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Galatians 5:16-26

How to love life

There are a lot of self help books that seek to give advice on how to improve your life, how perhaps even to come to ‘love life.’ Typically they will be something like 10 steps to happiness, or 7 steps to enrich your marriage.

Self help or Jesus help?

Unfortunately life is not reducible to a few simple steps. The sheer number of self help books proves that loving life is not as simple as they make it out to be. Nothing in this world will make you love life. And there is no secret technique either. Jesus is the life of this world. He promises to be the very source of your life both spiritually and physically

We often try and meet our spiritual needs with the physical. For example: We fear God’s judgement so we compensate by wanting people to love us, accept us and certainly not reject us. But when Christ reconciles us to God we no longer have to use people to replace the love and acceptance of God.

When Jesus lives in us he lives through us. We become more like him. This is called the Fruit of the Spirit. And the fruit of the Spirit is the best and only way to love life to the full.

When Jesus lives in us he causes a battle to begin within us. Our old self is still selfish and resist Christ’s Spirit desire to change us. The best way to overcome the lust of the flesh is to get on with living and walking in the Spirit (code for the fruit of the Spirit). Today we are going to explore how we can do just that, love life by living in the Spirit. Rev

Exercises

• What was the Galatians’ primary problem? Gal 4:10, 3:11, 5:1

• Share personally what you have been putting your trust in, like the Galatians.

• What encouragement can you find for those who struggle with the flesh v17-18?

• Discuss how the two lists are connected with the Ten Commandments in v19-23

• In what way will you crucify your flesh by living in the Spirit, give examples, v22-25.

       
Prayer: Dear God, forgive me for reducing You down to obeying the law in a shallow and superficial way. Forgive me for underestimating the lust of my flesh, for so often giving into my lust and desires. May Christ fill me with his Fruit so that I can crucify the flesh and live in the Spirit. Us me to reflect the very person of Christ in the my character, life and words.  This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it