Belonging at the Table.

Galatians 2:11-14

A couple of weeks ago Brad spoke on this passage where Paul confronts Peter about his hypocrisy. Peter wanted to appear to be still with the 'in crowd', part of the old order an was too afraid to step out, to stand for what he believes in. Back in the day, if you ate together you were all part of the family and that's still true to an extent these days but that notion has been watered down a lot.

The message was about belonging, and how we all belong to God but it got me thinking on a slightly different matter. I have various groups of friends and sometimes I might deliberately keep them apart because I fear what one group might think of the other. I end up running around pretending to everyone and in the end I start to lose sense of who I really am, where I belong. I end up trying to please people that I waste all my energy on it. In this way I can see what Peter went through, how it is so easy to put on your mask and be like every one else, to fit in, to be part of the 'in crowd'.

It's something I need to work on. I know I belong to God and that is who I should be and that is the right thing but saying it is much easier than doing it.

So that's my reflection on the message, what about you? How has it spoken to you? I am sure God has different things to say to everyone.

~Sck

Grace plus nothing

Galatians 1:6-12

When people told the Galatians that they needed to be more 'Jewish' to be accepted by God, Paul was furious. Paul got his message directly from God and so he had a right to be angry about these false teachings.

But he was angry at the people themselves for being so gullible and listening to men when they could listen to God's message as it was given to Paul. How would this apply to us? Well it means that we are not supposed to believe just anything anyone tells us about God. The message of God is in the Bible and if we know our Bibles well we can be sure that we know what God has to say to us.

It also means that God meets us where we are, in our situations, in our families, in our culture. He is the one reaching out to us. And when he reaches out to us, that means he is accepting us because of his grace, not because of all the good things we do. It's grace plus nothing.

So this week if you are having a hard time, remember that God reaches out to you and that if you ever want to know what he is saying about your situation, there are places in the Bible where you can find that.

God bless!