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Children of the Free Woman

August 30th, 2010 | Author: Greg Parke

Week 34, Galatians 4:1-6:18, Ephesians 1:1-2:22

Have you ever considered yourself a slave? It’s hard to imagine isn’t it. Some among us… perhaps most among us can trace our roots to ancestors who were slaves or at least indentured servants. But it’s hard for us to imagine that kind of life.

We’re free… right? Most of us we live free. No one dictates what we do apart from our choice. Sure there are those things we may not want to do but do anyway, but we are not forced to do them like the slave.

Paul uses the picture of a slave vs. a son in the message of Galatians. For those who wish to remain under the law or to place themselves under the law he calls slaves. For they are and they become slaves to the law. And what does the law say about this?

They shall never share in the inheritance with the free woman’s son. Galatians 4:30

Throughout our lives we are identified by several different monikers. We are children, sons, daughters, tweens, teens, youths, college aged or college students. We are singles, newly-weds, married or divorced. We even designate ourselves with acronyms. I know you’ve seen the titles printed on business cards that more closely resemble alphabet soup than any real accomplishment. But who are we?

Have you ever heard any one refer to themselves as a slave to the law or a slave to sin? But that was our identity at one time wasn’t it. We were all slaves to the law until faith came. Gal 3:25

Think on that for a moment. We were all once slaves. Slaves to the law and to sin.

But praise be to God he has done something in us that is impossible for man. He has made us children of the free woman. The children of the promise.

Remember the promise… the one that came 430 years before the law was given to Moses. (Gal 3:17) We are children of the promise. We are joint heirs with Christ.

Paul exhorts us to stand firm and not allow ourselves to be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. And how do we now live with this new found freedom? By serving one another in love.

Called to be free! Called to love!

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Week 35 – A Prayer that Works

October 16th, 2009 | Author: Bob Christopher

If you want to know how to pray, just check out the prayers of Paul. One of his most significant prayers is recorded in Ephesians 3:16-19.

I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge–that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Here are his four main requests.
 That Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith.
 That we would be rooted and established in love.
 That we would be strengthened with the power of God’s Spirit to grasp the love of God.
 That we would be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

What if this became the prayer of your heart. Do you think it would be a prayer that works?

Posted in Epheshians, Philippians | 3 Comments »

Week 34 – Keep in Step

October 9th, 2009 | Author: Bob Christopher

Something amazing happens to every person who responds in faith to the Gospel, and it happens the very moment of salvation. The Bible describes it as new birth, or being born again of the Spirit. This is the point in time, different of course for each individual, when God makes us alive together with Christ Jesus and then sends His Spirit to take up residence in our hearts. Paul wrote about this in his letter to the Galatians: “Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father’” Galatians 4:6 (NIV).

God lives in us. Amazing don’t you think? But what does this mean to us in practical, everyday living?

God’s Spirit gives us a new set of desires called the desires of the Spirit. Now these desires are in conflict with the desires of the flesh. We know that conflict. When someone wrongs us, the desire of the flesh is to get even. The desire of the Spirit for us is to forgive just as God in Christ forgave us.

As children of God, even though the desires of the flesh are there, we do not have to give in to them. Before salvation, following after the desires of the flesh was the only option on the menu. As Paul wrote in Romans 6, sin was our master. That relationship was broken when we were made alive. God’s Spirit is now in control, and we are to be led by Him.

Our role is to keep in step with God’s Spirit, to carry out by faith what God is working in us. Certainly, the desire to forgive the person who wrongs us doesn’t originate with us. God’s Spirit places that desire in our hearts. And it just makes sense to live out those desires. Paul put it this way, “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit” Gal 5:25 (NIV). Who are you keeping in step with?

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