August 17 - Galatians 3: Creating Life in Us

"We're all looking for relief from a strange unnamed misery that You [God] don't relieve. We want to feel alive. It's hard to see that as wrong."  (66LL)

I want to feel alive. In the midst of my undefined, often hidden, daily activities, I want to know that there's a purpose, to feel a sense of satisfaction, to experience a sort of inner regeneration. I crave and desire something that will make me feel alive. My mind begins running through my options - a date night with my husband, a new piece of furniture or a new outfit, time alone, time with friends, a paying job, a trip, a "balanced" schedule, another Bible study, and on and on. All things that feel justified and sound good, even spiritual. It's hard to see them as wrong.

"[God speaking] Your god is your stomach. You assume every strong desire in you needs to be satisfied now in this life. You, therefore, are caught up in thinking about your desires and the satisfaction you long to feel and could be experiencing right now....

"You are on the verge of discovering it as if for the first time a compelling and holy desire in your depths that will expose every other desire as less, every other satisfaction as unworthy to be compared with the satisfying joy of loving others with divine power. But that discovery will only be made as you more clearly see the demand that keeps you in bondage to lesser desires and unworthy satisfactions.

"Your preoccupation with satisfaction when it feels most necessary is the corruption beneath your compulsions. Your expectation of feeling everything you want to feel in this fallen world renders you vulnerable to false teachers who, in the name of My Son, offer you a strategy that promises to let you feel as complete now as you will feel forever in heaven. And like My followers in the providence of Galatia, you're drawn to their perversion of My Story. And your freedom to love no matter how you feel is replaced by slavery to a compulsive need to feel whole, to feel good about yourself before you feel able to love another."  (66LL)

God is calling to the Galatians to end their preoccupation with the law, their consuming desire to get it right, their hope that they will find life there. They're seeking lives that they can control, measure, and point to as justification for Him to stamp His approval and give them life. The Holy Spirit leans harder on Paul and writes these words,

Answer this question: Does the God who lavishly provides you with his own presence, his Holy Spirit, working things in your lives you could never do for yourselves, does he do these things because of your strenuous moral striving or because you trust him to do them in you? Don't these things happen among you just as they happened with Abraham? He believed God, and that act of belief was turned into a life that was right with God.... The person who lives in right relationship with God does it by embracing what God arranges for him. Doing things for God is the opposite of entering into what God does for you. Habakkuk had it right: "The person who believes God, is set right by God—and that's the real life." ... For if any kind of rule-keeping had power to create life in us, we would certainly have gotten it by this time.... But now you have arrived at your destination: By faith in Christ you are in direct relationship with God. Your baptism in Christ was not just washing you up for a fresh start. It also involved dressing you in an adult faith wardrobe—Christ's life, the fulfillment of God's original promise.  (3:5-6, 11-12, 22, 25-27, Msg)