The things of the flesh also are related to our living. There are so many items related to the flesh because you are a person living in the flesh. When you are a person living in the flesh, your clothing is of the flesh, your eating is of the flesh. Even your lodging is of the flesh. Whatever you do and whatever you have is of the flesh because you are just a person living in the flesh. The food for one who lives in the spirit becomes a thing of the spirit. But the same food may become the food of the flesh because you are a person living in the flesh. Because of your living, the things which are related to you are affected. If you are living in the flesh, everything that is related to you becomes flesh.
The mind of the flesh is not mainly for business but for living. The matter of enmity with God is a matter of living. You don’t have peace with God; you have something just the opposite. You have a kind of enmity with God. This enmity is not mainly related to schooling, business, jobs, or renting or buying a house. It is mainly related to living, to your daily life before God.
Then there is the matter of our body. God intended to have our body as an organ to express what we are. God did not intend so much that our body be an organ to accomplish great things. Actually, according to the Bible, God doesn’t want any giants. God wants a lot of small persons to express God. Whenever a person becomes great, there is a big possibility for him to be ruined. To remain in a situation and condition of being a small person is your protection. It is your safeguard. Many great persons on this earth have been ruined by their greatness. If they are strong in the will they may make up their mind to preserve themselves, but not for God’s glory. It is just for their dignity, for their kind of glory.
Small persons like ourselves are protected from corruption and from being ruined. We are protected from being dignified and from being glorified. We are preserved in our condition of being small just to express God. God doesn’t want people to be great, to be dignified, to be glorified. God wants human beings to be small persons who live Him and express Him. Don’t try to be great. Don’t desire to be great. We have to attract people to Him and give glory to Him. This is the truth in the Bible. God doesn’t care for our enterprise. God only cares for our humble living as a small person. While the Lord Jesus was on the earth, He was never made great. He never tried to be great. He always remained in His smallness.
The New Testament doesn’t teach us to be successful in enterprises or in activities. Many consider that Paul was the greatest Apostle. But if you read the New Testament, it seems he didn’t succeed in his work. Firstly, he was arrested and put into prison; then he was martyred. Even before he was martyred he said that all of Asia had forsaken him (2 Tim. 1:15). This means all the saints in the churches in Asia had rejected Paul.
I never saw Brother Watchman Nee trying to be great. We who had gotten much help from him always expected he could do a bigger work. But eventually the Lord let him stay in prison for twenty years where he died. But there was a life lived out by such a low and small man that gave glory to God. That expressed the very God whom we serve.
In Romans 8 there is no hint that would help you know the leading of God concerning your big enterprise. If you are seeking for this kind of leading you will be fully disappointed. How then could you know where you should go to school? How can you know what major you should take? It is by living in the spirit all the day. It is by living under the leading by the Spirit all the day. Then spontaneously you would know. This matter of the leading becomes a kind of habitual thing in your daily living. It could never be a kind of accident which happens all of a sudden. No! there is not such a leading by the Spirit. The leading by the Spirit is a matter of our daily living. This is something spoken from the negative side. Now let us look at the positive side.