Work vs Yield – 396

Hank’s Place is a place — of God’s grace. A place where we have ceased striving with our feeble attempts to prove our acceptability before God, and now KNOW that He is God, the God who justifies and makes righteous as a free gift by His grace — all for putting our trust, our believing into whom He has sent as Savior: Jesus Christ. 

That’s a mouthful, and it is all true! Today let’s look at Galatians, chapter 5. Paul declares in the first verse, “Stand fast therefore in THE liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.” 

Jesus HAS made us free. If we live in bondage to a legal relationship with God, it isn’t because God wills it. God pleads with us to take His strength and walk in that freedom, and to not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage. Notice that it is Christ who has made us free. We don’t make ourselves free. Freedom is a gift of Jesus, given to us — received by faith. When we struggle to free ourselves, we just become more entangled again with a yoke of bondage.

Paul made it emphatic: THE liberty. Not the false liberty of doing whatever we want, and never denying any desire. THE liberty is our freedom from the tyranny of having to earn our own way to God, the freedom from sin and guilt and condemnation, freedom from the penalty of sin, the power of sin, and eventually freedom from the presence of sin. We cannot thru struggling, free ourselves, nor gain TRUE liberty.

Recently I heard a preacher, 20+ years of pastoring, speak on Galatians 5, 16 thru 24, the works of the flesh contrasted to the fruit of the Spirit. Somehow he missed the huge point that fleshly actions are WORKS, efforts. And the actions of the Spirit through us are FRUITS. He spoke of struggling daily to perform all the fruits of the Spirit. Laying one burden after another upon the listeners, more “to-do’s” in a never ending ‘to-do list’ if we WORK at being Christian. We can STRIVE in the flesh or choose to YIELD to the Spirit. 

Verses 16-18 in the Passion Bible read, “As you YIELD to the dynamic life and power of the Holy Spirit, you will abandon the cravings of your self-life. When your self-life craves the things that offend the Holy Spirit, you hinder Him from living free within you! And the Holy Spirit’s intense cravings hinder your self-life from dominating you! So then, the two incompatible and conflicting forces within you are your self-life of the flesh and the NEW CREATION life of the Spirit.

Isn’t it time to abandon our Christian “to-do” list, but YIELD to the life of the Spirit of God within us? We will soar — and COME ALIVE!