Category: 21 Days to Freedom

Galatians 5:22 — Faithfulness

“But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!”

God is faithful when we are not. Let’s start there. That means that when we fail, give up, reject God and otherwise make a total mess (often blaming God for it), he does not walk away. Think about that for a minute. What person in your life has taken every bit of garbage you have thrown at them and stuck around anyway? Probably no one. And if they did, it was most likely an unhealthy codependency that kept them there rather than a deep and enduring faithfulness.

Psalm 119:90 describes the level of God’s faithfulness:

“Your faithfulness extends to every generation, as enduring as the earth you created.”

We feel pretty proud of ourselves when we are faithful for about a minute, but God’s faithfulness extends to every generation. Every. Generation. As enduring as the earth. Most of us Christians are a bit antsy for Jesus to hurry up and come back already, but God’s faithfulness isn’t on a tight timeline. Day in, day out, every morning he starts over with fresh mercy for you (see Lamentations 3:23).

Here’s your freedom for today: you can pause to commune with the most faithful God. Just sit and don’t worry about saying anything. He’s happy to see you and he’ll sit as long as you will. I imagine waking up in the morning, a slow awareness of the world around me. I open my eyes and blink a few times. And God is there to meet me, just saying hi again. With a present for me, fresh life and new mercy for me to drink in. If God’s faithfulness doesn’t get worn out or tired or impatient and he’s perfectly content to wake up with you to a new day and hand you some more grace and mercy, what does that mean for you today? What mess is he happily willing to fix again in your life? What imperfections and character defects is he slowly and faithfully working out?

Galatians 5:23 — Gentleness

“But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!”

As a mother I have been pushed, pulled on, whacked in the face, barged in on and of course thrown up on. And while at times it is perhaps tempting to return the favor, good parents maintain a gentleness even when their children are acting quite the opposite. What makes this possible for a parent? A strong sense of self and a groundedness in their ability to manage the situation.

Have you ever noticed that when you take your child aside for a moment of correction, they hear you better the quieter you speak? A whisper is more effective than a shout because you have to have an intimate level of closeness to be heard. Often people think of God as angry and scolding towards them, but this is most often simply a projection of their parents’ non-gentle behavior onto God. God’s gentleness is like a whisper in a tender moment. He does not shout or demand. God is described in the Bible as patient, slow to anger and rich in love. When he corrects you, he gently tugs at your heart with his Word. Or he paints a mental picture that helps give you a new direction.

Here’s your freedom for today: the touch of God is gentle, slowly molding you into the person he designed you to be. If you resist, he will not push or pull harder. He will stop. He will wait. He will let you walk away if you choose to do so. But he will also be waiting when you are ready to come back. God will never force his way into your life. You are free to dismiss him entirely. But when you do let him in, he is a gentle guest who only takes over areas of your heart as they are surrendered to him. One small and gentle change at a time. What does it mean for you today that God is gentle with you? Pause to listen for his voice — connect with his whisper and gentle touch today.

 

Galatians 5:23 — Self-Control

“But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!”

Have you ever begged and pleaded and bargained with God to do something that you knew he could do? Something that would be totally within his will, like blind people seeing and lame people walking kinds of stuff. Maybe you’ve asked, “Why aren’t you unleashing your full power right now, God??” The answer: deliberate restraint.

We don’t often think about the fact that God has to use self-control. Imagine that you are watching a masterpiece to which you devoted an intense amount of work and creativity get slowly ripped into shreds piece by piece. Most of us would lash out and rush to stop the destruction. And then we would sit and weep helplessly over the ruined creation. But God, perhaps to us seeming indifferent to the suffering in the world, waits. He holds back. He restrains himself from snatching back what is rightfully his in order to think and act strategically. Far from helpless, he is containing his power until the timing is exactly right for the outcome he desires most.

The fact that God is loving and patient and kind and good means we can trust his self-control. His deliberate restraint is for reasons that stem from his deeply trustworthy character. This is made evident in God’s conversation with Job, in which he challenges Job’s questions with a reassuring but firm, “You weren’t there at the beginning so you don’t get why I do what I do.”

Here’s your freedom for today: God knows what he is doing in your life. He knows the timing of every step and every breath. When perhaps it seems like he is far away, he is deeply involved, waiting for the precise moment for the right kind of action. When we don’t get what God is doing, that’s okay. He can handle our questions and frustrations. But we can also remind ourselves in those moments that God is exercising tremendous self-control that benefits our lives when it is used in our direction to save us undeservedly.  Will you trust in his goodness through that process?

 

Galatians 5:24

“Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there.”

We’ve just wrapped up our exploration of the fruit of the Spirit and we are almost finished with Galatians 5!

Just a little review of what we’ve covered so far: Jesus came so that we could live a free life in the Spirit, not just in heaven but right here and now. Rules are a total set up for failure, and our earthly desires will always get in the way. The work of the Spirit is directly opposed to those earthly desires and these two forces battle in our hearts and minds. If we want to access supernatural love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, we must connect with the very nature of God who possesses all these things. When we receive these things from him we can embody them through the Spirit as well.

In today’s verse we once again go beyond rules into the very core of our beings. Here’s the definition of a Christian: one who has killed his own flesh. Following Jesus means following him all the way onto a cross. I find it interesting that those who belong to Christ have done this already. The verse doesn’t say that Christians are working on this. It says you belong to Christ if you have already nailed your flesh to a cross and crucified it. I also find it interesting that in doing this I am both the person being crucified and the one performing the crucifixion.

How can it be that I am doing both the killing and the dying? Here we are confronted with the reality that we are both physical and spiritual beings. The only way we can crucify our flesh is by connecting with the Spirit to do it. We know that the flesh and the Spirit are in opposition to one another. Now we know why… our spirit, supernaturally given over to the Holy Spirit, must violently crucify our earthly desires.

Here’s your freedom for today: putting your earthly desires to death is easy when you realize they are the very things destroying you. I have no problem killing pests that encroach upon my home. I don’t feel bad, it is not hard. If I need to call an exterminator, I do not hesitate. There is no inner struggle or debate, I want to get rid of them before they make my life even worse. And when we realize that our earthly desires are slowly killing our spirit, we will have no problem exterminating them in whatever ways we can.

Galatians 5:25

“Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives.”

Every morning at 5:25 a few friends and I have a Power Prayer Minute. We don’t gather, we just pray for that one minute from wherever we are. There is something really awesome about knowing that we are united in the Spirit and our prayers are happening simultaneously. Why did we pick 5:25? Because of today’s verse. Every single day I remind myself that living by the Spirit means following his leading. And not just trying to hear something from God that makes me feel warm and fuzzy. This verse says we are to follow the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives. 100%. Not even 99.9%. Total. All. Every part.

Often people hear this and their response is, “Well, I can’t be perfect so what does this really mean?” Remember from the rest of Galatians 5 that striving to be perfect is a rules-based plan to fail. This is not about being perfect. It is entirely about living by the Spirit, receiving his fruit and letting it carry us into completely new places. Let me rephrase this verse: “Since rules don’t save us, let’s not listen to rules anymore. Let’s stay so connected with the character and nature of God that we are carried into doing exactly what he would do.” Living by the Spirit means we reject the law (or the American Christian subculture) as our Savior. Following the Spirit’s leading is our new guide for how to live.

Here’s your freedom for today: God does not resort to pressure tactics — he invites, welcomes and embraces. Some people are afraid to stop striving for perfect, rule-driven standards because they afraid they will somehow backslide if they don’t keep this pressure on themselves. What would happen in your life if you took God’s approach with yourself? What would it be like if you were kind and gentle and loving to yourself, flowing out of your relationship with the Holy Spirit? What if you were simply free to live in a way that helped you emotionally breathe? Maybe this word is just for me today, but I already feel lighter. I can carry a whole lot less on my plate if I just focus on who God is and where he’s taking me.