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Last month, I went with my friend, Julio, to a weekend seminar called Ancient Paths, which is part of a ministry called Family Foundations International. Through a series of videos, the organization´s founder, Craig Hill, shares about God´s system of blessing families, a system that He built into the Hebrew culture, but which we have mostly lost.
There is also one video session about spirit-soul-flesh, and the struggle we live out daily because of our triune being. If the Bible says that we are dead to sin and the flesh, and instead live in and by the spirit, why do we still find ourselves dealing with desires and actions that work against our God-renewed spirits?
He described our three-part being as a series of three rooms, with two mutually exclusive doors. If the door between spirit and soul (emotions, mind and will) is open, then the door between soul and flesh is closed. The reverse is also true -- the soul-flesh door opens and the soul-spirit door closes.
So how do we live in the Spirit, as we are instructed to do in Galations 5?
Hill said something very interesting in his talk: if we try to live in the spirit by consciously avoiding the flesh, we will fail!
Not very encouraging? Or maybe it is... He connected this concept to Hebrews, where the author speaks so much about God´s rest and entering into that rest. If we stay hyper-focused on the sinful nature and attempting to avoid living in the flesh, we end up doing just that (like a dieter eating the chocolate cake he thinks all day about NOT eating, or like a driver swerving off the cliff because he´s looking at the ravine instead of the road he wants to stay on). We can´t and won´t succeed on our own, because our soul (mind, will and emotions) is not strong enough... it is stuck in the middle of spirit and flesh, and does not want to give up its autonomy (MY will, MY thoughts, MY feelings). Living in the Spirit demands that my spirit submit to God´s spirit... that I die to MYself. That I REST in God. That I stop trying so hard.
Years ago, at a camp, God changed my internal name. I had been called STRIVING -- always attempting to do everything right. He told me that my new name was SAINT -- resting on Jesus´ perfection and sacrifice, the work already done for me.
On the last night of the seminar last month, the small group leaders turned in a little card to each participant. This card listed the participant´s name, its meaning, and a verse. I knew that my name, Emily, meant diligent one. I remembered reading somewhere that my middle name, Rebecca, meant deceiver. I could joke that I was diligent about deceiving! However, that night I was freed from my own joke, as the card handed to me said:

Emily: diligent or laborious
Rebecca: destined to God, abiding in God

So there, in my very name, is the paradox that Hill spoke of, and that God had already spoken to me in the striving-to-saint conversion. I can and should and do work, but it is valid only to the extent that I am resting in God. Abiding. Being, not doing. Living in the Spirit. Not inactive, but aware that my activity cannot save me, doesn´t make all the difference; God and His work does.