Step

I absolutely love when you have the near perfect weekend followed by a ginormous crash.  For example, yesterday when my two oldest kiddos got into a huge fight in our front yard that ended with Kylar throwing Drew to the ground and Drew's brand BRAND new glasses breaking. 

After hearing all that went down it came out that Drew was taunting her.  As Kylar puts it "I couldn't walk away any more."

Now dear friends,  how do you as a parent handle this?  Todd and I prayed with each child, we grounded each child from t.v. and tablets.  Where now they will instead of enjoying time of rest when they get done with their homework will be cleaning after school.  Drew was guilt ridden and felt bad.  Kylar and the other hand was filled with a justified anger.

She felt fully justified for her actions and she didn't feel bad about how she reacted in the situation.  It was the first time I looked at her and saw my very own actions in her.  Isn't that funny how some of the very qualities that you absolutely dislike in yourself are in your kiddos.  That night, we prayed and then had a very real and hard talk with our oldest.  About justifying our actions when it was sin regardless of who threw the first punch.  Finally the light came on inside her head that she was at fault.

Friends, how many times do we do that?  Someone in our own life throws the first punch (in words, or actions) and we go off on them, feeling justified for how we treat them even if it is full of anger and sin.  Galatians 5 is full of wide open truths that packed a very real picture to me. 

The Galatians unlike the Corinthians were rule followers.  They tended to follow every single rule to a tee.  For them the law became a chain tightly wrapped around them restricting them from being able to live freely with Christ.  In part of the chapter Paul even recognizes that with this verse.

Galatians 5:4 English Standard Version (ESV)

4 You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified[a] by the law; you have fallen away from grace.

What a difference from the Corinthians :)  I'm more like the Galatians, a rule follower wanting to do right but can so easily justify my actions when I sin.  I can even see my actions and words that I would use to God if He were to ask me.  I would say "See Lord I followed these rules and those people didn't!  I had every right to throw the first punch because they kept on taunting me."  Man that sounds a lot like the excuses my daughter used.

There's one thing that will give us checks and balances friends and this being is part of the Holy Trilogy.  The Holy Spirit,  if you read the verse in the image above it says to walk by the Spirit.  This way we will not gratify the desires of the flesh.  Whether they are to follow the rules so well we miss grace, or to be so free that we allow the desires of the flesh to consume us.

I was convicted today by this chapter and once again God revealed to me what I needed to do to not be hindered.  What do you need to do?

Galatians 5:7 English Standard Version (ESV)

7 You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth?