Understanding The Process

So now that you know God (or should I say, now that God knows you), why do you want to go back again and become slaves once more to the weak and useless spiritual principles of this world?  You are trying to earn favor with God by observing certain days or months or seasons or years.  I fear for you. Perhaps all my hard work with you was for nothing.  Dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to live as I do in freedom from these things, for I have become like you Gentiles—free from those laws.  Galatians 4:9-12a

When I was a child in elementary school, I learned how to do algebra quickly.  In fact, I got so good at it that I would do it in my head.  That carried me all the way to freshman year in high school, where I started to struggle.  The thing was I could figure in my head the answer because it became second nature to me.  However, I was not able to understand why that was the correct answer.  I had to learn the process that went with it.  Thus, I was slower than my peers that year.  However, once I understood the process, I was doing college level math by my senior year.  This very much reminded me of my journey with God.  When I was saved, I became His child, but I did not jump from ‘saved’ to Heaven.  I needed to understand why He valued me and to serve Him out of love and not obligation.  We know Heaven is the final destination and ‘answer to our math question,’ but we still must go through the process of learning His purpose for our lives here in this world.

We must focus on process of growing through Christ.  Many accept the gift of grace failing to go further to understand who He is.  They carry on just knowing that He saved them, but focus on doing things as an obligation toward salvation.  In those cases, we fail in our relationship with Christ because we do not deepen it or to Paul’s point, “earn favor with God by observing certain days or months or seasons or years.”  Others focus on feeling emotionally connected with God without building enough substance Biblically.  They experience little change in their life, and thus, they eventually fall toward spiritual stagnation, which eventually diminishes the emotional connection altogether.  However, a true life changing spirit filled journey is not only action-oriented but also creates a transformative change of heart.  Paul was bringing this awareness to the Galatians.  He encouraged them to live a life free from the bondage of obligations and to replace it with one of love for God.  If we love God, we surrender ourselves to Him, but it is not surrendering to bondage.  Instead, it is freedom from the bondage of sin, guilt, disappointment, sorrow, and any other inhibitor of joy you can think of.  We become selfless driven to act on His behalf and love others as He loves us.

To know God is simply not enough.  We must be willing to invest our time and energy into growing that relationship.  Paul’s fear was clear in today’s verses.  We should not settle for a life continuing as is and just accepting grace, and we should not do what God says just because it is written.  Let us live free focusing on learning more about who God is and letting our love for Him drive us toward obedience.  What steps in your journey might you have ‘skipped’ past?  How will you continue to build on your foundation of Christ to forge a deeper relationship with Him?  My prayer is that we embrace our journey of faith looking to understand the process.  Amen.