Five Minute Friday – This group of Christian writers takes a writing prompt, sets a timer for 5 minutes, and writes until the timer stops. No care to punctuation, grammar, or vocabulary–just free writing. When the timer goes off, stop!
fmf link up
Going back to clean it up is allowed. And I take full advantage of that.
Timer set for 5 minutes. Prompt: If
Go!
I’ve been in the book of Galatians for a couple of months. It is full of admonition to live by faith and not by rules and expectations. This is something I have had to keep on the forefront of my mind for years, as I am very performance driven, and prone to people pleasing.
I was struck with the “if”s in the book of Galatians today. There are 16 instances that I circled in my Bible today.
If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.
If anybody is preaching a gospel other than what you accepted let him be damned!
If while we seek to be justified in Christ, it becomes evident that we ourselves are sinners, does that mean Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not! If I rebuild what I destroyed, I prove that I am a law breaker. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!
If you let yourselves be circumcised [or earn righteousness by keeping the rules] Christ will be of no value to you at all.
—
I used to be plagued by the idea that I was not able to live the real Christian life. There wasn’t enough reality to my walk and my spiritual life.
If I could earn it, I probably would have some serious points toward it. But doing it right doesn’t amount to anything if there is no faith.
The question was always, what would it look like if I just believed and walked out into radical belief? What if?
The Kratt brothers jump into every episode with a “what if?” where they transform from real middle-aged men to cartoon characters who can transform into any creature with creature powers and specially-made creature suits.
What if I could jump into a Jesus suit?
Pencils down!
Elsewhere Paul tells his recipients to “put on Christ” and to take off the old self. Maybe we can put on a Jesus suit, after all.
What if we could live full of grace and power and truth and compassion and joy like Jesus?
The more I realize that he is the source of all those things, and they are available in him, and can be received by grace, through faith, included in the big package of our salvation, the more I see the fruit of it.
‘What if I could jump into a Jesus suit?’ – I love that! I’m not familiar with the Kratt brothers but they reminded me of the BBC children’s animation Mr Benn, who every episode visits a fancy dress shop and walks into a different adventure with every costume.
That sounds like a fun story line!
The Kratts are two guys who have been making kids shows about animals on Public TV for a couple or decades. My kids watch them every day, so they are fresh in my mind constantly!
Thanks for visiting!