Galatians Blog 2

I think that one of the hardest things that churches struggle with is the balance between keeping order in churches and allowing the Spirit to change plans. This happens both on a corporate level and on an individual level. Churches have become more about the self instead of the Lord. This does not apply to every church out there in the world. However, I feel that many churches in prosperous countries rely too much on their agenda. On an individual level success and deadlines get in the way of what God could be doing. Would I rather sleep now or pray? Would I rather get this exegesis paper done or spend some quiet time listening to the Lord?

How is the relating to Galatians? Well, at CCU there are expectations on every student. Get all of your reading done. Study hard for exams. Make sure you meet the expectations of your instructors when doing papers. You must expect hours of homework to follow a single class. Take five classes, then you have hours of homework to do times five. Do not forget to do ministry hours. Attend chapel at least twenty-five times during the semester. You signed a lifestyle covenant and you are expected to follow it to the letter. Try to get some sleep because 24 hours of no sleep to your brain is like being drunk. Make sure you keep eating. Oh yeah, don’t forget about the Lord….
Follow all of those laws and expectations with the Lord as an afterthought and you are not going to survive your experience at CCU in one piece.

A friend of mine has spent an amazingly large amount of time with the Lord this past week and she said that she was surprised that she was still able to meet the expectations of school. She still got a paper done and did well on exams and quizzes. She says that she has been lead by the Sprit and I think that she is right on. With the Spirit first, she has grown immeasurably in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, and self-control. She is not perfect by any means, but she has more toleration for everything that she is dealing with.

That along with the reading of Galatians and challenged me to try to follow in the same footsteps. CCU is a great place and I have learned a lot here. However, I learn more when God is guiding me through each day. I learned this the hard way first. One day I was working on homework for a class that was to start about 40 minutes later. About ten minutes in I felt like I should set the homework aside and spend time with God. Looking back, I wish I had. Instead, though, I continued to read. The words blurred together and suddenly I was incapable of doing anything. I failed a quiz. If I had spent time with the Lord, I probably still would have failed that quiz, but at least I would have had more peace.

So my first challenge failed. At the second one, I saw an improvement. I was doing my exegesis on Galatians 3:5-10 and my thoughts were jumbled. In response to my inability to write the paper, I moved away from the computer and prayed. Once I was able to say “If I get an A on this paper and have learned nothing from the Holy Spirit then the A is worth nothing.” The paper was still very challenging but no matter what happens, that does not change the fact that I learned from the Spirit.

The thing that I am not saying is that school should be blown off. CCU costs too much money to view its education in that way. Should we now go “sin boldly” now that we have been saved? NO WAY!

If we are being watered by the Spirit then the fruits of the Spirit will prosper in us. If the fruits of the Spirit are growing within us then we are probably less stressed out, and an assignment that would have taken us three hours to complete will take less time simply because we are not so concerned about it that our stress causes us to take longer to complete the task.
This goes with churches too in a way. We have seen those checklists.
Ask Jesus into heart
Confess sin
Try not to sin
Pray to God a lot
Pray some more
Read the Bible
Fast if needed
Stay away from bad things
Get baptized
Stop swearing at “bad” drivers
Be perfect and holy
Go to church ever Sunday
Tithe
Take communion
Forgive all offenses
Memorize verses of the Bible
Give extra around the holidays
Pray for people who need prayer
Pray for leaders
Pray for the unsaved
The list goes on and on and on and…ON! While these are all good points, there is a very important thing missing that is too easy to forget: Have relationship with God. Park Church has attempted to show its members that following this list just to please God is stupid. Nobody can do anything to earn God’s happiness or God’s approval.

After we recognize the relationship as the most important part the rest should fall into place. We confess our sin to God because we know that He can and will forgive us. We read our Bible because that is the Word of our precious Yahweh. We realize more often that when others make us angry that they are still loved by God and we try not to swear at them when they make a move on the road that may not have been the right move. Suddenly the checklist dissolves because we act the way God wants us to. Yeah, we still make mistakes, but there is grace deeper than our deepest mistake that we could ever make as we live for God.