Who is Keeping You from Obeying the Truth?

Galatians 5:7-9 You were running a good race. Who cut in on you and kept you from obeying the truth? 8That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. 9″A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.”

Who is Keeping You from Obeying the Truth?

Organized religion and legalism has hindered many in Christian faith from obeying the truth. With legalism people can control you, condemn you or make you believe that you must measure up to their standards. They put you again into bondage to try to win or earn God’s favor. The simplicity of the law of the gospel is simply to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, all of your soul and with all of your mind and then to love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus said on these two commandments, all of the law and the prophets hang. If you are still struggling with trying to be good enough for God and earn your way into heaven, you are missing it. Jesus did for us what we could never do for ourselves, through the cross He justified us as if we had never sinned, redeemed us, forgave us and washed us clean in His own blood. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “For he hath made him [to be] sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” Our only worthiness and acceptance before God is found in Christ. Nothing that we could do to be good enough or works we could do to earn His favor could replace or add to what God has already done for us in Christ. Our religion is to accept the finished work of Jesus that He accomplished on that cross. When we accept Christ we enter into an exchange, my old sinful life for His righteous spiritual life. We die to what we were so that we might live into what He is. That living is a walk of faith and obedience to His Word and the Holy Spirit that now resides within us. Christ didn’t die for us to be put again under bondage; He died that He might impart unto us freedom. Galatians 5:13-18 goes on to say, “13You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature rather, serve one another in love. 14The entire law is summed up in a single command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 15If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. 16So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. 17For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. 18But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.” The religion of man and legalism only brings us again under condemnation. Roman 8:1-4 says, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. 3For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, 4in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.” If there are those that are putting laws, ordinances and requirements upon you in order for you to be saved or accepted by God other than what the Word itself requires, they are keeping you from obeying the truth. They are robbing your freedom to put you again under bondage and the will of man. Know the truth of God and allow that truth to set you free. Galatians 2:21 says, “I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness [come] by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.” Do not allow yourself to be put under bondage, but come out into the wonderful liberty of the Spirit that is in Christ Jesus.

Blessings,

#kent

Advertisement

Show us the Father

John 14:8-13
Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”
9Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. 11Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves. 12I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. 13And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. 14You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.

Show us the Father

There are many concepts of God. Some think of Him as an old man with a great white beard setting upon a throne in heaven. Some conceive Him as a celestial Santa Clause. Some see Him as an angry God with a big stick ready to smack all who sin. Men have contrived many ideas and views of God, but what is true? Philip obviously had his own ideas when he asked Jesus to show them the Father.
Jesus once said something to the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4 about who God is as she was confronting Him about this similar question. “Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”” (John 4:21-24) He tells us something key, God isn’t natural physical substance or being; He is Spirit. The Holy Spirit that abides in you is God in you. What Jesus, the man, manifested and lived out in the earth was the Spirit of God in Him. Because Jesus was never given to the flesh, but only walked by the Spirit, He was the embodiment of the Father, the Spirit of God. Jesus came to get that same Spirit into us, so that we will operate out of faith in His name; embodied and indwelled by His Spirit and nature so that we might do the works that He did. Jesus says, “he will do even great things than these, because I am going to the Father. 13And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. 14You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.”
Some of us have thought that if we just use the magic words, “In the name of Jesus” all these things would happen. What Jesus is showing through His life of example is that a name is not just words that we speak, but a nature and character that we possess and the Spirit of the Father is what we manifest.
Remember Romans 8:9-17 teaches us? “You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. 10But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. 11And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.
12Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation—but it is not to the sinful nature, to live according to it. 13For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, 14because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” 16The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. 17Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.” We are no longer naturally minded beings, but spiritual beings operating as sons of God out of the Spirit of God. This why it is so important that we get a hold of our identity and live out of it. We live so much a mixture of flesh and spirit that we negate the power of God in us. Isn’t Father looking for human temples that are consecrated solely to His will and purpose. If we are to see that greater works ministry through our lives then let us do as Hebrews 12:1-3 exhorts us, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. 2Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”
If we would see the Father, then let us walk as Jesus walked and operate out of His Spirit, which is the Spirit of the Father. Father already came down into earth and humanity, now He is desiring to bring us up into the Spirit and heavenly places in Christ Jesus. I have shared it before and I will share again a saying I once heard as a teenager that has always stuck with me. “The Son of God became the son of man, so that the sons of men, could become the sons of God.” (author unknown)

Blessings,
#kent