Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Good morning, Christchurch.
[00:00:03] It is good to see you. How about that guardians game yesterday? Let's go.
[00:00:10] Let's go.
[00:00:12] See. God does love Cleveland.
[00:00:17] We don't have to talk about Ohio State.
[00:00:21] Just know this. Heaven wept with you last night.
[00:00:25] The Lord will right all that is wrong in time.
[00:00:29] But it's good to see you today, man. I'm excited. God's doing some special things in our church and I'm excited for the days ahead. But today we're going to continue working through Galatians. But just before we do, would you bow your heads in prayer with me? Father, we love you. We long for your strength, for your help, for your wisdom, for your goodness in our life.
[00:00:54] Father, help us to see that the way to real freedom in this life is commitment to you is focusing our heart on the truth and power of the gospel. So make that clear and real and powerful in our lives right now. And I ask this through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
[00:01:20] Well, I want you to think about your favorite movie for a second. Or if you can't think about your favorite movie, think about your top five. One that would be. Sometimes it's hard to just fully commit to a favorite. And I don't know exactly what my favorite is, but I know in my top five would be the movie Braveheart.
[00:01:44] It's a little bit older one now. It is an incredible movie. I don't watch it that much anymore because it takes half a day to watch it.
[00:01:54] But there was a time in my life where I feel like I could almost quote the whole movie. That's how much I loved it. And it's a movie that's based on a little bit of history. There's, of course, a lot of artistic flair to it and embellishment, but it's a story about Scotland and this leader named William Wallace, who is fighting for Scotland's freedom. And at the time, Scotland was being controlled by England, and the king was a tyrant and he was abusing and exploiting and taking advantage. And so William Wallace stood up and risked his life. And it's this awesome story now at the end of it, and if you haven't seen it, I'm about to spoil it. So you can close your ears right now. Yeah, Kevin, just like that.
[00:02:49] And if you haven't seen it, you know, I feel like this is what the Lord wants you to do, is to watch it today.
[00:02:55] Watch it instead of the browns game. I promise you, you'll be happier.
[00:03:01] And anyway, and so at the end of the movie, he gets captured and he gets tortured, and he gets killed. But there's a scene where he's in the midst of that, and it, like, really builds up the music. Everything is so powerful. And just before he's about to be executed, he yells out, anybody know freedom. Yeah. And it just. It gets me every time. It's so good. It's such a powerful scene, but it really summarizes what the whole story is about. It's about freedom. And there's something about that that always resonates in me, because I think we value freedom, don't we?
[00:03:45] We know that it's worthwhile. It's important. It's even worth sacrificing and fighting for it. There's something in our souls that deeply believes in it, deeply longs for it and is moved by it. And that movie just captures it so powerfully. And today we're gonna look at Galatians chapter five, and believe it or not, the apostle Paul is going to tell us. He's gonna say, at the heart of Christianity is freedom.
[00:04:21] At the heart of what God has done for us in Christ is real freedom. And the way to freedom is by committing our lives to Jesus Christ. So if you have a Bible, you can open it to Galatians chapter five. And I'm going to read through a few verses. I'm going to jump around this text a little bit, this chapter, because there's so much incredible truth and power in it. But we're going to start at verse one. Here's what he says. For freedom, Christ has set us free.
[00:05:01] Paul says, if I could summarize all of this, just hear Mel Gibson screaming, freedom.
[00:05:10] For freedom. Christ has set us free. Paul says, christ has done all this, all that we've been talking about to bring us freedom. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Now, I think this idea is just worth thinking about for a second. When people think about religion, I don't think their first thought is usually freedom. Is that fair? Probably many of us in this room, when you were a kid or when you were growing up, your thought of going to church was not freedom, it was oppression.
[00:05:50] Give me an amen. If that was you, you're like, this does not feel free. Like maybe you grew up and you were in church and you were trying to have some fun, and then mom or dad, you knew they were going to light into you if they caught you, anybody. And it was not freedom that you thought of. And what Paul is saying, he's saying, believe it or not, at the heart of Christianity is freedom.
[00:06:20] That if we all, as human beings, we long for freedom, we believe in it. We see it as something worth fighting and dying for. Paul says, believe it or not, that is a spiritual impulse in you and the reason you have it, because God actually wants to bring it to your life. But the way to get it is through Jesus Christ that at the end of the day, the real path to freedom is in Christ. Now, I find this a really interesting thing to consider, and there's two ways. The great Martin Luther, he was a church historian and commentator and preacher, but he said that you can miss freedom in two ways. He said, this was back in the day, before cars and everything like that. So he said, it's like getting on a horse. You can fall off on either side. I just like that analogy. Not that I ride horses ever, but I get what he said. You can fall off this way or you can fall off that way. And he said, there's two ways to misunderstand freedom. And the first way is, I think, where we would probably mostly go, we would think about, well, freedom is doing whatever I want. There was a time in my life where I felt free. It was before I had kids, and I didn't know I was free then, but now I do. I knew, and I wish I could go back to that guy and talk to him.
[00:07:50] But we think about freedom as the absence of all responsibility, as the absence of all commitment.
[00:07:59] We tend to think about freedom as, yeah, go do whatever you want, when you want, how you want. But what the apostle Paul and what many others would say is, that's actually not real freedom. And, in fact, I want you to think about someone in your life that you know that has lived that way, maybe someone you grew up with, maybe someone that was related to you, and they kind of approached life that way. They did whatever they want, when they wanted, how they wanted. And then I want you to ask yourself, did they really seem free?
[00:08:37] Was that really freedom? I had a friend in high school, and he was the wild child of our whole high school.
[00:08:49] He was the guy that there's always a story, always doing something crazy, always pushing the limits, always kind of getting in trouble, but obviously didn't listen to anybody, didn't follow any script, just kind of many people would look at him, and then they might say, well, he's a very free spirit, or he does what he wants. But as someone who knew him, even though it seemed like he did whatever he want, he wasn't really free.
[00:09:18] In fact, I would say it was almost like the opposite.
[00:09:22] He was one of the least free people that I knew. And he was sad and he was hurting and he was broken. And so there was this whole show that looked like freedom, but it wasn't really freedom. I don't think he felt it at all. And maybe we've been down that road before. We were like, yeah, I'm going to live life on my terms. This is going to be awesome. I'm finally going to be free. And then we go and do it. And we never felt more shackled than in those moments.
[00:10:01] We never felt less free.
[00:10:04] And so we can miss it there. Now, the other way we can miss it is we can allow the gospel to be conditioned by other things, and we can add a religious element that might sound good and look good, but ultimately what it does is it diminishes the work that Christ has done for us. Now, if you've experienced Christianity in a way that didn't feel like freedom, in a way that didn't actually create real freedom in our soul, then there's a good chance that you miss a horse on this side.
[00:10:56] And this is what's happening in Galatians.
[00:10:58] They're saying, yes, Christ has done a great thing for us, but you need to do something, too.
[00:11:08] And what Paul says is, by them adding requirements to salvation, Paul says, you've now voluntarily took on a yoke of slavery. You've now forfeited your freedom. Because here's how Paul sees it, and I think this logic is so powerful. He says, if you think God's love, God's acceptance, God's redemption of us, what we call salvation, it says, if you think you have something to add to it, yes, be a good person.
[00:11:50] In the case of Galatians, be circumcised. But all throughout human history, people want to add different things to it. Paul says, if you think you have something to add, then what you're saying is that Jesus didn't do enough for you.
[00:12:06] And Paul says, that is the craziest thought ever.
[00:12:12] If you think you have something to add, then Paul says, you're taking away from what Christ has done and the sufficiency of that. And Paul says, I cannot abide that.
[00:12:25] And so we can miss freedom that way. Now, this is a danger, I think, for every follower of Christ. And if you're a follower of Jesus today, I want you to think about this for a second. We can all slip into a less free place in our walk with God.
[00:12:45] We can lose sight, just like the Galatians did of what Christ has done and what it really means for us personally. And the way that I think you can recognize that in yourself is sort of two different emotions.
[00:13:03] The first one is shame.
[00:13:08] When you feel overcome by shame. Now, shame is a unique emotion because it's different than guilt or conviction. Guilt or conviction can actually be helpful because that's recognizing, hey, something I did was not wise, was not right, was not good, and we can learn from that. But shame is not just recognizing something we did was bad, but it's saying, no, I am fundamentally bad and messed up and beyond repair. Now, here's why this is at odds with the gospel, because here's what the gospel says. Here's what Paul's been saying in Galatians. In God's sight, you are forgiven.
[00:14:00] Church, that's your identity. You are forgiven. And not only that, you are God's sons and daughters. Everything that's wrong with us, everything that we failed at, is eclipsed by the work of Christ.
[00:14:20] And so when I feel this sense of shame, what I'm actually saying is, I don't know if Christ did enough for me. I think there's still things needed to be done, and I'm losing the freedom of the gospel, and I need to go back to it and remember, no, I'm forgiven. Yes, there's bad things in me. But ultimately, at the end of the day, God says, you're justified in my sight. You are forgiven.
[00:14:48] You are redeemed. You are my son and daughter. And so we have to watch out for that. Now, here's the second side of it, is that we have to watch out for shaming others.
[00:14:59] So you can do it to yourself, but you can easily do it to others. And that is missing the gospel, too. When I look at others, I'm like, oh, boy, what is wrong with them?
[00:15:12] And you sort of, it's not just looking at them saying, eh, I don't believe in that approach to life or whatever. It's not evaluating, but it's when you're looking and you're making a judgment of some kind, a sense of moral condemnation, because what that means is I'm losing sight of the reality that God did not condemn me, but he forgave me through Jesus Christ.
[00:15:41] And my role in life is not to sit in judgment of other people, but to serve them in the name of Christ and let the Lord do what he does. You with me on this? And so we can miss it. And so Paul says, for freedom, Christ has set us free. And then verse 13, he says this, for you were called to freedom, brothers only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love, serve one another.
[00:16:18] Now, in the book of Galatians, one of the things that Paul has made clear again and again and again, that this all rests on Christ.
[00:16:30] Forgiveness, grace, it all rests on Christ, and we just receive it by faith. That's been one of just his primary points, that salvation, God's work in your life, it all is built on Christ. And I receive it by faith. And so Paul says, you have this freedom now. You're loved, you're forgiven. You're an heir, you're a son or daughter of God. You have this amazing standing, this amazing opportunity. And he says, and don't waste it.
[00:17:05] Don't see it as an opportunity for the flesh. Now, what he means is a lot of times when people begin to, for the first time, understand the power and the extent of God's forgiveness, sometimes people can look at that and they can say, well, are you telling me that I have the biggest get out of jail free card ever?
[00:17:30] Cause if so, I'm booking a flight to some crazy place in the world and living it up.
[00:17:37] And sometimes people, they see the radical nature of forgiveness and they think, are you saying then that it's all forgiven no matter what? Cause it all rests on Christ. And Paul would say, yeah, it is that radical, that today, no matter where you go from here, if you've trusted in Christ, you're forgiven.
[00:18:00] It's done, it's over, it's finished, as Jesus said on the cross. But here's what Paul says. But if we really understand that our response is not going to be to dishonor God in ithood, but to say, Lord, for all you've done for me, I want to honor you with this gift of salvation, with this gift of life, with this gift of forgiveness. Lord, how can I serve you and serve others because of what you've done? Paul said, all of this freedom is not to be used in a selfish and self indulgent way, but it's to be used to serve others. He goes on, he says, for the whole law is fulfilled in one word. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
[00:18:54] But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. Now, that last line has always jumped out to me. You know, biting, devours, it's kind of a very ugly picture. It's like a picture of, of animals attacking each other. But here's what I think Paul is showing us that one of the greatest freedoms that Christ brings to us is he frees us from a life of selfishness.
[00:19:29] And the reason that is such a big deal is because selfishness ends up destroying you and the people around you.
[00:19:39] Paul says Christ has set us free so that we can just go and serve.
[00:19:47] But we can serve in a way where we're not keeping score.
[00:19:53] We can serve and love.
[00:19:56] We don't have to say, well, babe, I put the kids to bed the last three nights in a row.
[00:20:03] So, you know, here's where the score is at 30 right now. I would never think or say anything like that. Church. But just, for example, just pulling out random examples with no connection to my life. But it's easy. You can serve in life. You can serve in life by keeping score.
[00:20:26] By the way, it's a terrible idea. Don't do it. But we can do that.
[00:20:30] You can serve in life to get atta boys and atta girls to get applause and praise and people to notice. We can serve for ultimately manipulative and selfish reasons. But here's the beauty of what Paul is saying in this, in the gospel. We can serve just out of love.
[00:20:51] It's out of love.
[00:20:53] Hey, if you appreciate it or not, doesn't matter to me because I'm doing it for goddess.
[00:20:59] If I get noticed for it, I'm not keeping score here. I'm just doing it because God's at work in my life and he's freed me from the selfish drives within me and I can just show up and serve.
[00:21:22] Now. By the way, I find it fascinating that that is a more enjoyable way to live life, to show up with the heart of a servant. There's a great book I read recently. It's called build the life you want. It's by Arthur Brooks, and it's a book about happiness.
[00:21:44] It came out pretty recently. It's a really neat read. But in the book, he talks about all these different studies and different theories of happiness. And he cites this study that was done at Northwestern University in 2020. And the study asked this basic question. It said, are people generally happier when they're focused on their desires, what they want, or when they're focused on other people? And it had all these different complicated ways to figure this out and to collate the data and all that sort of thing. And essentially, what the study came out to just very clearly say is that whether you're religious or irreligious, none of that matters. If you focus more on serving people, you'll be happier.
[00:22:37] And the more it's about us, the less happier we are. Now, I think the real sadness about that study is all that time and energy didn't have to be spent on that, because the Bible has made that clear again and again and again that it's better to serve.
[00:22:58] Jesus Christ himself says, I did not come to be served, but to serve and to give my life as a ransom for many. Christ says, I've showed up to serve. And Paul says the gospel, it gives us freedom to show up and to serve the people around us.
[00:23:19] Otherwise, we might end up living a life where we are actually imprisoned by our own selfishness.
[00:23:29] Church, I don't know about you, but sometimes I am caught off guard by how selfish I can be. And, well, like, I. There's many days where I'm like, man, I was really hoping you were more spiritually mature than this.
[00:23:47] You know, you know this, dude, you know this. And how can you still fall into those patterns? And that's how powerful selfishness is in our own lives. And only Christ can bring us freedom from that. Only Christ can give us firm enough ground to stand on, to say, you know what? I don't have to live my life making it about me. It can be about God, it can be about others, and I can learn to function in that space. Gospel gives us the freedom to do that. And then Paul goes on, he says this. He says, but I say, walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. He said, there's two things at work in you, the spirit and the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit. The desires of the spirit are against the flesh.
[00:24:45] There's a lot of internal conflict in our lives, Paul says.
[00:24:49] He says, but if you're led by the spirit, you're not under the law.
[00:24:55] Now, the works of the flesh are evident. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. Against such things, there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus has crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the spirit, let us also keep in step with the spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. Now, there's a lot in these verses, but I just want to pull out the big picture here. See, many, there's been a few times in my life where I've, you know, put dirt down to put in grass or to create a garden bed, you know? And one thing that I learned very quickly was no matter what pile of dirt you get and how much of a premium you paid on it, there are weeds within it.
[00:26:13] You may not see them, but as soon as you try to plant the good stuff that you want, the flowers or the herbs or the fruit or whatever, you know, that you have just entered a battle between keeping alive what you want to come out of that dirt, flowers, whatever, and putting to death those nasty green weeds that are prickly. Anyone hate those as much as I do? I don't know what they're called. Pretty sure the devil created them, but they're horrible and they're resilient, aren't they?
[00:26:49] They just come and come and come.
[00:26:52] In a sense. What Paul is saying is that your heart, the soil of your heart, is kind of like that.
[00:27:01] There's some stuff in there that will germinate and grow.
[00:27:07] But the problem is, it's weeds. It's not stuff you actually want. It's not productive. It's actually destructive.
[00:27:16] And Paul says that one of the great challenges of being a human being is that we have these conflicting desires and these divergent paths within our own soul all the time.
[00:27:34] And I think if we're a little bit self aware, we're like, yeah, Paul, I totally agree. Amen.
[00:27:40] There's always little battles going on in there, isn't there? And Paul says. He says we have to learn to discern what we follow, what we trust, what we partner with, and what we reject. So I think one of the greatest lies of our time is that we tell people, well, whatever is in your heart, follow it.
[00:28:13] If it's in your heart, if it's in the soil, whatever's in the soil. If it's in the soil, it can't be bad.
[00:28:20] And what Paul's saying is, no, it can be, and it will destroy you.
[00:28:28] It will produce things that you don't actually want. What Paul says is, no. In the soil of our heart, we can't just take every desire as a good desire.
[00:28:41] There are many desires in us that we have to filter out.
[00:28:46] There's weeds that we have to pull out. There's weeds that we have to prevent, and there's things that need nurtured. And the way I discern them is not just by myself, but by the leadership and wisdom of God's spirit within me. You with me on this church.
[00:29:04] And we need to look in our hearts and look and discern and question things and say, what's at the root of this?
[00:29:12] Is it God or is it me? Is it the flesh?
[00:29:18] Is it the weeds that are there that are growing that. I don't actually want you with me on this church. And so Paul says we need to discern, and we need to weed out what is unhealthy, and we need to give life to God's spirit. Now, this list of the unhealthy things, it can be a little bit overwhelming, but I just want to summarize it for you. Cause Paul says all these words, I think you could kind of categorize them. And the reason I want you to see these is because what Paul says is, he says, when we are allowing the Weeds to grow, this is what you'll see in your life.
[00:29:55] So, in other words, this is how we know what we're really trusting in, what we're really following. So the First Group can be kind of a Sexual Dysfunction. Those are all kind of have that connotation to it, an unhealthy Sexuality. The Second Group, Idolatry. Those are Religious Dysfunctions. So, again, you might think both of those can appear very differently in our lives. Right. The First Group, you might be saying, well, that's easy to notice, but the second one can be more subtle, but nonetheless, they're the same origin. The next two groups are relational dysfunction. And just, if you look at that, that is most of the list.
[00:30:37] Relational. How am I relating and interacting with others? Guess what? That shows a lot about how focused I am on the gospel.
[00:30:49] That shows a lot about how rooted I am in partnering with God's spirit in my work. And look at these. Some of these really are things that we might not even second guess in our life. Enmity, strife, jealousy.
[00:31:07] How easy is it for our hearts to be filled with that? And Paul says, well, that's evidence that you're giving up your freedom.
[00:31:15] You're moving away from the truth of the gospel. Fits of anger.
[00:31:20] I don't lose my temper ever at home. Amen. Rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy. And then the last category is substance abuse. These would probably what we would say as addictions. You know, things where we're trying to. To cope and to numb and to avoid. But here's just what I want you to see. Paul says, when we see these things in our life, they're evidence that we need to move towards the freedom in Christ.
[00:31:53] All those things, they're in the soil of our hearts, church of our hearts.
[00:31:59] Yes. Other people's but more importantly, our hearts and Christ. Here's what Christ wants us to do. He wants to free us from a life that ends up getting controlled by our dysfunction.
[00:32:15] See all that list, church? It's dysfunction.
[00:32:20] And we can go through our life and we can be controlled by the dysfunction of the soil of our hearts.
[00:32:29] But Paul says, but Christ wants to free you from that. And in place of that, he wants to grow something good and something beautiful. And that's that other list. Love, joy, peace. In place of these things, he wants to grow that in your soul and my soul. And so he says, then let us stay in step with the spirit.
[00:32:55] Let us march in formation with the spirit. And how do we do that? I think he just kind of gives us insight into it. At the end, he says, let us not become conceited, provoking one another or envying one another. And I think that these are ways to think about staying in step with the spirit. So here's the first one. Go back. Not conceited. Now, this just means conceited means empty glory. Empty glory. And in life, we can chase a lot of empty things.
[00:33:31] Bigger, better, nicer stuff. We can chase the whole materialism of life. We can chase all these experiences. We can chase all kinds of things that ultimately, at the end of the day, are empty, or we can chase the glory of Jesus Christ.
[00:33:49] We can chase the joy and the purpose of following him, of serving him, of knowing him, of honoring him.
[00:34:00] Paul says we stay in step with the spirit. When I wake up and I say, all right, man, today it's not about me, it's about God. It puts me in step with the spirit. Wake up and say, all right, lord, there's a lot of things I want you to do, but not my will be done. Your will be done. It puts us in step with the spirit. Here's the second one. Not envying one another. I'm sorry. Provoking one another. Now, provoking the opposite of that would be encouraging one another.
[00:34:31] I think that probably most of the people in our life need more encouragement than they're getting.
[00:34:39] But let's be honest. Many times we don't want to give it.
[00:34:43] It's easier to go a different direction. But Paul says, when we strive to encourage, to strengthen, to build each other up, we're putting ourselves in step with the spirit, not provoking one another. I'll be honest. I like to provoke sometimes.
[00:35:00] Yeah. Yeah. Every once in a while, married couples, this means don't pick a fight.
[00:35:10] You know what you're doing. Amen. Says don't pick a fight.
[00:35:15] Encourage one another.
[00:35:18] It might take everything in you, but find a way.
[00:35:23] Stay in step with the spirit. And he says, not envying one another, but instead thanking God for the people in your life. Man, have you took a moment lately, just as I was reading this verse, I was thinking about all the great people in my life. I really got some amazing people in my life.
[00:35:44] You're part of that group. There's amazing people in this church, and it's a joy to see you. It really is. It's a blessing, and I'm thankful to God for that.
[00:35:54] And you know what's cool is I'm a lot happier when I'm focused on that.
[00:36:01] Like, there's a freedom to my spirit.
[00:36:08] When I'm scrolling instagram, I'm like, they're on another vacation. That place looks awesome.
[00:36:15] I'm stuck in rainy October here.
[00:36:19] Amen. That doesn't do anything good. That doesn't put me in step with the spirit.
[00:36:25] Paul's saying we can choose what we focus on. That's part of what God's given you, that ability. You can choose what you focus on. We can choose to thank God and be like, lord, man, there's great people. Yeah. Are there some not so great people? Yeah, there are.
[00:36:41] But you know what? If you take a minute, you might be surprised and how many blessings God has actually brought around us. Amen, church. So Paul says, stay in step with the spirit. Now, this phrase, in step with the spirit, really resonated with me this week. I was gone Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. This week I was in Kansas City, and I came back Wednesday night. And when I had left, my son Teddy, who is one years old, he was just kind of taking steps, you know, he might take, like, on a good run, he might take, like, ten steps at a time, you know, and then he would drop down, and then he would, you know, crawl around and do that thing. But when I got back and I saw him Thursday morning, after being gone three days, this guy was walking everywhere. I. It was awesome. And I was like, what happened in three days? This is great.
[00:37:35] And it's cool to see him make those kind of jumps in just such a short period of time. And so I get home, I'm like, this guy, he's walking everywhere. But, you know, walking is something that's learned, and he wipes out a lot, too.
[00:37:52] In fact, one of the things he did when I got home and he's walking is he took a header straight to the corner of our island. So. Yeah, but you know what? He got back up and he started walking some more. You have to learn to walk, and we have to learn to walk in the spirit. And guess what, church? Some days you're going to go head first into the corner.
[00:38:19] It's not going to be pretty.
[00:38:21] But do you know what you need to do? Get back up.
[00:38:25] Remember, Christ loves you not cause of how perfectly you walk, but because he died for you and rose again, church.
[00:38:33] And you need to keep walking.
[00:38:35] And today I wonder. I wonder.
[00:38:38] I wonder how much freedom we've given up in our lives that God's like, you didn't have to forfeit that.
[00:38:48] I wonder how much freedom we've given up in life. Here's one thing I noticed about Teddy. I saw this look in his eyes when he was walking when I got home. And I was like, you realized walking is a lot better than crawling. I was like, I feel like I see it in your eyes that, you know, now that crawling around is for the birds and walking's where it's at. You know, I could see that you. Something in you. You tasted the freedom of two legs.
[00:39:24] Yeah. If you wanna get calluses on your knees and flop around, you can do that. Or you can stand up and walk. And I think in so many ways, God looks at us and he says, son or daughter, I'm telling you, walking is better.
[00:39:39] You can crawl around, you can roll around in the mud, you can do all that. But goddess has a better way.
[00:39:48] I wanna encourage you. I want you just to think in your own life. What does it look like to get in step with the spirit? I need to just refocus and I need to remember that I am forgiven. I am God's son or daughter, and I need to challenge the shame in my life.
[00:40:07] Maybe I need to humble myself a little bit. I'm super judgmental of everyone else in my life. And I'm forgetting that I'm a sinner saved by grace.
[00:40:18] I need the gospel to bring a little humility. Maybe I need to reset at home and stop showing up and expecting everybody to serve me and say, God, I'm here to serve.
[00:40:30] I'm here to serve.
[00:40:32] I need to get my heart right. Maybe I need to weed out some things in the soil of my heart. I need to challenge some of the desires, and I need the spirit to lead me to a better place. What does it look like to walk in the spirit and do it? Because I'm telling you, it's a better way. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I thank you for the freedom that you offer to us, Lord, what a good God you are.
[00:41:03] That, Father, you rescue us. You redeem us. It's all your work. It's all your grace.
[00:41:13] And then you give us freedom. On top of that, you give us opportunity to live this life in a different and a better way.
[00:41:27] And, Father, I pray that we could.
[00:41:29] We could partner with your spirit. We could give life, and we could bear fruit, and we could be transformed.
[00:41:39] Bless us in this, Lord. Grant us your grace. Help us. In Jesus name. Amen. I.
