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The God Life

Patience

Listen to Sunday’s message by Pastor Phil Olsen.

Listen to Sunday’s message by Pastor Phil Olsen.

The God Life

Internal Fruit

Galatians 5:22, 23.  But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  Against such things there is no law.

These are things that are not worked for but are released into your life as a result of your life being filled with the presence of God – being filled with His Spirit.

What does it look like to have this kind of transformation, this kind of infusion, this kind of life?  What does it look like to not merely experience the good life but to live out the God Life?

It started out with love.  We saw that last week.   This week let’s take a look at joy and peace and since it is Father’s Day, will look at them from a guys perspective.

v  Joy

• Pleasure of purpose
• Life In sync
  • Fulfillment of intent.  Deuteronomy 16:15. Bless you…in all the work of your hands and your joy will be complete.
  • The connection between fulfilling the work of our hands (living out/living in sync with the       reason you were designed) and the joy of life.
  • Absence of fear – presence of hope (in any kind of circum).

Psalm 37:3.4.  Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.  Take delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Enjoy – to live in the midst of joy…living out the desires of your heart.  And the desires of your hear are not merely wants or strong desires – they are the our cravings of our existence.

v  Peace

• Release of anxiety, a trust factor
• A settledness in the midst of any circumstances.
• This incredible state of life where there is no conflict inside.

Paul wrote of this God Life experience in Philippians 4:6 – about living beyond anxiety with a peace which transcends understanding.

• A peace that transcends circumstances
• A peace based in reality but not destroyed by it
• A peace that in Paul’s words literally “guards your heart and mind”

Galatians 5:22, 23.  But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  Against such things there is no law.

The God Life

Love

Galatians 5:22.23.  But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  Against such things there is no law. 

In every one of these “fruits of the Spirit,” there are 2 key things you’ll discover.  1.  You can’t make any one of them happen.  2.  They are the source of what most anyone really craves in life – they are the things in our sanest moments that we desire more than anything else. 

We’re looking for the good life – and God’s offering us the God Life.

God declares that the God Life begins with love, but…What does it mean to love?  There’s a reason why these are called fruits of the Spirit.  It’s not only that we can’t produce them on our own; it’s that we’re not even sure what it is we’re producing.

Love is powerful.  Jesus said that loving the Lord with all your heart, soul and mind and others as yourself summed up the law and the prophets.  Love is the one thing that sums up every other directive, every principle.  If you get love, you get it all.

Matthew 7:12.  So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

Philippians 2:3.4. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.  Each of you should look not only to your own interest, but also to the interests of others.

 The idea is to understand that the God Life is drastically different and amazingly better than the life we try to live on our own.

2 Peter 1:3.  God’s divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness.  And His power is absolutely necessary to change what is unavoidably egocentric about us.  We don’t know how to live without the world revolving around ourselves. 

Do you dare to live that way?  Do you dare consider others as better as or more important than yourself? Do you dare to make your life that kind of life?