Galatians 5:16-21

Galatians 5:16-21The Message (MSG)

My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God’s Spirit. Then you won’t feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day. Why don’t you choose to be led by the Spirit and so escape the erratic compulsions of a law-dominated existence?

It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.

This isn’t the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God’s kingdom.

It's true, you know.

The kind of life that develops out of trying to get our own way all the time, isn't the kind of life that is fulfilling, affirming, or joyful.  Instead, it does rather have that erratic quality that Paul talks about here.  It is a life that is doomed be be not satisfied.

Because honestly, I'm pretty sure that most of the time, I've got it wrong about what's best for me.  I know I'm wrong when I push for my own way, because that rarely works out the way I hope.

That's quite a list Paul leaves as the outcome of seeking your own way. I can identify with many of those. I've seen them. Been caught up in some of them and see them all around me daily in this society that seems focused on "me, the individual."

God offers another way. A way of freedom. "Let Go and Let God," says the bumper sticker on the car of someone following the Twelve Step Program.  In the program, they are reminded every time and at every meeting when they recite the Twelve Steps.  Maybe we aren't powerless over alcohol, but sometimes I wonder if we all wouldn't benefit from the program nonetheless.

I've turned the first five steps into a prayer I say each day as a reminder that going my own way, isn't the way to go.

Good and gracious God, I am powerless over sin (and ____________), and when I forget that, my life becomes unmanageable.  Only you can restore me to sanity, to wholeness, to health, and to hope. Help me this day to turn my life over to your care and walk in your ways and with your Holy Spirit. Amen