Bible Reading May 22nd Galatians Ch. 1

Today's read came from Paul's letter to the people of Galatia. I love reading Paul's letters because he has such a great perspective on what it takes to follow Jesus. He states in verses 1:22-24, "And still the Christians in the churches in Judea didn't know me personally. All they knew was that people were saying 'The one who used to persecute us is now preaching the very faith he tried to destroy!' And they praised God because of me." I think we see examples of this all over the news and in our own lives everyday. Who would you rather give you advice on a topic, someone who has lived and grown through an experience, or someone who has read a book or seen a movie about it?? We constantly look for an "authority" on the subject we are questioning or struggling with. 

The other verse from this chapter that caught my attention greatly was 1:10 when Paul is talking about the decisions he has made, and will ultimately continue to make, when he says, "Obviously, I'm not trying to win the approval of people, but of God. If pleasing people were my goal, I would not be Christ's servant." It is amazing to me how often I and people I see go out of our way to please people or even encourage behavior we know is not pleasing to God. I always find myself running things through a filter in my brain trying to equate behaviors to see if one is as bad as the other when I should be comparing it to whether or not it is pleasing to God. I am not saying I am perfect by any means, trust me, I'm not. But, I think the more we start to look at our decisions with the scope of what God thinks of what we are doing, we are making great strides. Like they always say, "The first step to solving a problem, is admitting that you have one". I think we could ALL admit that we have a problem when it comes to what we call acceptable in our society. 

My goal for this upcoming week is to more strictly monitor my actions and make sure that God is always at the center of what I am doing so that I may draw closer to him through it.