Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] I'd like to remind you that this is our week of prayer.
[00:00:08] And our week of prayer is in many ways a measure of our longing for goddess. The people you really like, you want to talk to, am I right? The people that you really like, you like to talk to.
[00:00:35] And you start feeling a little uncomfortable. If it's been too long since you talk to them, you start to wonder, is everything okay?
[00:00:48] Well, in the week of prayer, we reorganize our lives so that at least 1 hour a week, I mean 1 hour a day, we dedicate to speaking to God.
[00:01:05] So we have times at 06:00 in the morning, noon and 06:00 in the evening.
[00:01:11] And I ask you to reorganize your schedule to upset the normal pattern of your life and to come here once a day and sit down with some other people or sit by yourself and spend some quality time talking to God.
[00:01:35] We've done it for 42 years.
[00:01:38] I know the value of it in my personal life. I know the blessings my family's had by prayer. And I know that everything you see in this church is an answer to prayer.
[00:01:53] So let the Holy Spirit refresh you.
[00:01:59] Spend a little time talking to the one who cares for you more than everyone else.
[00:02:07] See what happens when you sit in the presence of goddess and something of his spirit rubs off on you?
[00:02:17] Our dear heavenly Father, I pray that this beautiful book that you left us, the book of Galatians, I pray that it would make sense to us, and I pray that it would have profound influence on our lives.
[00:02:34] In Jesus name, amen.
[00:02:38] We studied Galatians one, and basically we learned that the gospel, the uangelion, is the person and the work of Jesus Christ.
[00:02:52] When we talk about the gospel, we're talking about who Jesus was and what he did.
[00:02:58] And then we studied chapter two. And in chapter two we learned to that we are declared right with God by faith.
[00:03:10] There isn't a checklist that if you do these things on the checklist, you're declared right with God. There's no list.
[00:03:20] There is a relationship to Jesus Christ in which we are persuaded of who he is and what he's done. And because we have put our faith in Christ, God declares us acceptable to him.
[00:03:37] This week we are in chapter three, and I want us to think about the nature of faith together.
[00:03:45] This is what Paul wrote.
[00:03:47] O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you.
[00:03:53] It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.
[00:04:03] So this sounds a little harsh, and I think Paul meant it to be a little harsh.
[00:04:09] He wanted to startle people out of their comfort zone. And the word for foolish is really the word thoughtless.
[00:04:19] O thoughtless. Galatians, have I told you on many occasions that Christianity is a thinking religion.
[00:04:30] Christianity only works when we think about the ideas of God.
[00:04:38] Christianity is not a list of rituals. You get baptized, you take the Lord's supper, you go to Christmas Eve service, you go to Good Friday service. You can do all of those things and not be right with God.
[00:04:57] Because being right with God is not a list of do's and don'ts. It is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
[00:05:08] And so Paul says to the churches at Galatia, look, it's evident to me that you have not been thinking about Christ the way you should, and it's starting to show up in your life.
[00:05:31] And then he says, who bewitched you?
[00:05:37] And Paul obviously didn't believe in bewitching.
[00:05:43] I think the word should be better translated to something like, who mesmerized you?
[00:05:49] Or who fascinated you? All right, he's saying, you haven't been thinking about Christ the way you should because you've been mesmerized by something else, and you're thinking about that instead of Christ.
[00:06:08] I wonder if every one of us could just do a minute self check and we could say something to ourself like this.
[00:06:17] My religious thinking, what has it focused on?
[00:06:23] When you think about your religious life, what does it focus on?
[00:06:29] Do you think more about what you're doing right and wrong? Then you think about who Christ is and what he has done.
[00:06:39] See, if I'm thinking more about what I'm doing right and wrong, I'm mesmerized by the law and the time I should be thinking about Christ, I'm wasting on thinking about myself and what I'm doing and not doing and all that stuff.
[00:07:02] How long has it been since you were really fascinated by Christ?
[00:07:10] How long has it been that you were thinking about Christ so clearly that just something in you said, I wish this never had to end.
[00:07:22] Church.
[00:07:24] See, that's what Paul's talking about. Paul's talking about we get so wrapped up in other things that we lose our fascination for Christ, and he just becomes another idea in our very cluttered minds and very cluttered life.
[00:07:46] Paul asked the Galatians to remember the time when they really were fixated on Christ.
[00:07:55] Remember the time when Christ was placed before your eyes as the one who was crucified.
[00:08:05] He's saying, can you remember a time in your life when you were much more interested in Christ?
[00:08:12] Can you remember a time in your life where you couldn't wait to read the gospels and, and learn something new about Christ? Can you remember a time in your life when you would just find yourself praying without even thinking about it?
[00:08:30] Now, Paul wants us to feel this. He wants us to say, what are you fixated on right now? And can you remember a time in your life when Jesus Christ was much more interesting to you? You were much more engaged.
[00:08:49] You had a greater longing for him. You wanted to learn new things about him.
[00:08:54] You wanted him more and more in your life.
[00:08:59] And Paul is asking us to do a heart check.
[00:09:05] It's just so easy to drift. It's easy to get mesmerized by things that are happening in our life, by things that are happening at work, by fears, by longings, by hopes and dreams. And all of these things subtly push Christ out of our thinking and push him farther and farther from our consciousness.
[00:09:28] And Paul is saying to the church at Corinthian at Galatia, and he's saying to us, this is not healthy.
[00:09:38] You can't live a thoughtless christian life.
[00:09:42] You have to reconnect with Christ in this profound way so that he's fascinating to you and you're interested in him, and he has a greater influence on who you are and how you think.
[00:10:00] And then Paul says, I want to ask you some questions. Paul is a good question asker.
[00:10:07] Verse two.
[00:10:09] Did you receive the spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith?
[00:10:16] Now he wants us to go back to the beginning of our christian life, and he wants us to say, how did you become a Christian to begin with?
[00:10:26] How did the Holy Spirit come to be part of your life to begin with?
[00:10:31] He wants you to think back to your beginning, the beginning of your relationship to Christ.
[00:10:40] And then he says, when you remember the beginning of your relationship to Christ, what do you remember?
[00:10:48] Do you remember a list of things you had to accomplish before the Holy Spirit would come into your life?
[00:10:58] And what could possibly be on that list?
[00:11:03] Did you become a Christian because somebody gave you a list of do's and don'ts, and somehow or another, you got your act together and you checked off all the do's and you didn't have any checks on the don'ts. So the Holy Spirit said to you, okay, you're good enough. I'll come into your life. That never happened.
[00:11:24] It never would happen. I can't get better by myself. In fact, it's just the opposite. I came to recognize that I could never get it right. And that somebody had to help me or I was hopeless.
[00:11:40] The Holy Spirit didn't come into my life because of a list of things I did or didn't do. The Holy Spirit came into my life as a free gift from Jesus Christ.
[00:11:54] Your spiritual life begins not based on what you do or don't do. It begins on a gift, for by grace you have been saved by faith, and that not of yourself. It is a gift of God, not of works. Lest anyone should boast, are you here in this church?
[00:12:21] Paul is saying, think back to the beginning of your christian life.
[00:12:27] And he uses this very interesting phrase, the hearing of faith.
[00:12:36] And I want to focus on the word faith because I feel like we often use the word and we don't have a specific definition for it, and we just kind of use it as a vague, mysterious religious word.
[00:12:52] And I'd like to focus on it a little bit.
[00:12:56] Originally, faith, the word that gets translated, faith, was an expression of being fully persuaded.
[00:13:08] A person who had faith was a person who was fully persuaded that something was true or trustworthy.
[00:13:18] So if in life you were fully persuaded that something was true or you could trust it, that was called faith.
[00:13:29] And we live by faith all the time.
[00:13:32] I'm not mechanical. If my car broke down on the way to work today, I couldn't. I'd have to call someone.
[00:13:40] But I got in it and drove it here and never thought twice. I just was fully persuaded that Ford makes an awesome pickup and that I would get here without any trouble.
[00:13:55] I was just. I'm fully persuaded.
[00:14:02] We go to bed at night, we lock the doors and go to sleep, and we're poorly persuaded that things are going to be all right. Otherwise you'd be up all night worrying sick. Right? A lot of things we do in life, we do out of this sense of, I'm persuaded that this is okay. I'm persuaded that this is true. I'm persuaded that this is trustworthy.
[00:14:25] Well, then the stoic philosophers picked this word up and they made it a relationship word. It stopped being I'm fully persuaded that the sun will rise tomorrow.
[00:14:37] And it became a relationship word. And the stoic said this, he who is faithful to himself can be faithful to others.
[00:14:50] That person alone is capable of being a genuine friend.
[00:14:55] So the stoics picked up this word and they said, if you are able to.
[00:15:05] If you're able to be.
[00:15:08] If you're able to trust the person you are, you will be a better friend than if you can't trust the person you are.
[00:15:19] Became a philosophical word. I all right, but man, that fits right in with how Paul use it. With Paul, faith is a relationship word also.
[00:15:30] But Paul doesn't say faith is your ability to trust in yourself. He says it's just the opposite. Faith is your ability to be fully persuaded that Jesus Christ is who the gospels say he is and he has done what the gospels say he did.
[00:15:51] When you have faith in Christ, it means you are fully persuaded that Jesus Christ is complete God and complete man.
[00:16:02] You are fully persuaded that in Jesus Christ, the infinite God and finite man meet.
[00:16:12] You are fully persuaded that he lived a sinless life, that he died a sacrificial death, that he rose from the dead and promised, because he lives, we also shall live. We are fully persuaded of the gospel, the person and the work of Jesus Christ.
[00:16:33] We're not fully persuaded that I'm going to be good enough or I'm going to get my act together or any of these other things. The persuasion is not what I'm capable of. The persuasion is what Christ is capable of.
[00:16:51] So then let's put this together through the gospel, the good message of who Christ is and what he did. We are persuaded that Christ is trustworthy.
[00:17:05] Christ's faithfulness is the basis of our faith.
[00:17:12] Our faith is a relationship to Christ in which we are fully persuaded.
[00:17:21] In the gospel, we hear who Christ is and the Holy Spirit persuades us that that is completely true and that's what faith is. All right, I, this is very important now. Paul says, where is your faith?
[00:17:40] Is your faith in the faithfulness of Christ or is your faith in your own faithfulness that you can do and not do what you're supposed to do and not do? Where is your faith?
[00:17:54] Are you fully convinced that Christ has done what he needed to be done and God has declared you right with him, or do you still have it in the back of your head, I gotta be faithful, I gotta do this and I have to do that and I can't do this and I can't do that. All right, the do's and don'ts follow faith. They don't create faith. I wanna do the right stuff because I love Christ, I don't wanna do the wrong stuff because I hate it and I feel guilty and it doesn't make my life good.
[00:18:32] I don't think I'm winning approval by what I do and don't do. My faith is not in my faithfulness. My faith is in the faithfulness of God.
[00:18:43] I'm fully persuaded that I'm not faithful. I have been consistently messing up for a long, long time.
[00:18:51] I am not persuaded in my faithfulness. I am persuaded in the faithfulness of Christ.
[00:19:03] So when we are fully persuaded, it's easy to believe, it's easy to trust, and it's easy to rely on Christ.
[00:19:13] When I'm not fully persuaded, I feel a whole bunch of pressure to perform myself, because I believe that it's up to me and not up to Christ.
[00:19:26] The Holy Spirit abides in us by this. Being fully persuaded about Christ, the Holy Spirit abides in us by this, fully trusting and relying on Christ. I want to be a good man tomorrow. Don't get me wrong. I want to be a good man tomorrow. But my route to being a good man is not trusting myself. My route to being a good man is trusting Christ and for the life of Christ to be more dominant in me than the life of the dummy that walks around with me every day. Church, he asks a second question.
[00:20:09] Are you so thoughtless that having begun by the spirit, you are now being perfected by the flesh? Here Paul uses this word again, thoughtless again, because you're not thinking right. You're drawing wrong conclusions.
[00:20:27] I know this happened in my own life.
[00:20:30] When I became a Christian, I believed that it was only Christ who could save me.
[00:20:38] But somehow or another, after I became a Christian, I got a message that you're saved by faith, but you don't live by faith after you're saved. You got to bear down on the rules, right?
[00:20:53] You'll never be the person God wants you to be unless you do this, this, this, and this, and you don't do this, this, and this. That's exactly what Paul's talking about.
[00:21:05] We are not made into the image of Jesus Christ by a set of rules, regulations, and obligations.
[00:21:15] Listen, listen. We are transformed into the image of Christ by Christ being at work in us.
[00:21:25] You can obey every rule that was ever written and still be a terrible person on the inside.
[00:21:34] You can obey every rule the church ever had and still be a vicious person on the inside. I've seen them.
[00:21:42] I've seen people who obeyed the rules. They were proud they obeyed the rules. They were judgmental of everybody else who didn't obey the rules, and nobody wanted to be around them. There was nothing of the life of Christ in them. Church.
[00:21:55] So Paul is saying, are you fully convinced in the life and work of Christ? That's how the life of God begins in you. Now that you believe that, you need to make the next step, how do you become everything God wants you to be?
[00:22:12] You don't revert back to a set of rules. To do that, you go forward in a relationship with Christ of being fully persuaded. I am fully persuaded that he who began the good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus, the very same person who saved you as a gift, who sent his spirit to your life as a gift, that very same person cares for you immensely and day by day in your personal relationship with him, he wants to change you, transform you, make you new in the image of Jesus Christ.
[00:22:55] The way to become a complete soul is not by a list of rules. The way to become a complete soul is by having more and more of Jesus Christ rub off on you.
[00:23:08] Remember what we heard Paul say last week? Ah, I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.
[00:23:17] The pathway to being a fully mature Christian is not a list of religious self helps. The pathway to being a fully mature Christian is a relationship to Christ in which you are fully persuaded that he who began the good work in you will make it perfect, will make it complete unto the day of Christ Jesus. The complete person I want to be, I can only become in a relationship with Jesus Christ.
[00:23:51] Are you thinking with us? Are we following Paul's argument?
[00:24:02] He asks, how can you possibly think you are made complete in the flesh?
[00:24:18] There is the law can only do one thing and it can create external compliance.
[00:24:27] Here's an illustration.
[00:24:31] Often I don't want to drive the speed limit.
[00:24:37] Is there anyone else?
[00:24:46] But I've had enough tickets that I know it's probably smarter for me to go to the speed limit.
[00:25:00] All right.
[00:25:01] Okay. But it doesn't change me at all. I'm complying because I don't want a ticket. It doesn't change me at all.
[00:25:11] I'm still rebelling in my heart.
[00:25:17] Okay.
[00:25:18] Ah, all right.
[00:25:26] That's the point Paul is trying to make.
[00:25:30] External compliance doesn't change who you are internally.
[00:25:38] We have all pretended to be somebody we weren't to get along with other people.
[00:25:46] True.
[00:25:48] Well, I would say most of us have pretended because we just didn't want an issue, so we faked it.
[00:25:56] Okay. It didn't change the fact that you were smiling and being nice, that in your heart you thought, this person's a jerk, and I want to get out of here.
[00:26:08] Okay.
[00:26:10] That's exactly what Paul's trying to say. Paul is trying to say, you can't go about becoming the person God wants you to be in the wrong way because you'll never get there.
[00:26:25] I have to have some. It's not external compliance, it's internal change.
[00:26:33] I actually want to be the kind of man who is good, better on the inside than I am on the outside.
[00:26:41] I like to be more authentic on the inside than I am an image on the outside. All right, this is exactly what Paul is saying. You became a Christian to begin with as a gift of God.
[00:26:56] Now you're going to become the complete Christian God wants you to be as a gift of God.
[00:27:03] But if you're going to receive that gift, you have to have some time with Jesus Christ in which who he is and what he has done starts changing you on the inside. You can't be a thoughtless christian and get better.
[00:27:21] You can't go Monday through Saturday and not think about Christ and get better. It won't happen.
[00:27:29] It requires this touching of your soul with the reality of Jesus Christ in a daily way.
[00:27:41] And then Paul asked a third question. Did you suffer so many things in vain? If indeed it was in vain, why would Paul ask this question? Well, you have to remember the book of acts and what happened when Paul preached in the four cities that this book was sent to. Antioch, Pisidian, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbec posidian. Paul preached there, had really successful weeks, and then some people got angry and jealous, and they created a faction, and the city had a riot, and the city managers threw Paul out of the city. They said, you gotta go. You can't stay here anymore.
[00:28:32] So Paul went to iconium, and he started preaching there, and good things happened there. Well, some people at Antioch heard what Paul was doing in iconium, and they went to iconium. They got another group started, and Paul and Barnabas had to run for their lives because they were going to stone them.
[00:28:52] Then they went to Lystra, and sure enough, he did get stoned in Lystra, and they stoned, and they thought he was dead. And Luke said they dragged his body outside the city, and Paul's friends were standing around looking at him going, Paul rolled over. It was knocked out, came to, rolled over, said that was no fun. They took him in the city, cleaned him up, and he went to the city of Derby. All right, so when Paul says being a Christian in the roman empire isn't easy, he wasn't.
[00:29:33] He was talking out of experience.
[00:29:37] I would hate to.
[00:29:39] Tried to explain to the church that I went to Detroit, started a riot.
[00:29:46] So I went to Chicago, and I started a riot there, and I went to Indianapolis and started a riot. Got knocked out cold.
[00:30:02] I hate to come and explain. Yeah, we had a really good mission trip, riots and three studies, concussions all right.
[00:30:15] So Paul says, I'm trying to figure out what's going on. Is it just that you're thoughtless, or are you starting to make some compromises with life to make it easier on yourself?
[00:30:32] Do you compromise your relationship with Christ so people around you don't think you are one of those religious nuts?
[00:30:41] Do you hide your faith to make it easier for you to fit in?
[00:30:52] Do you say, I just don't want the hassle of people knowing that I'm really committed to Christ, so I'm just going to let me just keep that to myself.
[00:31:05] Church.
[00:31:08] Paul says that's an obstacle to becoming who God wants you to be.
[00:31:14] Now, let's, I want to talk about this in a gentle way, but I want to be brutally honest.
[00:31:25] I can't ever let myself, ah, be embarrassed about Jesus Christ.
[00:31:35] I can't ever let myself do that.
[00:31:38] Because, you see, it goes right to the heart of faith.
[00:31:43] Faith is being fully persuaded that Jesus Christ is ridiculously awesome, fascinatingly good, totally committed to what is best for me.
[00:31:57] And if I permit the culture to make me uncomfortable and I start hiding my relationship to Christ, it damages, it damages my capacity to grow up in Christ.
[00:32:16] Church, you can't long to be like somebody you are embarrassed of.
[00:32:23] Do you hear what Paul is saying?
[00:32:25] Paul is saying if you want to grow up spiritually, it's about your relationship to Christ. And he said, I know being a Christian in the roman world is not easy.
[00:32:37] He said, but you can't ever give in. You can't ever, ever give in to the impulse to make it easier on yourself by hiding Christ, by hiding that part of your life, because it damages your growth in faith?
[00:33:04] Then his last question is, does he who supplies the spirit to you and works miracles among you, do so by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? Let's just take the first question.
[00:33:21] Does Christ, who daily supplies his spirit to you, does he do that by your good works, or does he do that by faith?
[00:33:32] See, I believe God shares his spirit with us every day.
[00:33:37] I believe the Holy Spirit was a down payment of my salvation. But I believe day after day the spirit of Christ is active in my life.
[00:33:48] What does that look like? Well, he guides us. If you'll let the Holy Spirit, he'll prompt your thinking and you'll do better things.
[00:33:59] He'll say to you, maybe you shouldn't be so hasty on that.
[00:34:03] Maybe you ought to think about that.
[00:34:06] Maybe you should pray about this first.
[00:34:11] Maybe this would be something that you should talk about with a trusted friend. The Holy Spirit guides us.
[00:34:19] The Holy Spirit teaches us, if I'm going to get better, I have to learn. And so the Holy Spirit is the teacher. He empowers us. I overcome temptation not by my own power, but by the power of the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit protects us from evil. All right, Paul says, does God share his spirit with you in a daily way to do all these things only when you're good and he doesn't do it when you're bad and he's expecting you to say no. God shares his spirit with me when I'm good and when I'm bad. And sometimes I think he shares his spirit more with me when I'm messing up than when I'm good. Cause I need extra work.
[00:35:06] I need extra attention.
[00:35:10] Dude, you're off track here. Somebody's gotta get you back on track. All right?
[00:35:16] This daily presence of the Holy Spirit in your life is not a reward for doing good. It's the essence of your relationship with goddess.
[00:35:28] All right, I'm running out of time, so I'm going to skip verse six.
[00:35:32] Abraham is a good example. He was justified by faith. It was his faith in God that God equated, his righteousness. Now we're going to skip to verse 24.
[00:35:45] If all this is true, if the gospel, if my relationship to the gospel is faith, if I'm justified by faith, if I live my christian life by faith, then what is the purpose of the law? Why was the law ever given? And Paul says this, so then the law was our guardian until Christ came in order that we may be justified by faith.
[00:36:17] But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.
[00:36:23] For in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith.
[00:36:30] Let's look at this word that's translated, guardian.
[00:36:34] It's a compound greek word that means child leader.
[00:36:39] Some of you who are an education pedagogy, child ago leader. A child leader. The law was a child leader to walk us to Jesus Christ.
[00:36:56] It was never given to make anybody better or worse. It was given to get us to Jesus Christ.
[00:37:06] The law says, you can't do this by yourself, and I'll prove it to you again and again. But God has an answer. Christ has done something for you.
[00:37:21] And then he says in verse 25, when faith comes, we don't need the child leader anymore.
[00:37:31] When faith comes, we don't need the pedagogue. The bond between God and his people is not a bond of law. It's a bond of love and faith.
[00:37:45] How about this?
[00:37:49] When we pray and say in Jesus name, amen. Why do we do that?
[00:37:58] When we pray and at the end of our prayers we say in Jesus name, amen. Why do we do that?
[00:38:04] We are acknowledging that our bond to the Lord God Almighty is through Jesus Christ.
[00:38:14] Because of Jesus Christ. I'm praying for this.
[00:38:19] Now let's put this into Paul's argument. How stupid would it be to pray?
[00:38:26] Say everything you pray for, ask for the blessings and all that and say, and I do this all because you said thou shalt not kill in the name of ten commandments. Amen.
[00:38:42] No one would ever think of doing that.
[00:38:47] No one would ever. No one would ever have a prayer to God. And instead of saying in Jesus name, amen, I say, and in the name of thou shalt not commit adultery. Amen.
[00:39:05] Are you sensing this argument? My bond to God that is expressed in prayer is a bond through Jesus Christ. It's not a bond through the law. I'm not bonded to God through the law. I'm bonded to God through Jesus Christ.
[00:39:22] And this is our week of prayer. And we're not going to pray in the name of the law. We're going to pray in the name of Jesus Christ. We're not going to seek blessings because we say, look at all the good stuff we did. Don't we deserve your blessing? We're going to ask for blessings because of who Jesus Christ is and how much he loves us and his eternal purpose for us.
[00:39:47] And then Paul draws his grand conclusion.
[00:39:54] You are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus.
[00:40:03] Parents, do your children stop being your kids when they disobey you?
[00:40:12] No.
[00:40:14] Unless you have terrible character issues, your child isn't your child because of what they do or don't do.
[00:40:25] Your child is your child because you are a parent.
[00:40:32] Your children do not earn the right to be your kids.
[00:40:37] You never set your kids down and say, now this year when you go to school, if you do these things and you don't do these things, you can be my kid next year.
[00:40:51] But if I get, if I, if you, if I get the principal calls me or this or that next year you're going to the orphanage.
[00:41:02] No one would, well, I hate to say no one. I'm sure there are people out there that are a normal parent would never do that.
[00:41:12] So why do we treat God that way if we are flawed parents and we don't do that to our kids? They're not our kids when they disobey us and they are our kids when they obey us. If we don't even do that? Why would God himself do it?
[00:41:31] Paul is saying very clearly, here's what I want you to understand. You're not God's kids. When you do everything right and you don't do anything wrong, you're God's kids. Through faith in Jesus Christ, you're being fully persuaded that Jesus Christ is who the gospel says he is. You being fully persuaded that he did with his life what the Bible said he did. You being fully persuaded that when he died on the cross, he died for your sins. And by faith he declares you right with God. That's what makes you a child of God.
[00:42:10] And now I have to live like a child of God. I cannot live like a indentured servant who has to do certain things and not do certain things, or God doesn't love me. Church, you have to say there's something beautiful and meaningful and rich in my relationship to Christ. And the more time I spend with him, the more fully persuaded I am. The more time I spend with Christ, the more brilliant he seems, the more loving he seems, the more gracious he seems. And the less time I spend with Christ, the easier it is for me to fall in to being fascinated with other things and then drift back into a performance relationship with God. I underperform. Today, God doesn't like me as much, and I lose the life of faith.
[00:43:09] All right. Chapter one, the gospel. Jesus is God of God and man of man.
[00:43:18] He lived a sinless life. He died a substitutionary death. He rose from the grave and said, because I live, you also shall live. The gospel number two, I'm justified by faith, not by works. God declares me right because I have been fully convinced about who Jesus is and what he did. Chapter three. I grow up in Jesus Christ by the very same faith in Christ by which I became a Christian. Our dear heavenly Father, I pray that your spirit would plant these good thoughts in our hearts, and I pray that those who have never been fully persuaded, I pray that just now your spirit would pass over their hearts, and you would convince them of how awesome Jesus Christ is.
[00:44:21] And it would be easy for them to put their trust in you.
[00:44:25] It would be easy for them to receive your spirit.
[00:44:30] I pray for those who have, who've come to know Christ, but they've lost their fascination and their christian development is stalled, and they question where they are in relationship to you.
[00:44:55] They worry about their performance and lack of performance.
[00:44:59] I pray that just now your spirit would pass by them.
[00:45:03] I pray that you would reaffirm your love to them.
[00:45:06] I pray that they could see Jesus more clearly than they've ever seen him. And in seeing him so clearly, their hearts would be persuaded, and they would have a new fascination with Christ. And in some way, they would seek your face every single day.
[00:45:24] And your spirit would be doing his good work in them, day by day. And you would fulfill your holy promise that the good work you began in us, you will make perfect until the day of Christ Jesus. Amen.
