“Have no confidence in the flesh” (Philippians 3:3b).

The way up is down. The death of the carnal is the end of the curse. When we lay our carnality on the altar, He helps us to mortify the sinful nature’s deeds (Romans 8:13).

Don’t try to hide that which cannot be hidden from Him. Don’t waste life’s days refusing to acknowledge or confront the innermost defects and problems resulting from unwise choices. We are all casualties of the curse. Yet when, through humble repentance before Him, we divest ourselves of carnal aspects that harbor the curse, we see Him work a change that overpowers the curse and delivers us from “the body of this death.”

If you have not offered yourself before Him in this way—or perhaps you have, yet not for a while—then don’t delay. Mere moments of true openness before Him does more than could ever be accomplished by going through “religious” motions. The stench of flesh is not that which ascends while the carnal nature is burning on the altar. A thousand times no. The true stench of flesh is that odor of sin, pride, and self-will, that foulness that oozes from our pores as we attempt life on our own, without trusting Him by building an altar and laying ourselves upon it. Cry out with Paul, “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death” (Philippians 3:10).

“For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live” (Romans 8:13).