Today, we're going to take a posture of peace
by keeping in step with the spirit,
and it is going to terrorize Satan.
Posture is a short, audible fist bump
to remind you God is with you in everything.
Together, we're going to be emboldened
to take a daily posture of perfect peace.
Well, we are back in Galatians 5 today,
and I'm going to be reading from verses 13 through 26.
And what I love to do when I read the word of God
is I love to just let it wash over me,
wash me, renew my mind, refresh me.
So as I read today, let the word of God wash over you.
In verse 13, it says,
for you, my brothers and sisters, were called to freedom.
Only don't use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh,
but through love, serve one another.
For the whole law is fulfilled in one word.
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
But if you bite and devour one another,
watch out so that you do not consume one another.
But I say, walk by the spirit,
and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit,
and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh.
They are opposed to each other
to keep you from doing the things you want to do.
But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law.
For the works of the flesh are obvious,
sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality,
idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy,
fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions,
envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.
I warn you, as I warned you before,
those who make a practice of doing such things
will not inherit the kingdom of God.
But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness, self-control.
Against such things, there is no law.
And those who belong to Christ Jesus
have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
If we live by the spirit,
let us also keep in step with the spirit.
Let us not become conceited,
provoking one another, envying one another.
The word of God is so precious to me.
It has encouraged me.
It has emboldened me.
It has comforted me.
It has convicted me.
It has confronted me.
It has changed me.
Christ, you know, he did not come to supercharge
our human performance so that we could finally scrape by
and make it to the finish line of heaven.
No, Christ came to set us free from the law
of sin and death so that we would be empowered
to experience the beautiful, glorious reality
of heaven here on earth.
Jesus performed a finish work on the cross.
It's finished, it's complete, it's perfect.
And now we get to live in the reality of his performance.
Jesus empowers us to see, think, act, and live differently.
And last week, we spoke about the nature of God,
who he is, and what he's like.
And his likeness is so clearly revealed here
in the fruit of the spirit.
Love, joy, peace, patience, all those wonderful things.
God is like this all the time.
To us, for us, and through us.
This, this is the life that we have been invited to live,
made in his image and likeness,
not him being made into our image and likeness.
And this is such good news.
It's such good news because it means that you and I
are no longer subject to the nature of the world.
We're no longer in bondage to it.
We're no longer directed by it.
We get to experience the absolute delight
of responding to the nature of the world
in the opposite spirit.
And this drives Satan absolutely crazy.
If we think about it, you know, often,
often we teach, we preach, we think about
the effects that the works of the flesh
have on us in our world.
But have you ever considered
the effects of the fruit of the spirit
and what they have on the enemy?
My friend and mentor, Graham Cook,
who I've introduced to you before,
and by the way, him and I are doing
another Facebook challenge this week.
I will link the details to that in the description.
He put together a wonderful list of what the fruit of the Spirit does to
inflict the enemy and I revisit this list often and think about the
possibilities. The possibilities when you and I realize that we can exhaust the
enemy with our love for each other. Did you know that you can depress him with
your joy? That you can weary Satan by becoming peace? You can demoralize him
with your patience? You can discourage him with your kindness? You can overcome
him with goodness? You can debilitate him with acts of faithfulness? You and I, we
can trouble and torment and terrorize Satan with our gentleness. We can dismay
him with our self-control. More than that, we can also dishearten him with our
faith. We can weaken him with our mercy. We can intimidate him with our intimacy
with God. We can devastate and destroy him with grace. We can paralyze him with
compassion. We can cripple him with humility. This, this is the true you. This
is the life you have been set free to live. Everything the enemy tries to bring
against us can be turned around by moving in the opposite spirit. When we
move in the spirit of God's nature, things open up here on earth because
what we release puts the enemy in his proper place, which is under our feet. And
not only that, but what we release when we respond in the opposite spirit, it
blesses people around us. It blesses the world around us. If we choose, and we can
choose, to move in a negative emotion or thought, we are only empowering the
enemy against ourselves. So let's not do that. Let's just stop that today. Instead,
let's fill up on the fruit of the spirit so that there's no room for any
negativity anymore. This, this is the life we can live. Like we talked about in
episode 78, you know, there's opportunity to learn and grow in this truth. When you
feel pressed towards anger or offense with someone, you know, that's an
opportunity to discover more of God's love. And then what you can do is you can
focus all of your attention on receiving God's love for you and connecting with
him on how he loves the person who is coming against you. And honestly, that
person is probably in their own place of internal conflict and torment. Because
our real enemy, Satan, he has been bringing negativity into our lives and
into our world for years. It's time, it's time that we receive and release God's
opposite instead. Guess what that is? That is vengeance. The promise of perfect
peace is found in Isaiah 26 3. In Hebrew, it is shalom, shalom, meaning complete
wholeness, nothing missing, nothing broken. This is who you are in Jesus
because of Jesus. You are a living testimony of Jesus's ultimate win with
every step you take today, you're putting Jesus's victory on display and
Satan's defeat on replay.