charles Spurgeon.  He writes, "O believer, learn to reject pride, seeing that thou hast no ground for it....The more thou hast, the more thou art in debt to God."  O Lord, guard me against pride.

Spurgeon goes on to pen, "Oh! strange infatuation, that thou, who hast borrowed everything, shouldst think of exalting thyself, a poor dependent pensioner upon the bounty of thy Saviour, one who hath a life which dies without fresh streams of life from Jesus, and yet proud!  Fie on the, O silly heart."