Month: September 2020

The Kitchen Table            Galatians Day 17

And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” ⁷ So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.

 Galatians 4:6-7

This life with Jesus is about a relationship, not rules.  Jesus has fulfilled all the demands of the rules for us.  What we couldn’t do, He did for us.  Those who believe in Jesus are now called sons.  Once again, this life isn’t defined by laws but by love.  When we have faith to fall in love with God, He sends His Spirit to live in His love and to everything about His love.  We are sons and not slaves.  We now know Him as Father and call Him Father.  And the Spirit of our heavenly Father now lives and moves and defines our being.  Only God can change our predicament and He has.  We are sons of His love and not slaves to the law.

The Kitchen Table             Galatians Day 16

In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world

 Galatians 4:3

God created us to rule and reign with Him over the earth and creation.  There’s that saying that God can do anything He wants without us, but He chooses to do everything He wants with us.  God created this universe to rule with us not just over us.  Sin put a big dent in that plan but that didn’t stop God.  He came and paid for our sins so that we could again rule and reign with Him.  The law was our nanny to teach us what is good and right and true, but love came to make us good and right and true.  Anything but God Himself enslaves us to elementary principles such as people who are not God and things that don’t have the power of God.  We believed and were born-again to live blessed and to a blessing.  Don’t give up the blessing to live bound by the failures and forces of man’s fantasies about life.  You are blessed to be a blessing today!

The Kitchen Table            Galatians     Day 15

But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, ²⁶ for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.                                        Galatians 3:25-26

We all need something to live for, not just live from.  Faith for what is ahead has come because love has come.  Love creates hope that inspires faith.  Faith has come because we ran into the love of Jesus that created hope for a better and different life which then inspired faith in us to believe in Him.  The law showed us our failure and need for someone like Jesus but love, His love, created the hope to live by faith for the future, favor, and fortune of God.  The law looks back, but love looks ahead.  We can go on because Jesus took care of was, what is and what will be.  Now that faith has come, His love has come and created hope and inspired faith to live in Him, for Him, and with Him.  We can live in the favor, freedom, and fortune of God and not the fear, failure, and frustration of the law.

The Kitchen Table            Day 14

Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary.   Galatians 3:19

The law, written on the walls of our minds and monuments, is good but it’s not God.  This life that Jesus gives us through faith is lived in relationship to His Holy Spirit, who is God.  The law was and is given to reveal our disbelief and disobedience.  The law of God was given by angels; the love of God was revealed by God Himself.  That’s why this relationship is a face to face experience with Jesus that each of us must know personally.  Now sin for us is anything that grieves and quenches the Spirit of God in our lives.  And there are promises in this relationship that give purpose, power, and passion  to this life.  Don’t make this about rules, make it about your relationship with the Holy Spirit.  That’s where life is.

The Kitchen Table            Day 13

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— ¹⁴ so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. Galatians 3:13-14

I am a child and not a curse.  We are blessed because Jesus was cursed with our sin.  Because on the cross Jesus took our curse and crushed it.  The curse of the law is death to those who have broken the law.  Jesus didn’t break the law, He didn’t sin, we did, but He took our cross and our curse and crushed the law’s verdict over us so that we might live “blessed” when we believe in Him and what He did for us.  We know He crushed the curse because He rose from the dead.  Now we are free to live in the blessing of Abraham if we will live by faith in His love rather than in fear of the law.  Now the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, can move, mold, and motivate us because we are no longer cursed, we’re children of God.

The Kitchen Table            Day 10

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Galatians 2:20 The law tells me that I am a sinner, but love tells me that I am a son.  I am a child and not a curse.  What Jesus did for us on the cross offered us a new way of being alive and a new way of doing life.  Don’t go back.  We can, you know.  We can be saved but live enslaved to sin and its system of accusation, condemnation, and regulation.  We don’t want to rebuild what Jesus helped us tear down.  Think about it this way.  In Christ this life is no longer involves breaking laws but rather breaking hearts, His heart.  This is a love relationship and its lived in the love of faith.  We believe in Christ’s love for us and live by faith in His love, not the law

The Kitchen Table            Day 11        

Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith— ⁶ just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”? Galatians 3:5-6

Live boldly by faith rather than badly in fear.  Our enemy would have us be intimidated but our Savior would have us be inspired.  The enemy intimidates but the Spirit inspires.  The law came to show us our faults, but the Spirit comes to show us our future.  But we have this tendency to go back to the law trying to live this life in our own strength and savvy.  This life is not living by heeding the law but by hearing the Spirit.  The blessed life is in the hands of the Spirit, not the hands of the courts.  That’s why it’s not about better obedience or worse sin.  This life is about faith that obeys the voice of the Holy Spirit, the heart of God.  Sin for us is grieving and quenching the Holy Spirit’s desires.  The law does what the law does but only the Holy Spirit can do what the Holy Spirit does.  Learn to listen and obey His voice.

The Kitchen Table            Day 10

So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. Galatians 3:9

We have a choice to live blessed or bewitched.  God says that those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham.  Those who are of the flesh are bewitched in the flesh.  To be bewitched is to be under the intimidation, manipulation, and domination of the flesh, foe, foolishness, and fear.  We have a choice.  The flesh operates in fear, but faith operates in the fearlessness of blessing.  We are blessed in Christ Jesus and His work on and through the cross.  We are blessed to be a blessing today.  God says so!

The Kitchen Table            Galatians Day 9

yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.                        Galatians 2:16

Hypocrisy lives in hopeless lives.  Happiness lives in a hopeful life.  Trying to live this life by the law is hopeless; we just can’t justify our lives by ourselves.  Only Jesus can do that.  Only Jesus lived the perfect life and only Jesus can justify the life of a man.  To be justified is be just as if I’d never sinned.  That’s amazing and awesome.  Faith makes all the difference.  Faith in Jesus and what He did for us.  We can try to live by the law but we can’t do it.  We need the Spirit of God to live this life and that happens through faith in Christ and what He did and does.  The law doesn’t save us; the law tells us that we need to be saved.  Jesus saves us, He saves our spirit immediately, making us pure, and now by faith He will save our mind, emotions, will, and our body if we will live by faith in Him.  There’s Hope that makes us happy in Jesus.  Trust Jesus today!

The Kitchen Table            Galatians Day 8

But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?” Galatians 2:14

Hypocrisy is one of the hardest habits to overcome personally and publicly.  It’s a constant struggle because we’re constantly dealing with our flesh and the fear in our flesh.  Our skin wants to rule our spirit but this life is lived from within, from faith with hope in love.  To live in the flesh is death and that’s why we must deal with it.  Hypocrisy hurts our conscience and our community because the spirit of man is looking for truth.  It shuts down our witness.  When we are not in step with the gospel everyone and everything else suffers, but it happens because we’re growing in our walk with Christ.  The best thing to do is deal with it, don’t defend it.  If we deal with it (hypocrisy) we don’t have to defend I; God will defend us.