The first I lasted a few days. It was new to me and I started to feel trapped...I was far too selfish to appreciate God's miraculous walk in the Spirit. Next time was 18 years later and this time I lasted for 2 and half years. I won some battles but failed a test so I was back to walking as any man.
This is what I don't understand, feeling trapped in that walk. For me when God gave me this it was complete liberty, without any loss. I simply wasn't thinking that way. What I don't understand is how anyone would think that way, in the full control of the Holy Spirit. There were no fleshy thoughts of any kind.
I know we are all different, and our knowledge of the Holy is different, even so, Biblically speaking, how would that be? Feeling trapped in the walk of the Spirit, Scripture speaks otherwise. If you walk in the Spirit you do not fulfill the lusts of the flesh, which, desiring independance from the Holy Spirit, I would have to say that was flesh. So how is it you are walking according to flesh while walking in the Spirit? That is specifically refuted in the Scriptures, one place is Galations 5.
To your second occasion, I likewise fail to understand what you've said about that. If you failed a test that means you were already walking according to flesh, otherwise, the test would have been a proof of your faith as you endured it. It's only if you were not walking in the Spirit that you would not have the endurance, the faithfulness, the self-control, to accomplish any affliction or testing. Walking in the Spirit, there is no doing the works of the flesh, only patient faithful endurance through any testing.
2 Corinthians 3:15-18 KJV
15) But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the vail is upon their heart.
16) Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the vail shall be taken away.
17) Now the Lord is that Spirit: and
where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
18) But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.
Much love!