The Flesh Freakout Factor

Jesus repeatedly emphasized that VERY small faith could accomplish literally anything.  Man puts a premium on having “big faith,” but I don’t think that you can read the gospels and conclude that our problem is needing bigger faith.  Jesus said that if you had faith like a mustard seed – minuscule – you could command a mountain to move and it would obey you – and NOTHING would be impossible to you (Matthew 17:20, Matthew 21:21, Mark 11:23).  He also said that if you had faith like a mustard seed, you could command a tree to be uprooted and planted into the sea it would obey you (Luke 17:5-6).  In that second passage, Jesus’ answer was a response to His disciples who asked Him to give them more faith.  He didn’t do it.  Instead, He told them to USE their faith.  So “big faith” does not seem to be the issue but rather using it.

This leads us to conclude that the issue when you encounter what seems in the natural to be a difficult situation is not having faith, but rather, exercising faith.  So when a “serious” issue confronts you, something could stop you from exercising faith that would not stop you if the issue were more minor.  What could that something be?  I call it the Flesh Freakout Factor.

If someone needs a minor shoulder pain healed, you usually can’t even see any evidence of the problem.  No sense knowledge bombards your flesh, telling it that this situation is too much to handle.  Now suppose someone in the hospital is dying of cancer.  The person reeks, he looks hideous, the doctors and nurses are discussing how to “keep him comfortable” before his imminent and inevitable death, and you are surrounded by pre-grieving relatives who just know that this is the end for him.  Now your flesh is bombarded from all sides with natural sensory evidence that this man is not going to make it.

Now from God’s perspective and from the perspective of your anointing to minister to the sick, it is no harder to heal that cancer case than the minor shoulder pain case.  Jesus did not put limits on how sick the sick could be when you lay hands on them for healing in His name!  He simply said that the sick will recover (Mark 16:18).  His promise applies to someone sick with a shoulder pain or sick with terminal cancer or sick with AIDS or sick with anything else.

But two things can fight against you – your mind, to the extent that it is unrenewed with the Word, and your flesh.  A minor issue won’t stir your flesh, but your flesh can freak out when a situation is really bad.  That’s when you’ll find out if your mind responds naturally with what the Word says or with what your flesh says.  That will depend on how much you have renewed your mind with the Word – or failed to pick up a Bible lately because you’re too busy watching secular TV shows and trading social media posts.

I believe that the disciples’ failure to deliver the demonized boy was a case of the Flesh Freakout Factor.  This demon was a nasty one that didn’t mind showing off in front of people to try to get them into the flesh (and thus, into unbelief).

We also see this principle at work in Nazareth, where a few people got healed but no major miracles occurred.  We forget sometimes that their unbelief wasn’t absolute – Jesus DID get some probably minor cases healed.  But He was NOT able to get the unbelieving crowd to go along with Him when notable miracles were needed, so no notable miracles happened there.  (Someone objected that there just must not have been anyone in the crowd who needed a big miracle, but that argument is easily debunked – the lack of miracles was because of their unbelief (Mark 6:1-6) – not because of their lack of people who needed miracles.)

So while all things are possible to us who believe (Mark 9:23), we can reach a practical barrier when our flesh screams doubt at us and we haven’t trained our flesh to stay under well enough to offset its protests.  This is why Jesus talked about prayer and fasting when it came to harder demon cases (Matthew 17:21) – these disciplines help keep our flesh from dominating us and thus enable us to handle more difficult circumstances.

We see this on the Sea of Galilee when Peter got out of boat and walked on the water during a storm (Matthew 14:28-31).  I don’t know if the storm suddenly gusted harder or what, but Peter got his attention on the storm instead of Jesus’ word and he started to sink.  Now, is it harder to walk on water when the wind is blowing 60 miles an hour than when it’s only blowing 25 miles an hour?  Logically, it would not seem so – walking on water under ANY conditions (when it isn’t frozen) is a major act of faith!  But it DID matter in a practical sense to Peter.  Apparently, he was OK at first, but when he noticed that the wind and waves were really boisterous, the Flesh Freakout Factor kicked in.  His senses were bombarded with information that indicated that he had to go down and he would not make it to Jesus.

As long as you live on this earth, you will have to deal with the Flesh Freakout Factor.  Your flesh is unspiritual and never will be spiritual in this lifetime.  You can’t get rid of it and stay on the earth.  So your only hope is to keep it under.  The more you walk in the Spirit, the less you will gratify your flesh (Galatians 5:16).  The more you fast, the more your flesh will fall in line and stop fighting you every step of the way.  I don’t do long fasts; I’ve never found that I have to fast a long time before my flesh will stop screaming at me, trying to dominate me.  So don’t go overboard and think that you need to pray 4 hours a day and go on a 40-day fast to ever make it in life.  But if you don’t want to get stopped by the Flesh Freakout Factor when you really need to believe God for a miracle, you need to train your flesh to stay under.

Sometimes you can prepare for an event, like a crusade, when you know you will need to have your flesh in line, but at other times, a situation like the one with the demonized boy can appear out of nowhere.  At that point, you’ve either trained your flesh not to dominate you or you haven’t.  When you keep your flesh under as a lifestyle, you will be ready for any unexpected situation that requires a miracle.