Is The Life You Are Living the
Real Life?
Good Morning Friends,
Too often we do not embrace prayer as a creative path to truth. For me prayer, like studying scripture, has become an art of discovery where I begin to hear who I really am and also begin to see who I might become. Here I discover my authentic self that awaits the fulfillment of what God has prepared for me. For what makes faith alive for me is God’s creativity in our lives and I think that at some level it is this same creativity that has motivated others before me. There are, of course, pitfalls as today’s scripture makes clear, and yet I cannot deny what I experience. I hope you too have discovered, as I, that our lives can be a journey where faith and doing, love and grace converge in the creative experience of something that is not fantasy at all. Is The Life You Are Living the
Real Life?
Scripture: You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? Have you suffered so much for nothing—if it really was for nothing? Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard? Consider Abraham: “He believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” Understand, then, that those who believe are children of Abraham. The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.” So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.” Clearly no one is justified before God by the law, because, “The righteous will live by faith. “The law is not based on faith; on the contrary, “The man who does these things will live by them.” Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.” He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.
Galatians 3:1-14 (NIV)
10The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
John 10:10 (NRSV)
Message: I have come to the conclusion that God’s love and creativity shapes our souls and that a collective creativity in community worship can help to support that experience. We all have had experiences that have changed and shaped our lives. I expect that most of them though occurred outside Sunday worship. Some of them are fun and others serious but the ones that shape us are all powerful acts of creative grace. It is here in these experiences of work and family and for me in prayer as well, that I have discovered that there is a difference between trusting and trying….human effort and God’s grace… but that on occasion they do cross paths at the corner of faith and love. Friends, there is no replacement for Jesus…there is no replacement for grace. Still we should strive then stop, look, listen and choose to live. The faith of Abraham had no law to encumber him. Yet still he too had to act and so must we. But God’s love is not predicated on our performance. Our action is more like submission to the divine. Friends, in the real life we too have been freed to experience faith without spiritual legalism…. worship without legalism…prayer without legalism. We are saved by grace and we grow by grace and by grace we extend to others a witness of our experience. We are free to be saturated in a culture of God’s language and history that permeates the world like salt and light. We have been freed to have a faith that is alive. So be courageous and live beyond the tension of the moment, but not so content that creativity is pointless. Accept joy as an act of faith and God’s limitless creative capacity. Believe God can come up with a solution but that throwing out our brains is not the appropriate response. We too can share in the creativity. So believe that God’s favor is not achieved but received and sometimes creatively so in faithful acts of love.
Pray we realize that God’s creative genius is endless. Pray we have been set free to live in freedom’s spirit. Pray that we understand our faith experience involves our mind, emotions and will in the act of doing. Pray we do not fall prey to legalism or to the institutionalization of Christ. Pray we do works of God but not add them out of context as an obligation on a path to sanctification. Pray we live in grace. Pray that we realize that we cannot redeem ourselves. Pray that the Holy Spirit helps us to live in grace. Pray we recognize the source of the supernatural work in our lives. Pray we see the powerful workings of God in our midst. Pray we never take credit for what God has done. Pray we come together to share in grace we have been given. Pray we realize we have been blessed to be a blessing. Pray that we are united together because of the work of Jesus and not our own work. Pray our hearts are encouraged and strengthened by every good deed and word we do and say in and through the love of God. Pray we are not just hearers of the Word but doers as well. Pray that we experience life and worship as a collective prayer that shapes our souls in God’s continuing plan for His creation.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 