Walking The Walk

"Many are the plans in a person's heart, but it is the LORD's purpose that prevails." ~Proverbs 19:21 I know many unhappy people in this world.  You know what nearly all of them have in common?  They put themselves first.  They are focused on their own needs.  Their own desires.  Their own wants.  Their career.  Their reputation.  The respect they feel is due to them. The pay they think they deserve. The car they want.  The list is endless, and because it is endless, so many people in this world are never content. They never get everything they think they are entitled to, because there is no end to what they want. Too many of us just don't understand why we're here. We don't understand we are custom built for a specific purpose. And the discontent we have in our lives isn't because we don't have our dream house--it's because we haven't found the thing we were put here to do.  Our true purpose! God didn't put us here to consume goods and...

S o I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.   ~Galatians 5: 16-17 How can a Christian possibly live a Christian life in the world today?   We're buffeted each day by the worldly, and that influence can be corrosive to our faith.  It gets difficult to escape it.  The values of our society are in decline.  The lines between what is clearly right and what is clearly wrong continue to be blurred.  We're exposed to a constant stream of media, and internet, and social media--all of them trying to promote an agenda.  And pornography is everywhere.  You can hardly use social media at all anymore without running across these images from time to time.  And our kids are seeing all of this and being exposed to all of this you ...

  "Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit." Galatians 5:25 Earlier this week at my weekly Bible study, we were looking at Galatians 5:16-26.  We talked about the acts of the flesh in 19-20 and then the fruits of the Spirit in 22-23.  We had a great conversation about these verses--the challenges of the flesh and the benefits of the fruit.  When we got to verse 25, one of the members of my group made an excellent point that I wanted to share.   It was about how we deal with the challenges our flesh often throws at us.  The example was patience--some in my group were really challenged in this area.  The point that was made by one of the members of the group was that too often we try to master these weaknesses by suppressing them.  We bite our tongue when we're impatient.  We try and suppress our frustration when we feel it rising.  What this verse is saying to us, is when we walk with or stay in step with the...