I wish I could tell you it's good to be back. In a sense, it is good to be back. In fact, there's a real sense in which I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. But there's another part of this I haven't taught in a couple of weeks. As I was preparing, I did that like I normally do, and I was working through that over the last few days. And then this morning, I ended up needing to get up early, so I did that. And when I got back, I got up and went through it again to be sure that I kind of had it. And I felt like I did, and so then I kind of left it alone. When I later on I was getting ready to come and I was shaving and as I was shaving Something just came over me. I assume it The Lord Spirit was reminding me of some things and I began to tremble which is not what you want to do when you're shaving because you cut your face off, but I I wanted to be here, but I'm not sure necessarily that I wanted to teach this morning. And the reason for that is because sometimes we forget what we're doing. A sense of awe and a sense of fear came over me to the degree that I wanted to come and be among you guys, but I wanted somebody else to teach. I didn't want to bear that. So often, and particularly with me, I've been in front of people since I was a little kid. I'm not scared of standing up in front of people. It doesn't bother me. Maybe that's because I can't see them that well. I don't know. But it's not something that bothers me. But when I thought about the prospect of trying to open up God's Word and to explain it, A sense of fear and trepidation came over me and it took me a long period of time to get to where I thought I could come and do this and if it had been possible that someone else could have done it I probably would have called them. And I assume that that's a good thing and I assume that we need to go on from here but we're a small group this morning and but that piece of it doesn't matter. It wouldn't matter if we had the number that we had now or if we had five or if we had one small child. The issue is sometimes we become too familiar with the things that we're dealing with. And sometimes what happens is we think, I've got this. I know the word well. I can deal with this situation. I can handle what is being put in front of me. And we forget that we are handling the words of Almighty God. And while that's a good thing and a wonderful thing and a great privilege, whether we're teaching or whether we're sharing the gospel with someone or just a word of encouragement or whatever else, but there is another sense in which we need to be thinking about God make me tremble at your word a little bit. Give me a little bit of awe, because I can do this on my own sometimes without recognizing the seriousness of what is taking place. So I don't know if that helps you, or if you even understand what I'm saying, but the responsibility of carrying God's word to people is no small thing. And if we take it that way, we're going to become flippant, and we're going to communicate just by our attitude in it a wrong thing. So, that being said, let's pray. If you want a voice of prayer, do that, and I'll close this in a minute. Father, I ask this morning that you would speak to your people through your word for your glory. And it's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen. You turn in your Bibles to Galatians chapter 5. If you will remember the last time that I was teaching we were right in the middle of the fruit of the Spirit. And I'm thankful that at least there are some of you and others that are not here who listen to the recordings because they keep me in check. So I'm going to start with an illustration this morning because I may have inadvertently communicated something that's not quite accurate. And so we need to fix that. If you look at Galatians 5, and you look particularly at 22 to start with, it says, but the fruit of the Spirit. It does not say the fruits of the Spirit. And I fell into a trap that a lot of people fall into because right after it says fruit, it gives all of these individual character traits that the Holy Spirit works out in us. And so then we start separating them in order to explain what they all are. And that's a necessity. It has to happen. But we've got to remember that we are talking about a fruit, not fruits. This is not the same thing as gifts that we might receive. So in other words, these characteristics don't exist one at a time. they exist as a whole because we remember that the Spirit of God is a person and he has these all at once. So it's not like he's doling them out. I need more patience. So I need to have more patience right now. Certainly those things can happen. But it is more that all of these things as one unit are built into the believer's life. So I have Emmett's breakfast this morning. What are the parts of an apple? Somebody tell me characteristics of an apple. Go ahead. Mm-hmm. Good. Good. All those are parts of an apple. And those would have been the way that I would have answered, too, if I hadn't thought about it a while. So all that's correct. But let me add to that. We've got the visual aspect, right? So we have colors. And not just one, but there's variegation in this apple, right? So it changes color. Not only that, but the stem is a different color. As we were to core down into the apple, the meat of this fruit would change color as we went through it, right? But it's not just that, right? There's liquid in this apple. There's apple juice in here. And then there's a taste, there's a texture in this apple. And we could probably think of other things in terms of the essence of this piece of fruit. My point is, this is a fruit. Even though it has all of those characteristics, it is still a fruit. And all of those things, whether we talk about the skin, the color variegation, the smell, all of those things are part of the essence of this fruit. In the same way, the fruit of the Spirit are all essence of the Spirit. They are part of His character. They are part of the character of the Lord Jesus and the character that He wants to impart to us. Okay? So while I know that it is a temptation, as we work through some of these things, that we say, well, I'm doing pretty good in the self-control aspect, but I'm not doing so well in terms of joy. I get that, and in some ways maybe that's okay. But just recognize that if I am able to demonstrate a lot of self-control, but I'm not able to demonstrate joy, then the fruit of the Spirit, the essence of it, it's like having an apple without any skin on it, or without any juice in it. These things work together in order to form this. And so that in some respects makes it harder for us because we like to take this list apart and work on these things individually until we see evidences of them in our lives. And while that can be healthy and good, the problem with that is we must remember that these things come from the Spirit of God. They are all supernatural. I did do that fairly well when we talked about this last time. These are not innate things that you already have that you're just going to build on. These are characteristics that are outside of you. They are characteristics of God himself and his spirit that are outside of you, that are far beyond what you are able to exhibit on your own. And so the issue is, all of this is supernatural when it comes in. And that's hard in one sense, because we want to be like the Galatians, where we want to make rules about, well, if I'm doing this, this, and this, then I'm being gentle. And if I do this, then I'm not. But of course, that's what the whole book of Galatians is about, right? We're not making rules. But instead, we are totally dependent upon the Spirit of the Living God to do these things in our lives, because we can't do them ourselves. And that is the point. And that is the inoculation against legalism, against law following. Now, I think we went through most of these. I think I'm going to go through them again quickly, the fruit, because I think perhaps it might be helpful, but I won't take as much time. So when we talk about love, The kind of love that the Spirit imparts to us, that He works out through our lives, is that we serve a person for their good and not for what they might give us. In other words, we serve a person because we want them to do better. We want them to have a better life. We want them to be closer to God. All of those things, regardless of what they're able to give us, in the same way that the Lord Jesus served us. The opposite of love is fear and self-protection. Okay? So, if I am operating in fear, and if I'm operating thinking about myself, and I'm protecting myself, I can't love. Right? So that's its opposite. There's a counterfeit to love, and a counterfeit to love, and I'm going quickly here, because we talked about this a lot last time. I'm going to slow down when we get to the end of the list, because those are the ones we didn't cover yet. But the counterfeit of love is a selfish kind of an affection, You're attracted to someone for some reason and you treat them well because of how they make you feel about yourself. All right. Joy. Joy is a delight in God for the sheer beauty and worth of who he is. It's a little bit of a different definition. We covered that last time than what we would normally call joy. Because we attach the idea of joy to emotion. And while God has created us to be emotional people, our emotions fool us all the time. They do things based on circumstances that either make us feel good or make us feel bad. Or make us just feel kind of blah. Okay? True joy is all wrapped up in the worth of who Christ is and recognizing that. The opposite of it is hopelessness and despair. The worst thing that we can have happen to us is to not have any hope anymore. Either that things are going to be different in our own lives or that things are going to be different in someone else's. A counterfeit. of joy. It's an elation. It's a happiness that's based on experiencing the blessings that God gives us without relating to Him. So, if I've got money, if I'm healthy, if I've got enough to eat, if I've got good inter-social relationships, if I've got all of those things, all of which can be good things and are gifts from God, and not that we would despise any of them. He's built us to enter into some of that. But if I look at that and I base whether or not I'm joyful in terms of a worldly sense on those things, then that's not the kind of joy that we're talking about here. Ma'am? Okay, let me do that. It's a delight in God for the sheer beauty and worth of who he is. Certainly. And please feel free to yell at me. Enough on that one. Let's do peace. Peace is confidence and rest in the wisdom and control of God. I'll give you that again. Peace is confidence and rest in the wisdom and control of God. And then we can say, we can put a caveat at the end of that and say, rather than your own, right? Rather than your own wisdom and control. So rest in the wisdom and control of God, in God's sovereignty, in his wisdom, rather than in my sovereignty and in my wisdom. We'll point out quickly again, we spent more time on this, but peace is not the absence of conflict. Peace is not the absence of conflict. And that's normally the way that we think about it. So we spend our whole lives trying to manipulate circumstances in certain ways so that there'll be an absence of conflict, at least as far as we're concerned. And then we can feel that we're at peace. That's not the kind of peace that we're talking about. Another issue with peace is, and this is one that I have to be really careful about, so I'm going to mention it again because some of you may suffer from this. We can claim that we have peace, but we really don't, and here's how we do it. We're indifferent. We are indifferent, apathetic. We just don't care. That's not peace. That's not being loving. That's not engaging. That's just indifference. And, of course, if you build walls around your emotion and walls around your heart, and even your heart becomes walled off, then what's that called in the scripture? A hard heart, right? I mean, that's what that is. Hard hearts are indifferent and they tend towards sin, as we all know. Because once you let that attitude in and you start not caring, it's really easy for the category of, I don't care about that, to get bigger until pretty soon it encompasses most of your life. And it's nice in the sense because you don't have to engage, you're not emotionally upset, you feel peaceful. But the other problem with that is that you don't really get to experience the joys of life that God has given us because you've isolated yourselves from that. Okay. Patience. Patience is an ability to face trouble without blowing up or hitting out. Especially pay attention to the ability to face trouble. These all have to do with things that are happening in our lives, right? It's pretty easy to be patient when I'm not being challenged with anything that irritates me. If everything's going my way and everyone's doing exactly what I want them to do, I can look like a pretty patient fellow. The opposite is resentment toward God and others because they're not doing what I want. That's not patient. The opposite of patience is kind of in the same way that we talked about the last one. The opposite of patience is like a cynicism. It's a counterfeit. It's not an opposite. It's a counterfeit. It's cynicism or lack of care. And the way that what it is, is this is too small to care about. This is too small to care about. We got to watch this one a little because we baptize it with some spiritual language sometime. We think, well, I'm not going to worry about that. You know, that old prayer that everybody reads, Lord, help me to accept the things that I can't change. There's a little bit of a problem in that. It's good, but there's a little bit of a problem in that. Because what it smacks of is, I'm not going to care about things that I can't do anything about. But if you think about that attitude, the problem with it is that if you look at your life honestly, you think about all of the things that you can't do anything about, you're not going to care about anything after a little bit, because there are way more of those than there are things that you actually can affect. So, yes, there are many things that I can't do anything about, but do I care? In other words, if I have a family member, that is not saved and is struggling and those kind of things, there's a sense in which I can't do much about that. So do I not care about that? Or do I plead with God to use me, use somebody else, keep it in the forefront of my thoughts, work at that, wrestle with that in prayer? All of those things. That's the difference. Kindness. Kindness. Kindness is an ability to serve others practically in a way that makes me vulnerable. It's sort of like Jesus' parable about the widow and the mite. It's not hard for us to be kind out of an abundance when we have a lot of something to give to someone. To skim off the top of a lot of something and give it is not a big deal. But to give out of a lack that we have ourselves, that's where kindness comes in. That's where vulnerability comes in. And you know that, some of you who have been doing this for a while now, you know that because, let's face it, on this earth the Lord tells us that this life is not going to be easy, but more than that, he calls us to have relationships with people. And when we have relationships with people, and particularly when we're trying to give them the gospel, which at some point, even when we're trying to build relationship, giving someone the gospel at some point is always telling them they're wrong. And people don't want to hear they're wrong, right? And so that makes us vulnerable. And not only that, we recognize that a lot of the time it doesn't seem to work out very well. A lot of the time you pour your heart and soul into somebody and you pray and you work and you meet with them and you deal with the problems that they're having and some of those are practical and spiritual and all of those kinds of things and at the end of it they get mad at you and won't speak to you anymore. I don't know if you ever had that happen. I have. And it will continue to happen. But we're called to be kind anyway. You see how supernatural all of this is? I can't muster up enough out of myself to do that to somebody. I can't continue to make myself vulnerable in practical ways apart from the Spirit of God working in me. Because, this is laid on the table, it hurts. When you're looking at somebody who looks like there's some growth there and you're seeing like some good things and then an offhanded comment or something that you're trying to teach them that they don't have yet offends them to the point where they won't have anything to do with you anymore. It's pretty tough. It's kindness. The only way that you can be kind... Gosh, I didn't intend to spend this much time. That's okay. The only way that you're going to be able to be kind is if you already have an inner security in what Christ has done for you. If you're constantly a worried person all of the time who doesn't really believe the things that you're trying to communicate to someone else, that you're hoping that God will impart to someone else, it makes that whole thing really shaky. And I cannot be vulnerable if I'm not securing Christ myself. All right, the opposite. The opposite, the opposite of kindness is manipulation, manipulativeness. I'm doing good deeds. I'm helping someone so that I can congratulate myself or feel that I'm good enough. And that works either for others or for God. It's manipulative. I'm doing something that's good. No one can fault maybe what I did, but now we get into motive. And that's the whole thing about the fruit of the Spirit. It changes motive. That's the supernatural part of it. If I am doing something for someone so that I can get something back, even if it's a good thing, that's not kindness. Right? Goodness? Goodness is integrity, which may not be what you would think it would be. Goodness is primarily integrity. It's not, as we often look at our little kids and say, this is a good one and this is not such a good one, this is a bad one. That's not the definition, right? Goodness here is integrity. Goodness is not being a hypocrite. Goodness is being the same person in every situation, wherever I am, whether we're good at that. Goodness is not being an actor. I don't know about you, but I struggle with that. It's pretty easy for me to be one way when I'm standing up here than what I'm doing now, and it's quite another thing when I'm in other circumstances. Goodness is integrity, but it's not brutal integrity. What I mean by that is that you've got to be always truthful, but you've also got to be always loving, and it is the balance of both of those things. Getting things off your chest to make yourself feel or look better is not goodness, and it's not integrity. But being the same person all of the time, that's integrity. That's goodness. Faithfulness. Faithfulness is, well the best word is loyalty. Courage. Reliability. True to your word. That's faithfulness. This comes in often when circumstances in life come up that are not good. And this comes where we wonder where God is, and the ceiling feels like it's made of brass, and our prayers don't seem to go anywhere, and we don't seem to be going. And that blessing that God gives us in terms of how we each recognize and feel his presence is gone. We don't seem to feel that on whatever level that we normally do. But loyalty and courage to hold on to things that we know are true, even when at the point in time that we're at, they don't look very true. They don't feel very true. That's faithfulness. The opposite of faithfulness is to be basically an opportunist. The opposite is to be a friend only in good times. We've all known some of those, right? When it suits me, I will have a relationship with this person. When it does not suit me, I won't. When it suits me to act like I'm a Christian, I will then act like I'm a Christian. But when it does not suit me to do that, then I will not. It's all about me, and what's good for me, or what I sense that to be anyway. A counterfeit of faithfulness is... We don't have the English language to do this any better, so you'll just have to understand what I'm saying. A counterfeit of being faithful is to be so loving that you're not truthful. so that you're never willing to have a confrontation or to challenge anybody on anything. These are the folks who people can say something or do something right in front of them that they know is wrong and they give kind of a tacit acquiescence to that because they won't say anything. Now, of course, we need wisdom in this, right? I mean, we're not everyone's policeman and all those things too. God has to work this fruit out in our lives so that at the time that we're dealing with others, which is what it's about, that we do it rightly. But if you find yourself never being able to enter into a confrontation about something, it's because you don't hold the truth that you say you believe as dear as you need to hold it. It's because somewhere in there you believe that while that may be your truth, it's not necessarily going to be a truth for them. And of course, we're not talking about peripheral issues, right? We're not talking about those things that are questionable or that people look at differently. But we're talking about the bedrock, first-tier kind of doctrine things that have to be adhered to, that have to be loved. And so that's where that's at. Gentleness. We view gentleness as, we all have this idea, someone who's not abrupt at all, someone who would pick up a newborn baby and handle it really well so that baby would be comfortable, or a young animal. Someone who maybe in a conversation was able to be kind of a soothing influence in that conversation. Maybe some of those things are part of the definition. But the real thing is with gentleness is humility. I can't be gentle if I'm not humble. In other words, all of the things that I need to recognize about who I am apart from Christ have to remind me how I'm then going to deal with other people. Another part of gentleness is self-forgetfulness. That's another part of gentleness. It's self-forgetfulness. If I'm worried, you ever seen somebody with a newborn, you know, and sometimes we We can judge someone's hypothetical motives, but a new father or someone who's not handled a newborn baby before, they can be afraid to hold that baby. And what's always said is that they're afraid to interact with the baby because they don't want to hurt the baby. And a lot of times maybe that's true. But in a lot of times, what it is, is that I don't want to handle the baby because if I handle the baby and the baby gets hurt, then people are going to think really bad of me. You see the difference? The difference is huge. But again, the fruit of the Spirit is all about motive. All about motive. And So, the opposite of gentleness is to have a superior attitude and to be self-absorbed. If I think that I'm so much above whoever it is that I'm dealing with, I can never be gentle with that person or that situation. Okay, we're coming to the end now. We'll spend a little more time on a couple of these. Self-control. Those of you, I see some of you writing, so I'm going to say this slowly because this was the best definition that I'd heard of this, and I want to remember it. I want to memorize it. Self-control is the ability to pursue the important over the urgent. Think about that a minute. Self-control is the ability to determine what is important and to deal with that rather than what is urgent. And urgency is the thing that runs most of us most of the time. In fact, we don't even think about it. We just go from one thing to the next thing to the next thing to the next thing, right? And you say, well, could you put things in categories for me so that I could understand what is important and what is urgent? And the answer to that is no, this is the book of Galatians, and we're not going to do that. I mean, we can do it in general terms. We can say, certainly. And this has been really hard for me, because I was always the guy, fix the biggest hole, find the biggest hole, plug it. Then go to the next biggest hole and plug that one. That's the thing. This is especially important when you're mucking around in people's lives. What is urgent to them and what may seem urgent to you may not be important. Quick example, some of you aren't going to like this, but it was the only one I could come up with. I was dealing with a guy one time, and he was hung on tobacco. I mean hung on it. Tobacco is not a good thing for us to be hung on, yada, yada, yada, et cetera, et cetera. But when I began to deal with this guy, somebody had talked to them, and that was the focus. That was the focus. And as I began to talk with him, I He wanted to focus on that, and I said, I don't care about that. At least not right now, I don't care about that. You have major malfunctions in your life in terms of how you view who God is, and even in your understanding of the gospel. And whatever well-meaning soul who wanted to work on this tobacco thing didn't get it. That may come at some point, but we have got to figure out what the important thing is, not the urgent thing. And the urgent The urgent is mostly tied to your own personal preferences a lot of times, and less tied to what is the biblical need, what is the revealed need in this person's life. And so you've got to guard against that a little bit. So here's how you do it. When you view the perfect situation in this person's life, if this, this, and this would happen, then it would be a perfect situation. What you need to be looking at is, and I'm talking about practical things, not big spiritual terms, but practical things. Then you need to line up your this, this, and this, your one, two, and three that would make this person's life so much better. You need to line that up with the scripture and see if the scripture actually has anything to say about that. And if it is the preeminent thing that you should even be looking at. Not that it's not important. Maybe you do sin something. But most of the time, the urgent is the thing that's going to irritate us the most if we don't get it fixed. Right? Rather than what that person really needs. Okay. Self-control. Pursuing the important over the urgent. There's a counterfeit. There's a counterfeit, a dangerous, dangerous counterfeit to this. And these Galatians were falling into it based on the teaching of the Judaizers. The counterfeit of self-control might surprise you. Because you would think that the counterfeit of self-control would be chaos, some sort of chaotic behavior, impulsiveness, those kinds of things. Well, maybe that's part of it. But really, In a biblical way, if you think about it, the opposite of self-control as a part of the fruit of the spirit is willpower. It's willpower. You see, we view self-control as the ability to not let things rattle us. And we build that muscle within ourselves, those of us who care about that, so that you can't rattle me. And that means I'm self-controlled. So I don't fly off the handle. I don't get angry when I shouldn't get angry. I don't do those things, all of which are good. But if they are accomplished by willpower, what we're doing is we're saying, I have created the ability to manage all of this stuff as I get these input, because I need to be in control. I gotta be in control. And if I can be in control, I have found that when I deal with other people, that being chaotic and impulsive and flying off the handle is not as effective as manipulating them through my calm exterior. But I gotta be in control. Willpower isn't self-control. Christianity, folks, this is something that's hard for us. Christianity, yes, there's discipline in it. Yes, there's obedience. All of those things are true. But at its core, Christianity has always been an abandonment of ourselves. It always has been. It has to be. Because we can't hang on to that which was us before Christ did anything with us and expect to be Christians. That doesn't work so well. We've experienced that. But then after sometimes we're saved, what we think is living the Christian life means that I've got to muster enough willpower so that I exhibit those characteristics of a Christian. That's not it. You will exhibit the characteristics of Christ when you throw yourself on him with abandon always. It's not willpower. And that comes right back to our self-control definition. It is pursuing the important over the urgent. Okay. Are there questions about the fruit of the Spirit before we go on? Yeah. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Let's talk about that one. I think chapter six is going to go faster. But these are those critical principles that it just takes a while to deal with. So we're going to have to work through them at this pace for a little bit. Those who belong to Christ Jesus Two things that I see in this verse. The verse is a test. That's the way we take it sometimes when we read it. If you belong to Christ Jesus, then you have crucified the desires of the flesh. Crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. So we take it as a test. That's a good way to take it. But the other way that we need to think about it for this is If we have crucified the flesh, if we belong to Christ, what it's saying is, it's like a positive statement. Those who do belong to Christ have done this. So it's a test, but it's also something that is a continuing thing that moves on. Those who do belong to Christ have done this, are doing this. So our first thought of this is that belonging to Christ means that we're His. And that's going to be a necessity to hang on to if the fruit of the Spirit is going to happen in our lives, that belonging. And then we talk about crucifying the flesh with its passions and its desires. We know that Jesus was crucified for our sins. He died on the cross for our sins. He rose again. We have been justified. As if we had paid that penalty for ourselves, we have been justified because there is no more penalty for that there, for the believer, and we know that to be true. Paul says earlier, I've been crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I. So now we're talking about it in a little bit different sense, right? Because if you just think about crucifixion in a physical sense, if you crucify somebody, that person is dead. They don't continue to live, right? Nobody comes out of crucifixion alive. I know that some of the naysayers of the Christian faith had tried to say that, yes, Jesus was crucified, they stuck a spear in his side and they let him hang there forever, but really he just passed out and then he woke up again in the tomb. There's never been another account of somebody being nailed to something and coming back. So in this sense, crucifying the flesh, with its passions and desires. We're going to talk about crucified a little more in just a minute, but let's talk about passions and desires first because that will help us think about crucifying. Really, when you look at the meaning of the word passions and desires, if you get down to the root of that, it's overdesire is the idea. It's being overly passionate. It's an over-desire. So, the thing that your sinful flesh desires, in some form or fashion, when it's desired in a right way, can be a good thing. In fact, it can be a God-given thing. It can be a God-given impulse. Our problem with our flesh is that we have over-desires. We want something more than we want relationship with God. We want something more than we should want it. based on our relationship with Christ. And so what do we do? We kill it. We kill it every single day, every moment. We are constantly in this battle of killing it. And see, this goes right along with the fruit, because nothing exists in a vacuum, even in the spiritual world. And the reality is, if I'm having these over-desires that need to be killed, then I can't exhibit the fruits of the Spirit. But if I am exhibiting the fruits of the Spirit, if He is doing His work within my life, then these over-desires are being tamped down and that flesh is being crucified. That's how you tell, right? That's how you gauge that. Every day. Many times a day. But here's how you do it, and here's the important thing. This is what we've learned so far in the book of Galatians. If we learn nothing else, then it is this. We don't say, it's like the old slogan used to be, just say no. That's the old drug slogan. Just say no. That didn't get it. That didn't work. That's not what's being taught us here. Just say no will only get you so far. We gotta have a major motivation shift. We're going to have a nature shift. We've got to have a personality shift. We've got to begin to love things that we don't normally love. We've got to begin to hate things that we didn't hate before. Seeing the value of the Lord Jesus Christ in worship is the thing that's going to help us in this matter of crucifying our flesh. Twenty-five. We're going to close here. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Don't let us become conceited. Okay. Time's flinging. Let's do it this way. Living by the Spirit, keeping in step with the Spirit. We'll do that briefly. We'll just say, this is exhibiting the fruit of the Spirit. How do we do it? How do we breathe? In, out. In, out. We don't get very far if we quit breathing. Living by the Spirit is the same thing. We don't get very far in the Christian life if we don't live by the Spirit. Let us also keep in step with the Spirit. How do we do that? That comes back to that worship word again, honestly. How do we keep in step with God? Everybody always wants to know What is God's will for my life? Right? How do I do what he wants me to do all of the time in various situations because I don't know? The scripture is telling me to keep in step with the Spirit, but it doesn't tell me all the time exactly what I need to do in a given specific situation. And that drives me nuts. Right? That's kind of the thing that we have here. Because I could do this or this and neither one seems necessarily biblically wrong. And I just don't have a handle on it. So how do I keep in step with the Spirit? How do I do that? Keeping in step with the Spirit is a matter of relationship. Again, it comes back to motivation. It's not a matter of trying to do just enough so that God will be happy with me and I will remain kind of in His good category instead of His bad category. Right? That's not it. Keeping in step with the Spirit means that I'm always recognizing the glory and the worth of the Lord Jesus Christ and I'm worshiping Him. And it's not a have to, it's a get to. And that changes my motivation in it. Right? So that I'm thinking about these things differently. And as I'm doing that, the freedom of the Spirit just comes out of me. And I do what I would normally do. A good way, though I know this could be twisted, but I don't think it'll be twisted too badly. A good way of describing this is like this. Given everything that we've talked about so far in the context of the scripture that we've dealt with, the Christian life is really a very simple thing. Love God and do what you want. I know that could be twisted. I get that. Because then we have to define love God and all those things. But we have in the sense of what the Spirit of God does within us, right? Love God and do what you want. That is a simple way of saying walk by the Spirit, keep in step with the Spirit. Now the last verse in the chapter, I'm not going to deal with that now because I want to deal with this conceited thing in a little bit more detail because I've thought some about that and we don't have time this morning so I think we'll stop here. Pray with me. Father we're grateful this morning for your word and desire is that you would be glorified as the service continues. Lord, we recognize that there are areas in our lives where we're not motivated by the right things. My prayer is that you would show us the glory of walking by the Spirit, keeping in step with you. We know that all of this is supernatural, so we seek it, and we desire it, but we ask You to do it. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.