What do you want?
What we naturally want is often in conflict with what we ultimately value.
You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.
Galatians 5:13 NIV —https://www.bible.com/bible/111/GAL.5.13.NIVSo I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
Galatians 5:16 NIV —https://www.bible.com/bible/111/gal.5.16For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh.
Galatians 5:17 NIV —https://www.bible.com/bible/111/gal.5.17
“There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every person,and it can never be filled by any created thing. It can only be filled by God, made known through Jesus Christ.” - Pascal
If you were to get in lockstep with your Heavenly Father, this is what it would look like…
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
Galatians 5:22-23 NASB —https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Galatians%205%3A22-23&version=NASB
Love, joy, peace…
Love
Love is the highest value in the kingdom economy.
The ability to Love someone who is unlovable and forgive them even though they don’t deserve it.
Joy
(Gr) chara: derived from charis which is “grace”
It is to be able to step into difficult circumstances and still be able to have joy.
You have thought these people were on some thing… or in denial.
When when Paul writes about “Joy” he talks about it in times of affliction. It conveys the idea that you can have joy and inner peace even in the middle of a heavy pressure situation.
Peace
(Gr) eirene: calm, completeness, or tranquility in the soul that is unaffected by outward circumstances or pressure. (SHALOM)
Love, Joy, Peace…
These 3 things show up again and again in Jesus’s teachings, and the writings of Paul.
They are the core reality we experience in our spiritual journey with Jesus.
And they are more than just emotions, they are overall conditions of the heart.
They aren’t just pleasant feelings; they are the kinds of people we become through our apprenticeship to Jesus who embodies all 3 infinitely.
This isn’t natural. You can’t work this up or work it out. You can’t find it
Contentment. I think this is what you really want. I think this is what you ultimately value.
And one common enemy to all 3 of these is HURRY.
Love…
Love is painfully time consuming.
It takes and enormous amount of time to love well
Love has its own speed – an inner speed. It is a spiritual speed that is different from the speed of the technological speed to which we are accustomed.
Joy…
Spiritual masters as well as secular psychologist and mindfulness experts agree that if there is a secret to happiness, it is presence to the moment. The more present we are to the now, the more grateful we are for what is, and the more we tap into true joy.
We often vow to give God “our future” with great virtue, but the future is easy to give God for the simple fact that we don’t have it.
All we have is the present. The here and now. This moment, this pain, this concern, this joy, this gratitude, the surrender.
The more moments we slowly and gratefully turn over to God the more we tap into his joy. Not just giving God our future, but giving Him “now”.
Peace…
Peace is incompatible with hurry.
Next time you’re running late to catch a flight, or to school, or an appointment, or overdue for an assignment, take an interior inventory and see if you feel the deep peace of God deep in your soul.
Do you sense a grounded, present sense of calm?
Or something else?
The message is clear: slow is bad, fast is good.
But in the upside-down kingdom, our value system is turned on its head: hurry is of the devil; slow is of Jesus, because Jesus is what love, joy, and peace look like in flesh and blood.
Jesus always walked SLOWLY thru the crowd.
… the rest
patience … “love is patient”
kindness
goodness
faithfulness
gentleness
self-control
Freedom
Life in the spirit is less about avoiding one group of actions, and more about pursuing another.
The fruit of our life is the product of what we think about, consume, indulge in, and are connected to.
Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
Galatians 5:24 —https://www.bible.com/bible/111/gal.5.24
Jesus’s initial invitation wasn’t to obey or submit or understand it was to follow. And if you were to ask Him where we are going, He would say we are going to love, joy, peace, patience, goodness…
Kindness does not impede progress.
Here’s how I know that…
You may not latch on to all of this personally, you value those things because you want the people around you to be characterized by those things.
These are things you value.
And because you value them, you need to pay attention to them, because they are lurking in the shadows of what you say you want.
So back to the question we keep asking…
What do you want?
What you really want, and what God wants for you, are closer than you ever imagined.
And if you keep digging into this question and you get behind all the stuff and the experience and the people, and dig eventually you get to things like meaning, significance, and legacy.
And eventually, you may find yourself face-to-face with the will of your Heavenly Father for your life.
Freedom is not the ABSENCE of SOMETHING but the PRESENCE of SOMEONE.
The moment you receive Jesus as your Savior by faith, God planted his Spirit and His Word into your heart like a seed and you were spiritually born again.
You have the seed in you, but have you been watering it, growing it, nurturing it?
No farmer plants a seed and expects fruit automatically. They work the ground, take care of it, help it grow.
We can’t expect more love, more joy, more peace, more patience of your life, if you don’t spend time reading God’s Word, spending time in prayer, and renewing your mind, or letting the spirit change the way you think.
Are you willing to let the Holy Spirit reveal where you aren’t in lock step with Him?
The Good Life is having the freedom in Christ to pursue God’s values over time versus what you want in the moment.