“If you want to be made right with God by fulfilling the obligations of the law, you have cut off more than your flesh—you have cut yourselves off from Christ and have fallen away from the revelation of grace! But we have the true hope that comes from being made right with God, and by the Spirit we wait eagerly for this hope. When you’re joined to the Anointed One, circumcision and religious obligations can benefit you nothing. All that matters now is living in the faith that works and expresses itself through love!” Galatians 5:4-6 TPT.
You know I’ve done enough stupid stuff in my life to know that positive talk won’t help me to use my faith and love others. Mainly because whatever you talk yourself into, you can talk yourself OUT OF! Plus satan would be de-light-ed to help me to go the wrong way. Even other people’s reassurances won’t help when my focus goes off – ‘whatever the Lord is doing,’ and lands on ‘what’s in it for me?’
Yesterday I looked at David and his faith-filled interactions with the Lord. No matter what happened in his life, David’s heart stayed right with God – even when he was corrected. You and I are blessed to be able to live that way too, because of Jesus and what He did. So this morning, hubby and I were talking about how much we need to be reminded that God doesn’t love us for what we do or don’t do – He loves us because Love is Who He is. Now we always have a choice in the arena of faith. Do we believe Him or not? Will we let Him make ‘love’ who we are?
If we don’t make that choice to deliberately keep aware of His Grace, we can become so focussed on serving the Lord, and making sure we do everything right – that we forget to enjoy every single day what we have been given. When we live with rules and judgment over ourselves, we are much more likely to give that junk away to someone else: Peter made that clear when he said: “…such as I have give I thee!” Acts 3:6.
His focus in the above scripture, was spot on. He honed in on being a benefit to those around him, not the law. So giving away what he had, meant that he lived aware that he had fresh clean water bubbling up inside him. His faith was always active. I want that, and I’m pretty sure you do too – that’s why we are all taking this journey together. When our focus is on right and wrong, eventually, we will start focussing on, and judging ourselves, and others.
This wrong kind of perspective can distract anyone from the revelation we’ve been given about God’s Grace and what He has done for us. Jesus did not only come to save us from our big or little sins – He came to save and restore our relationship with our Heavenly Father. Sin is the lesser thing, the Lord Jesus’ primary focus is always on redemption and restoration and His love being shed abroad in our hearts – by FAITH. We receive love by faith, and we give it away … using our faith.
When we read the gospels, it is clear Jesus wants us to know what His Father likes and wants from us. And self-recrimination and condemnation of others is not on that list. Micah 6:8 tells us that God has shown us what is good. “He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you But to do justly, To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God?”
Adam and Eve lost their fellowship with God; but Jesus, the second Adam, is the Founder of a whole new spiritually-aware kind of people. He came to restore us and exponentially increase our faith, love and fellowship with our Heavenly Father, so that we could begin to know the kind of Oneness that the Trinity enjoys. We cannot have that when we have enmity with one another. Our focus will go off faith and fellowship and love, over onto finding fault with others.
That’s when we decide to protect ME at someone else’s cost. Maybe we don’t like these people because they do this and that, or we don’t like this member of our family because they did so and so. You know, loving people doesn’t have to mean we give them permission to mistreat us, or that we approve of the way they treat others. Loving them means that we use our faith, put them into God’s hands, and live the way He says.
We can’t afford to embrace the idea that everyone thinking the same way is the criteria for restoration. It isn’t! It can’t be! We don’t all think the same way! Almighty God Himself has to be the One Who unites us. However, His love is a universal language, and expressing that love, using our faith, as He leads us, can take away barriers. That’s what God’s love given freely to all of us undeserving sinners did! It took away all barriers. We can now enjoy Who He is, and He can expand our viewpoints over and above our prejudices – so that our prejudices… fade … away.
If someone is in error, then we need to remind them from God’s Word what His way looks like. If necessary then we will engage the church leadership in this process. Withdrawing love cannot be the way forward. As we co-operate with the Holy Spirit, and let Him love people through us, we will learn to release our faith as we choose to live in love. Meanwhile Galatians 5:6 says: “And we to whom Christ has given eternal life don’t need to worry about whether we have been circumcised or not, or whether we are obeying the Jewish ceremonies or not; for all we need is faith working through love.”
The law can’t produce what faith does, in our own lives or in the lives of others. Faith has one primary purpose – to activate our lives with love. Bless you 👋.
