¹⁴ But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. (Romans 13:14 CSB)

When I go on a long motorcycle or bicycle ride I have to consider how to provision myself. Depending upon the length of the journey I make a list of the things I will or may need. It is easy to end up with everything plus the kitchen sink, but being that I am on two wheels I have to provision carefully. Otherwise I end up carrying around too much weight.

We provision for our daily lives as well, whether we realize it or not. In some circles we call this our EDC (Every Day Carry). It is what you end up with in your pockets or other that just naturally tag along for your daily journey.

As our scripture today notes, we too should carefully provision our spiritual journey. In this case making no provision “for the flesh to gratify its desires”. Think about it for a moment. Mentally we carry a lot of baggage around with us. Some of that baggage dwells on the past, some on the future. Yet we only have right now. Furthermore, we tend to carry with us the desires for those things that we think will make us happy. But really mostly, these are simply distractions from life.

When we provision lightly and with The Spirit fully in mind, we can “put on Christ” and not our fleshly desires.