Perhaps it was a battle for you to get up and moving this morning. Scientifically speaking you were in a state of equilibrium, two forces of equal magnitude were acting upon you, the downward push of gravity and the upward push of your bed! Maybe, the only reason you got up and got going was due to an external force, work or children. Or perhaps you are one of those morning people. For those individuals who possess some odd DNA trait, it was your bubbly excitement and internal character that worked to get you up and going. This scientifically is referred to as an internal force.  

Sir Isaac Newton, one of the greatest minds of the 17 century, described such forces as “unbalanced forces”.

Newton’s 1^st Law of Motion, sometimes called the Law of Inertia, states “An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.” 

Scientifically speaking, “Inertia is the resistance of any physical object to any change in its velocity. This includes changes to the object’s speed or direction of motion. An aspect of this property is the tendency of objects to keep moving in a straight line at a constant speed when no forces act upon them.” 

In fact, it is the natural tendency of objects to resist changes in their state of motion. 

Our lives as Christians are often like this. We battle against the force of our flesh. Our flesh desires to do the opposite of what God commands us to do. We also battle against the evil forces of the devil and the ungodly culture around us. Thus we find ourselves in a state of poor spiritual equilibrium, we can easily reject God and His Word, letting the desires of the flesh speed us along in the wrong direction, or we become motionless, doing nothing for Christ. 

Sadly, even as Christians, we have a strong predisposition to resist the changes the Holy Spirit desires to make in us. Most of us need an unbalanced force to halt the motion that is leading us away from Christ and godliness, and some of us need an unbalanced force to get us out of our state of rest and get us moving for the Lord. 

Paul, in Galatians 5:16-24, wrote about this unbalanced force that has the power to do just that, the Holy Spirit. 

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.  For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.  But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.  Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality,  idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions,  envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.  But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.  And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

 As Christians, there are no excuses for our weak walk. You have the Holy Spirit within you that has the power to defeat spiritual inertia! Let it change your state of motion!