Origin
Origin
Galatians, Week 2, Not My Life
We are in Week 2 of our study of Galatians, coving studying Chapter 2 with the thought that our life is not our own. God is Sovereign, Supreme Ruler over everything, yet He gives us free will. When we make Him Lord of our lives, our life belongs to Him. It is Not My Life. But do we choose to live it for ourselves or do we choose to live it for Him. The more fulfilling life is to live it as God created us to, not with ourselves at the center, but with Him at the center.
Welcome back to the Table of Origin. We are in
week two of Galatians:Not Going Back, and we've got a lot to cover. Today, I'm here at the table with my friends, Kyli Rose and Jina McAfee, and today we're going to discuss Galatians chapter two with the premise that the life I am living belongs to Him. It is not my life. God is sovereign and supreme. Sometimes we have trouble with that thought. Hopefully we can break down some of that throughout the conversation about Galatians, but He's supreme and He rules over everything, yet He gave us free will. That's where the tension is. So our life belongs to Him, but do we choose to live it for Him? That's the question. I think we have trouble with that concept. Why do you think we do?
Kyli Rose:I think we live in a culture that says, "Do what is best for you!" We live in a very selfish, self-serving culture.
Jina McAfee:We're born into an existance that's all about self. When He changes your life, there's still this back and forth living where you're trying to lay yourself down, saying,"We want more of You, Lord, less of me," but it's a journey. We have to adjust ourselves.
Kyli Rose:Yes. It's in us.
ReGina Johnston:My little two-year-old doesn't look at the toy that her brother, who's almost four, has and and say in her heart, "I just prefer for you to have that toy." That is not her stance at all. No, she goes and takes it and says,"Mine!" And that's in us. It is.
Jina McAfee:It's totally in us. Paul opens chapter two of Galatians by saying this,"Fourteen years later [He's telling his story, right?] Fourteen years later, I went back to Jerusalem again, this time with Barnabas and Titus. I went there because God revealed to me that I should go. [like He directed me to go.] And while I was there, I met privately with some leaders of the church and shared with them the message that I had been preaching to the Gentiles. I wanted to make sure that we were in agreement" (Ga 2:1-2). Then we go to verse six. It says, "The leaders of the church had nothing to add to what I was preaching....They saw that God had given me the responsibility of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles [which was everybody but the Jews] just as He had given Peter the responsibility of preaching to the Jews. For the same God who worked through Peter as the apostle to the Jews also worked through me as the apostle to the Gentiles. In fact, James, Peter and John, pillars of the church, recognized the gift God had given me, and they accepted Barnabas and me as their
co-workers" (Ga 2:6-9a NLT). So what we see is that God has a plan. He had a plan for Paul, He had a plan for Peter, and He has a plan for us. We just need to be open to the plan He has for us. We need to hear His voice, hear His direction, because God wants everyone to hear the gospel. So we just need to be open. God will direct us.
Kyli Rose:If you know anything about Paul, you know that he was called to the Gentiles. He had this radical experience with Jesus on the road to Damascus. He would have described himself as the Pharisee among Pharisees. He was steeped in this Jewish culture, but God put a calling on his life, and that was to go and preach the gospel to the people who were not Jews. We see that many of the other disciples and apostles were called to the Jews, but Paul was called to the Gentiles. You see this journey with Paul where he just comes to the end of himself. He says,"Whatever it is You have put me on this earth to do, that is what I will do, regardless of the cost. No matter what You ask, the answer is 'Yes!' No matter where You tell me to go, I'm going. If it's hard, I'm going to go." You see this pattern and this life of surrender through Paul, over and over and over again. One of the questions we've been asking ourselves in preparation for this podcast and one of the questions you can ask yourself is, "Are you as open as you should be?" As we're looking at the life of Paul, we see his openness, and we see the fruit of that openness. People responded to the gospel. He was open to go and to do and to say whatever Jesus asked. Are you as open as you should be? Be open. What does that look like? It looks like not judging. That's hard. If you think about it, he was going to places and spaces where people looked differently than he did. They thought differently than he did. They would have behaved in ways that would have offended his very nature, the way he was raised, his theology. So can you go and be open? That requires no judging. That requires you to be trusting, not suspicious, to be constructive, not condemning. It's not our job to be the Holy Spirit. The task He gave Paul was to go, not to be the Holy Spirit. Do we lift people up and not bring them down? Can we have genuine dialogue with a culture that does not know how to have dialogue, where we have sides, you versus us, where we draw lines in the sand? Can we do that? Can we learn how to do that? Not critical debate; that's destructive. And can we use discernment as we go? The gospel is not limited to a particular people group. If Paul's life tells us anything, it was always meant to be everybody. The family of God is an open invitation to anybody and everybody. The gospel is not limited to a particular class or a category of people. The body of Christ, the Church, is the welcoming point and the meeting place for anybody and everybody who wants to come.
ReGina Johnston:Not only was Paul open to go to people that weren't like him, but he was also open to the leading of the Holy Spirit. We can see throughout Scripture when Paul will talk about how the Spirit was leading him and he was going according to the Spirit's guiding. Sometimes it's hard to tell when God is speaking to us. I know you both, and you've probably dealt with these moments where you're saying, "Is that God? Is that God speaking to me?" Here are some ways that we can know. On occasion, He'll speak directly to us, and there's just no doubt. You know that was God. I wasn't even thinking on that matter, and all of a sudden, this thought comes into my head, and it was so clearly God's thought, so clearly that He's speaking directly to you, maybe not in an audible voice, but maybe through your thoughts. He invades your thoughts to speak. Sometimes you will just feel it deep in your spirit, just have this sense that God is guiding you. You might have a dream, you may have a vision, and you might hear an audible voice. Sometimes, though, if we just limit God speaking to us in some dramatic fashion, we're going to miss what He's wanting to say. There are other times and occasions in the in the Word, where He speaks even in a whisper, in a still, small voice. You may be turning up your volume right now, because I got quiet for a moment. When God begins to get quiet, sometimes it's to get us to lean in, to draw near, to come closer, to be more intimate. And I love that He has that range of dynamics in His voice, where He catches our attention, so be open to the leading of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes His direction comes through the right word at the right time, and that word brings clarity to a situation that was previously confusing. It could be through a sermon or a song or a friend or a prayer. Just attune yourself to hear from God, however, that might be.
Jina McAfee:One of the main ways He speaks to us is through His Word, through the Bible. Today, most of us have this Word right here in our pocket or our purse. I'm looking around to see if my friends here at the table have it right next to them. I've got mine. I've got my phone. I talked to my 10-year-old granddaughter this week to see if she had the Word on her phone. So be in the Word. Study the Scriptures. Years ago, I had this physical paper concordance, a huge book. Today, I just use Google. I just type in the search bar, "What does the Bible say about_____________." Fill in the blank. This morning, I looked up, "What does the Bible say about godly friends." I have friends doing a podcast about godly friends, and I wanted to see what Scripture said. So look it up. Read it. Ask Holy Spirit to reveal Himself. He wants to. He will. He wants to be known. We just have to be open to hear His voice and to be open to do what He wants us to do, just like Paul did when he went to Jerusalem. We saw in the first nine verses, God led some to speak to the Jews, some to speak to the Gentiles. Same God, same message. In 1 Corinthians 9, Paul talks about finding common ground. Just like Kyli said, he wants to find common ground to be able to share Christ with people. It says in 1 Corinthians
9:20-22, "To the Jews, I became as a Jew, so that I might win Jews; to those under the Law, as under the Law ... so that I might win those under the Law; to those without law, as without law,... so that I might win those who are without law. To the weak. I became weak, that I might win the weak; I have become all things to all men, so that I may, by all means save some."
ReGina Johnston:Flexible.
Jina McAfee:I love that. He's paying attention to those around him, and he's looking at them. How can they hear? He wants to make sure they can hear.
ReGina Johnston:I think it's important to say that Paul did not compromise his relationship with the Lord and his own convictions to become all things to all men. Sometimes we think that we need to do exactly like they're doing and live exactly like they're living in order to be relatable.
Jina McAfee:That's right. We don't want to go there. That's not what he did. What he is saying is I looked for a place where I could get in and touch their lives. He looked for common ground.
Kyli Rose:He laid down preferences. Preferences and theology are two different things. He didn't minimize his theology or water it down. He just put his preferences to the side. He put himself to the side.
Jina McAfee:Just look for ways. So we talked about being open, and we want to talk about being real. Share who you are, share your struggles. Like, "I understand why you're struggling there." Tell people what Jesus has done for you. We're all in need of a Savior. That's common ground. We're all in need of a Savior. Be real.
Kyli Rose:So we're open to people. We're open to the Holy Spirit. And like Jina just said,"That openness involves authenticity, being real with people." You're willing to meet people right where they are. And how do we do that? Practically, that looks like service. Where people are, there will be messes. People are messy. We're messy. We're messy people. I think about the people who stooped with me when I was figuring this thing out, and the people who were patient with me. They didn't ask me to come to them. They met me right in that place. We didn't stay in that place, but they met me there. We see Jesus. He models that so beautifully. We see Paul model that beautifully. What does being real with people look like? It looks like service. Matthew 20:27-28 says, "Whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave; just as the Son of Man, Jesus, did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many." So what does it look like? You serve your fellow man. There is no better way to be real and authentic with someone than to get down in the muck with them, to get down in the mess and the dirt and serve them. We see Paul do that. But in John 13, you have this beautiful picture of Jesus doing the same thing. We see that He gets on His knees and He begins to wash His disciples' feet. You've probably seen this scene depicted in a picture or a piece of art, and usually what you see is a really nice and tidy scene. You see Jesus in His robe, and you see the one clean, white towel, soapy water, yes soapy clean, clear water and that just wouldn't have been what that scene would have looked like in real life. These people wore sandals. They did not have tennis shoes and socks. Their feet would have been filthy. And we see Jesus, the King. If anyone deserved the highest place of honor, it was Jesus. If anyone deserved to have the best seat at the table, it was Jesus. And if anyone deserved to have His feet washed, it would have been Jesus. And in this day and time, the person who washed feet had the lowest position in the household. What Jesus was modeling to them is, if you're going to be effective and fruitful, you have to be really, really good at assuming the lowest position. He washed their feet, and you know that that basin of water would have been filthy, dirt and grime and excrement from the streets. They had animals walking around and living amongst them. He met them right where they were. It was more than about dirty feet. He was saying, "I'm going to meet your dirty hearts. I'm going to meet your broken and your messy hearts. I will meet you right where you are, the brokenness, the poor motives, the bad intentions. I am going to meet you right where you are, and if you'll allow Me to, I can clean every single bit of it up.
ReGina Johnston:Another thing we want to highlight is in
Galatians 2:11-13. It says, "But when Peter came to Antioch, I had to oppose him to his face, for what he did was very wrong.[That's so difficult, because you're dealing with a brother, right?] When he first arrived, he ate with the Gentile believers who were not circumcised. But afterward, when some friends of James came, Peter wouldn't eat with the Gentiles anymore. He was afraid of criticism from those people who insisted on the necessity of circumcision. As a result, other Jewish believers followed Peter's hypocrisy, and even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy." As we were speaking of being true to yourself in every setting, remember that you're a follower of Christ first and foremost. Being who you are in every setting means that you're not going to be one person at the church, another person at the gym, and someone else at home. You're going to guard your emotions and your passions and be long suffering with people at church, but you're going to be that way at home too with the people who love you most. You're not going to take advantage of the fact that they love you and they"ain't going nowhere." You're going to be long suffering with them too, and you're going to communicate value in that. So be in the world but not of the world. This speaks to what we were talking about earlier, about trying to find common ground, but not being like the people you're with in every way. In John 17, Jesus is praying over His disciples, and this is what He's saying in verse 17,"Sanctify them in the truth; Your Word is truth." So I can just imagine, as He's washing their feet, He's thinking, "I'm about to sanctify them in some truth." They're rubbing shoulders with Jesus. This is the truth, washing their feet. Jesus is praying to His Father,"As You sent Me into the world, I have also sent them into the world" (v. 18). That's part of His prayer. So be true to who you are, wherever you are. You're saved, you're redeemed, you're set free. Be that wherever you go.
Jina McAfee:I love that. He's getting ready to leave them and He's saying, I'm sending you now. You've got to be Me.
Kyli Rose:I'm hearing that this is hard, though. Everyone talks about being authentic and being real, but when you look at what being real actually looks like when it's service and when it's holding yourself accountable and your brothers and sisters in Christ accountable, that's hard. Being real and honest and authentic is actually very, very hard because it requires death to self.
Jina McAfee:That's it. You've got to lay aside your life.
Kyli Rose:It's not about you.
ReGina Johnston:And you want people to like you. We're kind of deviating from notes, but this is so important because this is where we live. I want you to like me. I don't want to say something that might be confrontational to you. However, we're called to sharpen one another. So can you just imagine what went on in the hearts of both of those men and the receptivity that Peter had was amazing, notable.
Jina McAfee:So, we're talking about being open, we're talking about being real, we're talking about being a servant. Next, we are going to talk about being changed. We're following along in chapter two, and we're going to look at verses 15 through 19. Paul is saying to Peter, "You and I are Jews by birth....Yet we know that a person is made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, not by obeying the law.[So not by being circumcised. We're made right by faith.].... No one will ever be made right with God by obeying the law." Verse 19 says, "For when I tried to keep the law, it condemned me. So I died to the law--I stopped trying to meet all its requirements--so that I might live for God." So the point is, a person is made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, that alone, not by obeying the law. Some versions use the word"justified." A man is not justified by the works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ. Today we can look at that word "justified" as an excuse for doing what we do. That's not what Paul is saying here. You may hear someone say,"It's okay for me to yell at my kids. After all, my mom yelled at me."
ReGina Johnston:Well, look what they did. They wrote on the walls.
Jina McAfee:They did. Or, it's okay for me to take things from my job, you know, take some paper, printing, they don't pay me what I'm worth. We justify our behavior, which is really sinful behavior. Another might say, "It's okay for me to sleep around or watch porn, I have no husband." Now, I have never said
ReGina Johnston:I know it seems so weird coming from your mouth. that.
Jina McAfee:None of those are things I have actually said or thought, but I have justified my behavior before. This is not the justified that Paul is talking about here. We are justified through the work of Jesus Christ and that alone. It's about aligning with Him, being aligned with Christ, being made right. The freedom that comes through Christ is not a license to sin, but a strength to live in righteousness. So we say, how do we do this? Only in Him, right? So we're talking about being real. As believers, there's continual growth, there's continual refining. We begin to look more and more and more like Him. We don't start out that way, right? He's working. Allow Him to work in you. Seek Him and His will. Allow Him to change you and rescue you from the things that keep you from being like Him. So be changed. You may say, I can't quit _____. Fill in the blank. Whatever it is. I can't quit thinking about myself. I can't quit saying that one thing. I can't quit feeling the way I'm feeling. You're right. You can't, but Christ, through you, can. It's not your life anyway. It's His. He rescued you. And there is no going back.
Kyli Rose:So you see the call, the thing that we're all called to, this openness, this transparency, being real, authentic, serving, and you see where that is not happening in Galatians two, and how it actually creates conflict. It's this confrontation between Peter and Paul. Paul is being a good friend. He's calling his brother Peter on the carpet because of his inconsistent, incongruent behavior towards these Gentiles. We have set the scene already. Before his Jewish counterparts came, Peter was actually eating and fellowshipping with these Gentiles. He was free. There were certain dietary restrictions for the Jews, but when Jesus came, He abolished a lot of those restrictions. We see Peter waffling between two worlds, a world that he has been set free from and one that he is part of now. He's having to make a choice. He's hanging out with the Gentiles, celebrating, fellowshipping, eating. Then when his Jewish friends come, he actually separates himself from the Gentiles that he was fellowshipping with. He was caught in between these two worlds, and he made a choice. So Paul is calling him on the carpet for his inconsistency. I think we can relate to Peter's struggle. I want you to find yourself in the struggle, because it is an age old one that we still wrestle with. Peter was struggling in this moment with ties to the law, which came from his old identity, his former life. He was wanting to go back to something that Christ had already set him free from, because it was hard. There were two sets of people looking at him, and he had to choose. He was struggling with his role as a Jew. He was also struggling with appearance, and in this moment, he looked like a hypocrite. He was behaving hypocritically. So Paul, being the good friend that he was, called him out on it. That's hard.
ReGina Johnston:That appearance thing is a big deal these days, because we do so much for appearance sake. We do it for the Instagram post. We do it for the picture that makes everything look perfect when we know the reality behind the scenes and that's just not the case. I want to talk about that a little bit more. First of all, I like that Peter struggled. It made me think that somewhere down the line, years and years to come, and maybe in weeks to come, someone will say, "I like that you struggled" to me, because that makes me relatable. I know the end of Peter's story, and it's a good end, but he did struggle. Second Corinthians 5:17 says, "Now, if anyone is enfolded into Christ, he has become an entirely new person. All that is related to the old order has vanished." So my old identity no longer lives. It keeps trying to resurrect, but it no longer lives. That's how we can walk away from past ties. We can say, "That's dead! Christ now lives in me." We do have moments where we struggle like Peter was struggling, and sometimes we make decisions in the moment that someone needs to call us on the carpet about. We know Peter loved Jesus. That wasn't the question. Also, we know that Jesus had already told Peter, "You're a rock and on you, I'm going to build this church." But what he was doing in the moment didn't look like it. So we're going to have those moments. We're going to struggle with past ties and who we are. It's good to remember who God says you are in those moments and then align yourself with that.
Jina McAfee:Get some truth in there, right?
ReGina Johnston:And it's good to be open to your trustworthy sisters and brothers, who would say, "Maybe that's not the thing for you. Maybe you are concerned about an appearance here." We can call a brother or a sister to a heart searching activity through prayer that makes them better, makes them stronger, makes them more effective for the kingdom. So yes, we're going to struggle, but God will help us.
Jina McAfee:As we're talking today, you might think, "Oh, I do that. I can so see the reality of that." When you see it, you can move forward. So it can be hard to let the past stay in the past. For some of us, there are past hurts, bad choices, thought patterns that are on this loop somewhere in our brain that can affect our present actions. When I speak about thoughts that play over and over again in your brain, you may think of some of the things that are on a loop in your brain. Sometimes it's the enemy speaking lies over you. Sometimes it's us. We just speak it over and over and over again to ourselves. My "go to" used to be, "I can't." For another, it could be, "You failed at your diet, you're never going to lose weight." You speak it to yourself. You speak that. You
discourage yourself. Or:"Remember when you did______________." Just fill in the blank. "You're not worthy of
God's love." Or:"You will never have it together." I could go on and on. These thoughts can lead to strong feelings, and we trust these feelings. Realize, these feelings are not real. They're subjective, they're subject to error over what the Word of God objectively, steadfastly, equivocally and all of the ly's says. The world lives in this headspace. I've lived in that headspace. Here's another one,"If it feels good, do it. If it's the path of least resistance, then go for it."
Kyli Rose:You see that Peter actually had this choice, and he chose the path of least resistance. He cared more about the opinion of man than the opinion of God. In that moment, he chose to separate himself from the Gentiles in favor of the Jews. And he knew the Gentiles were accepted by God, just as they were. He knew that. But what Peter knew did not stop him from acting on what he felt--on fear. It was fear. And so we see this cycle. We attach theories and all sorts of terms now, but you see these rooted in biblical principles when you see them working themselves out in the lives of these biblical characters. We have referred to this now as the "think, feel, do" cycle. It's this loop of thoughts that assigns meaning to our circumstances. So those thoughts evoke an emotion which then leads me to act or not act. So whatever the circumstances, the way you think determines how you feel, which impacts what you do, which creates your life results. So it all begins with a thought. What I think will inform my emotions, and then my emotions will inform my behavior. And that continues over and over and over again. Some of us feel stuck because we are in this cycle. I think a certain way, and that thought process is a broken thought process, which then informs a broken emotion, which then informs a broken behavior. There is so much hope in the Word. You'll hear us talk about the Word over and over and over, and we will not stop, because you cannot break this cycle apart from the Word, apart from the truth. You cannot dismantle a lie unless you replace it with truth. You cannot do it. So to break the chain of those old thought patterns, we're brought into a new life. We have to make a conscious and intentional choice to trust God. How do you trust God? Those are two big words. What does that look like practically? You need to interrogate your thoughts. A lot of us are so busy expending energy. You are tired and you are exhausted because you are hacking away at the branches of your life, the behaviors of your life, but you need to spend time looking and evaluating the root system. If you want to kill something, go to the root. You don't hack at branches. You kill it at the root. What is the root? The "think, feel, do" cycle would say that the root is your thought life. So how do we do that? Whenever you interrogate your thoughts, the first thing you need to ask is,"Who said that? Does that thought line up with what God says about Himself and what He says about me?" You cannot know that apart from the Word. Does it line up with truth? The Word of God is truth. Do we know it? Do we hide it in our hearts? So interrogate the thought. Attack the root system. That is your thought. Then you'll see those emotions being informed in a new way and those behaviors beginning to change. It will not happen overnight. It is a process. You take every single thought captive. How do you do it? You interrogate it over and over and over again.
ReGina Johnston:You spoke about trusting God. Proverbs 3:5-8 says, "Trust in the Lord completely, and do not rely on your own opinions. With all your heart rely on Him to guide you, and He will lead you in every decision you make." We've got to become very intimate with Him so that we know His character and so that we can trust His character. I will tell you that you can trust His character. And if we feel like we can't, it's just because we don't know Him enough. We're not living closely enough to Him. If we think for a moment that we have the wisdom to deal with everything we deal with or that we know all the ways that we need to deal with something, all the things we need to say, all the thoughts that you're having, I don't know that. We don't even know our own hearts. The Bible says we need God to even search our own hearts. We need Holy Spirit to help us objectively look at our hearts. So we want to come to Him with undivided devotion and avoid the sin aspects of life. Shut those out so that we can find healing refreshment for our bodies and our spirits. Romans 12:2 says, "Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our minds, that by testing we may discern what is the will of God, what is good, acceptable and perfect." Kyli, you mentioned this, 2 Corinthians, 10:5 says, "We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God." Once we've come to Him, we know Him, we trust his character, then we know what's not Him, right? And when we hear that, when that comes into our mind, we want to destroy it, and we want to take that thought captive, like you said, and make it obedient to Christ, make it obedient to what we know about His character. This isn't just for old thought patterns, but it's also for that inevitable question that comes to all of us, "Who am I?" We will not know who we are unless we know who God is, unless we begin to know His character. Sometimes people focus the "Who am I?" question on themselves in trying to find out who they are so they can be true to themselves. No, if you focus that question on who God is, you'll find yourself.
Jina McAfee:So identity is a big question today, right? Who am I? There are so many books and podcasts about how to find your best self. The world has lots of good advice, but not God advice. So that's what we want to give you today. One of the things people do is look at our roles, at what we do, as our identity. If somebody says, "Who you are? Tell me about yourself," you might say, "I'm a mom, I'm a teacher, I'm a cook, I'm a business owner, I'm a realtor, I'm a pastor." Those things may be true, but it's not fully who you are. It's some of what you do. The enemy knows that if he can turn your gaze off of Jesus, or if we try to figure it out by looking at ourselves, we'll never know. We have to look at God. You can't look at earthly things like roles. They're not stable. The enemy does not want you to be stable. And he doesn't want you to be sharing Christ with people. He doesn't want that. He wants to keep you bound. Once you understand who you truly are, you'll begin to understand the authority that you walk in now, and we want that for you.
Kyli Rose: 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 says, "We are human, but we don't wage war as humans. We use God's mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments." He's given us supernatural weapons to defeat the war that rages in our minds. We don't have to stay stuck in that cycle. We can break it. 1
John 5:4-5 says, "For every child of God defeats this evil world, and we achieve this victory through our faith [not through a TED talk or a four-step process.] And who can win this battle against the world? Only those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God." It's a supernatural war that you're engaged in, and you have to utilize supernatural weapons. So we see Peter. He's struggling with his identity in this passage, his identity, his former role as a Jew. He's stuck in between this choice. We see Peter was a lot more concerned about appearances, so he's also struggling with the way things look on the outside. He's struggling more with appearance before the Jewish leaders than he was with what he had learned from Jesus and what was revealed to him from the Father. So the definition of a hypocrite, in this sense, is a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion. We've talked a lot about identity through the lens of old ties to our former selves. We've talked about the attachment to roles and ties that can sometimes take our attention away from Jesus. But I think most of us really wrestle with putting a whole lot more focus on the appearance of our walk. And there's a lot of danger in that, because we begin striving to become the person that the people around us want us to be. I think we've all done that. You feel the expectations, and they're not necessarily bad expectations, but some of the weight that we carry is weight that we don't have to carry. We're carrying around expectations of other people, and not from God. Or maybe it's about the person you think God wants you to be, rather than letting Him do the work in you. There's so much striving. Maybe your walk with the Lord just feels heavy and hard and cumbersome because you are trying so hard to be good and like work through these behaviors and thought processes on your own. And He says, "You don't have to." He is the one who does the work, and you should just simply keep showing up and being willing. Just keep being willing. Just keep saying,"Yes, God. I don't believe, but help my unbelief. I want to trust You. Help me. Show me. And He will.
Jina McAfee:So when it comes right down to it, we just need to hear verse 20 in chapter two, which says, "My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me." Already done. We've got to identify completely with Him. We have been crucified. We have been. I know what that striving feels like and even the weight of what we think God wants us to look like, but He's got to do that work in us. So this is the thing that stood out to me right here: Our DNA is literally Christ. It's who we are. But listen to this, our muscle memory is self. So what does that mean? It's like your your reflex. It's like your "go to." It's like your habit. It's like those chains of thought too. We have to keep reminding ourselves that we are dead to sin. When I heard the term muscle memory, I thought about the old study about Pavlov's dog. Like if you do this, then this result comes. But the truth is, we've got to remind ourselves of who we already are in Christ to break through those old habits. I used to walk in a room and I'd feel fear. Like, I don't want to be here. I just want to leave. That was muscle memory. I can walk in a big room now, and I can still feel like, "Where do I go? What do I do?" Then I have to remind myself, "You can do this. Just go and start tallking to somebody, start a conversation." I have to remember who I am in Christ. I'm a daughter of the king. You have to get the truth in there. Romans 6:11 says, "So let it be the same way with you! Since you are now joined with Him, [I love that. Joined with Him. Actually, He lives in you.] you must continually [that word continually stands out] view yourselves as dead and unresponsive to sin's appeal while living daily for God's pleasure in union with Jesus, the Anointed One." And you know what? There's peace. When you do that, you live in peace. It's like your whole self is in union with the Lord and what He has for us. So what does that look like in practice? How do we do that? We've got to draw close. We've got to know the Word. We've got to spend time in the Word. We have talked about the fact that if we will be in the Word more days than not [4 or more times a week] it will become our "go to." It will become who we are. It happens over time. Speak it out loud. It takes time.
Kyli Rose:So we're talking about muscle memory. And really the fancy church word we would use for that is sanctification. We talked about us becoming new creatures in Christ. That happened at the moment of salvation. You stepped out of the kingdom of darkness into this kingdom of light. Now you're doing this continual process, this process of sanctification, looking more and more like Jesus. You're creating a new way of living, a new way of thinking, and you're doing that by the power of the Holy Spirit. Six years ago, I started working out, lifting weights and and it was a process. It was really hard. I was having to put my body under strain and I remember in those first weeks, just being so uncomfortable. It was so painful, and I was so sore, that doing even very simple tasks felt so hard, but I just kept showing up, and I kept showing up, and I kept showing up. Six years later, it is still not easy, but it is a part of who I am. It's a part of my daily routine. I have developed new muscle memory. My muscles know what to do. It is six years of just day in and day out reps. Oftentimes what happens is we want to quit. We feel the fatigue. We feel the burnout. We feel tired. Our muscles are sore and we want to quit, but I would just encourage you, keep showing up, like keep doing the hard thing. Romans 12:2 says that we are transformed by the renewing of our minds. It is a day by day process. It is just simply choosing to get reps in every single day. What are reps? What does that look like?
Jina McAfee:When you speak about muscle memory, I don't think the mind is necessarily involved. So here it's saying,"Get your mind involved."
Kyli Rose:It's a choice. It's a daily choice. We renew our minds with consistent time in the Word. That's reps. You're just getting reps in. You don't always feel like it. I don't
want to get up at 5:45 and go to the gym, but I know it's life for me. I know that my body is going to respond. It's communication with the Father. I'm talking to Him. I would normally maybe listen to music. I'm going to choose to turn my music off, and I'm just going to talk to Him. That's reps. He gives us a choice. And as we do this day by day, the Word begins to live in us and through us, and we will literally just day by day, rep after rep, become this new person, the person you and I were actually created to be.
ReGina Johnston:And the purpose of God's redemptive power is to make us look like Him. We're not supposed to go and try to make other people look like us. They're supposed to look like Him. We're watching Peter and Paul interact in this chapter two of Galatians. We're watching how one approaches his work with people and another one approaches his work with people. But the thing is, neither one of them have the power to save. Only Jesus has the power to save, and so we want Him to work through us in such a way that His saving power connects with the people with whom we're interacting. We're not saved by rules, by old patterns, by new patterns. We're saved by grace and grace alone. And once we make Him Lord of our lives, He is Lord indeed, and our life, then, is not our own. It's His. In that process of making Him Lord, we are now dedicating our lives to Him, to live them according to the destiny He has planned for us. And I will guarantee you that if you live the destiny He has planned for you, it will be the most fulfilling and most effective life you would ever live. So Kyli, can you pray us out?
Kyli Rose:God, I just thank You that You put this task before us, but you empowered us to do it. God, Your yoke is easy and Your burden is light. So I pray for those who feel just the weight of trying to strive to be something, to do better. God, I pray that they would just feel an invitation to Your grace and knowing that You started this work and You will finish it. That it is by grace and grace alone, God, that we are saved, and it's through the power of the Holy Spirit, God, that we're sanctified. God, I pray that You would give us the strength to self evaluate. You would give us the courage to be open, to be real, to be honest and authentic before You first, God. And as we begin this dialogue with You, God, that that will spill over into the relationships that we have and that it will transform not only us, but the people that You have called us to love and to serve. God, I thank You that we do not do this alone. God, I pray for those who have been hacking at behaviors and they're tired. God that You would just begin this process, this transformational work of our mind, and that we would partner with You in that process. God, that there would be a whole lot of fruit, just like there was with Peter and Paul, that as we submit and surrender to this process, God, that we would see the fruit and the dividends of it, and that's souls, people who know Jesus, who know that they're loved. God, we thank You for Your goodness and Your grace. In Your precious name, we pray. Amen.