Grace and Renewing our Minds

Over break I was able to do a book chart of Galatians and spent a lot of time just reading the text. It was extremely impactful to me. It's interesting how many times I feel like I have been just like the Galatians, understanding that they are saved by faith but expect to become sanctified through self-effort and conforming to a set of rules. We want to perfect our faith on our own. We thank God for saving us and then want to take over, take it from here. How silly we are! We were in chapel today and Shirley was taking us through Philippians and showing us how God is the one who started a good work in us and how that good work God started is to conform us to the image of His son. It's GOD'S WORK though, not ours!! His Work...challenging. And yet we do have responsibility to allow God's Word to renew our minds and transform our thinking, but ultimately HE is the one doing it. We cannot force ourselves into being like Christ....because we won't be even if we outwardly look it. Outward conformity isn't what God desires. That was Israel's problem. God told Israel in the Old Testament that he HATED their sacrifices....sacrifices HE instituted! He hated them because they were ritual, done without heart change and just for the sake of doing the right thing. God doesn't want us to outwardly conform to what His Word says. He wants our hearts to be changed and our actions to change as a result of our heart change. The change is INWARD first and the natural outflow of that is an outward change. So many times I think we focus on making someone, especially ourselves, look a certain way and behave correctly without addressing the real problem, our wicked hearts. It's been such a challenge to me as I evaluate the WHY behind what I do. Am I looking for a list to conform to like the Galatians were? Am I trying to perfect myself without God or am I allowing His Word to transform my thinking and acting according to the truth that I know, depending upon His power? Really challenging.

We have also been talking in 2 Corinthians a lot about grace vs. performance. It's interesting to see how many times I treat people based on performance without even realizing it. I think it's definitely a cultural thing, but definitely a WRONG thing. We have been looking at Godly, Biblical discipline verses social justice as well and that's been super convicting too. Discipline should come from a heart of seeing that person as part of the body of Christ and wanting to do whats best for them in order to restore them in fellowship and do it in a loving, gracious manner. Most of the time I don't even know what that would look like. But it's been good to ponder it, to look to His Word for answers, to study. I feel like I'm just beginning to scratch the surface of it. I feel like that a lot...

Thank God that He is faithful!