Yielding To The Spirit

"For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit," (Mosiah 3:19). Sometimes when I've read this, I've imagined that if I want to follow the Lord then I need to be in a battle with my "natural" self. The natural man in me is the enemy that I must fight against. But the natural man is me and God did not create me to be His enemy or even to be my own enemy. And that's not what the scripture says either. It doesn't say that the natural man is an enemy until he is defeated by the Spirit. The natural man is an enemy until he yields to the Spirit. In meditation, pretty much the first thing they teach is to notice when your thoughts start to wander. Not to judge or beat yourself up that you couldn't keep your mind blank, but just to notice that your mind has wandered and gently bring it back into focus. God does not want us to go to war every time our natural tendencies cause us to wander off from the correct path. It does not say that God is the enemy of the natural man, but that the natural man is the enemy of God. God loves us and sees our efforts, our weaknesses, the complicated reasons that led us to make one choice or another. He never sees us as His enemy, although often we are tempted to view Him as our enemy. But if we can just remember not to fight against our natural tendencies but rather to yield to the Spirit. It's not about fighting evil but giving in to good. We don't have to white knuckle our way through temptation. We can simply stop fighting and let the Spirit into our minds and hearts. The more often we yield to the Spirit, the more often we adopt principles of meekness, humility and submission to a higher power, the less will our natural man be an enemy to God.