Legalism

I've been home for almost three weeks now, about to go to Idaho for a friend's wedding and then Pennsylvania to start working at Wayumi and I'm really excited for that. But I wanted to share with you something God's been revealing to me lately. More exposing the truthfulness of my heart and trust me, it's not pretty. But it helps me to write about it so here goes:

The last class I finished up as a junior at New Tribes Bible Institute was Galatians. Now my summary will fall quite short of doing it justice, but Paul talks a lot about the truth of the Gospel apart from works, apart from legalism, apart from US. How it's not about what we do and who we are, it's about what HE did and who HE is. Really cool book. And so naturally it caused me to look at what I was trusting in and why I did the actions I was doing. Am I trying to prove to God that I'm worth something? Am I doing things with wrong motivation? Sometimes I can answer those questions no and sometimes I can't, but I now know to ask the question. I now CAN ask the question. But today I was reading through Philippians and trying to ask questions and things and understand the tone of the book. Now, to be honest with you, I only made it halfway through chapter two and then I thought I had better sit down and type my thoughts because if you know me then you know if I don't do it now, I won't spend the necessary time stewing over that thought I had and miss out. So here I am. Sorry...sidetrack....back to Philippians. So I'm sitting there thinking "Okay, so Paul is saying all of this because he truly cares about the people. In 1:8 he makes that so clear. Really in the whole intro he makes it very clear how much he truly cares about the people." So then a little later, he starts telling them how they ought to act. And I asked myself why. He does it because he cares for them and their relationship to God. He does it out of genuine concern. That's completely evident if you look at the first chapter. And then I realized something....while I may not be legalistic in my living, I am in my "teaching." My motive behind sharing truth most of the time is based out of "they need to know the truth" not "my desire for them is to know and understand their Savior and have a relationship with Him that is grounded in truth." Now if I would have read that sentence like, two years ago I don't think I would have been able to make a clear distinction between the two motives, but as God has been showing me the depths of my own heart and the depths of His (okay, so I'm really just starting to scratch the surface of that one...but I'm scratching) it all becomes a lot more clear. And looking at the example God gave us in Paul really opened up my eyes too. I want people to know and understand their Savior and to be able to have the relationship with Him they were created for. I want the same for myself. But I don't want to share truth with people because it's the right thing to do. I don't want to share truth because I know it and they don't. I want to share truth trusting in Christ the whole time. And I'm thankful for a God who is patient with me to show me what that looks like and how that's done. I'm excited to learn. :)

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!