Have you checked your ladder lately?

Galatians 3:1-3

If you received this letter from someone you value, as the churches of Galatia did the apostle Paul, it would be a wake up call.  My prayer is that no matter where you live in the world, the Spirit will address this letter to your heart.  This was not a one-time thing, I grew-up in small Baptist churches and heard and saw the hypocrisy of religious people who saw faults in other denominations, trying to earn righteousness, but missed living by faith and were looking to self.  Often, our walk was not according to God’s Word, but rather by our feelings.

“O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?”  That is a great question and it is worth asking, how did I receive the Spirit by my goodness or by hearing with faith?  And then Paul ask this question of us; “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?”  It is later in the letter to us that Paul makes this statement; “Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more? You observe days and months and seasons and years! I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain.”  It has been many years for me since I ask Jesus to take over management of my life, and I wish that I could say I’ve never returned to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, but I have and yet the Holy Spirit has always confronted me.  Why do we choose to live outside of the Spirit’s control, it is our desires and the culture, or looking to others or self, and not to Jesus?

How do we get so messed up?  Could it be living the Christian life is hard?  We live in a culture that has little regard for Christ, and the Christian life is a single lane road going the right way, but the culture is the eighteen lane highway going the opposite direction and we are in the middle of those eighteen lanes.  It is easy to stop at a rest stop, and the next thing we know we have entered the eighteen lane flow of life.  How can we stop doing this?  Os Hillman is a man of faith and I try to read his thoughts each day, and today these were a small part of his thoughts; “Godly success involves a partnership between you and God. Success in God's economy means achieving the purpose for which God made you. That purpose can never be discovered without seeking Him with a whole heart. You may achieve great things without seeking God, but you will never achieve the things God set out for you to achieve without seeking Him. Unless you seek Him, you may find yourself one day climbing to the top of the ladder only to find it leaning against the wrong wall.”  Way too many times my ladder been on the wrong wall, have you checked your ladder lately?

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice