Galatians 5:16-22 | Against the Flesh | Alex Culpepper

Well, today we're continuing our kind of the last series through the book of Galatians. This series is called Spirit or Flesh. And here Paul is concluding his letter to the Galatians. Last week we talked about discernment, right? How Paul, he kind of gives them a framework.

He works with them to help them discern what is the nature of the teachings that they're hearing from, what is the nature of the ideas that they're consuming and dealing with. And so this series, Spirit or Flesh? It's about living out of the freedom that the Holy Spirit brings as opposed to the slavery of dead, corruptible flesh. And so we talked about how we can discern things by their fruit. Fruit is beliefs, behaviors, and outcomes, right?

And Paul's whole point here in this letter is to give these people tools to be able to recognize the source of any teaching or. Or idea so that they could quickly see if this is out of alignment with Christ or not. And so this week we are zeroing in on the works of the flesh. These are those things that are not of God. This is fruit that the Holy Spirit does not produce.

It does not come from the Holy Spirit. Those things that are against the Holy Spirit, those behaviors that are produced by false beliefs and also produce bad outcomes. So if you would. Would you stand with us? I want to read through the passage.

Could we all stand together? As I read the passage, I'm starting in verse 16, and the encouragement is this. It says in Galatians 5:16. But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh.

For these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these? I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Would you pray with me, Holy Spirit? Would you impress on us the seriousness of your word, the threat that our own flesh is to us?

Holy Spirit, would you take the power of your word and apply it to the lives of your people? Would you bless us to not have any disruption in our attention? Every Spirit that might seek to distract God, would you push it out that we could be concerned Only with your word, with honoring Jesus, with giving our attention to who he is. God, we need your wisdom this morning. Would you pour out wisdom and would you take the words that are in this passage and cause them to sink into our hearts that we might leave this place and not be the same that we were when we came in?

So we ask this in Jesus mighty name. Amen. Amen. Amen. You can be seated.

Galatians, chapter 5, verse 16 starts like this. It says, but I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. Today's passage has a whole list of walks, what we could just call garbage in it. Some Bible teachers call this a vice list. Now we're gonna.

We're gonna look at it. We're gonna seek to understand what God is trying to communicate to us through those things. But as we go into this, we need to kind of remember what Paul is not doing. The entire letter to the Galatians that Paul has been writing has been, you are not bound by a law, but you have been set free in Christ. So that's the context that Paul is writing this down in, which must mean that Paul is not now providing for us a new law.

He's not even. I just want to tell you, he's not even providing a code of ethics. He's not giving you a list of things to do and a list of things to not do. He is describing what it looks like when people walk by the Holy Spirit as opposed to by the flesh. Right.

So do you want to know whether or not you're being led by the flesh? Well, if you do the things that are in the list, then you know the flesh is at work. You know that the thing that's leading you is the flesh. So would Paul say, stop doing these things if you're doing them? Well, yes, I think Paul would definitely say, stop doing these things if you're doing them.

But his point the whole time with the Galatians has been, how do we live the life of faith? How do we live by faith? Right. It is our faith, is our response to God's grace. And faith is the thing that brings us into the kingdom, but it's actually God's grace that brings us into his kingdom.

Faith is just our generosity or our response. Because of God has been so kind to us, we are responding to him in turn. So in faith, we receive the Holy Spirit to live in and guide us. And so Paul's primary instruction to them as he provides a list of things that are not good his primary instruction is not to say, don't do these things. His primary instruction to them is to say, keep in step with the Spirit.

Pay attention to what the Spirit wants. Align your heart with the spirit's way of thinking. I don't normally give us the main point at the beginning, but today I'm going to give us the main point at the beginning. Our main point this morning is this. The key to overcoming the flesh is surrendering to the spirit.

That's what Paul clearly teaches here in this passage. The key to overcoming the flesh is surrendering to the spirit. So we have this phrase, we wore bracelets that had this. That had this phrase on it in the 90s. It said WWJD on it.

What would Jesus do? And I just want to let you know. You cannot know the answer to that question without the Holy Spirit.

You certainly can't care about it or obey it without the Holy Spirit. Because Jesus, you know what Jesus did? Jesus did whatever the Holy Spirit told him to do. He says Jesus's words to the disciples were, I do only what I see my father doing. How was he able to see what his father was doing?

Well, the Holy Spirit clarified for him the things he was to do, the path that he was to follow. And Jesus lived and walked and loved and ministered perfectly according to the Holy Spirit. Now, just want to let you know, when we get the Holy Spirit, we don't get the perfectly part right because we still have fallen flesh, but we do get better at it the longer we make a point of walking with him. So verse 17 says this. For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh.

For these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. If you were to translate this literally, literally, what it says is that the flesh wants. The flesh wants against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. So this letter by Paul to the Galatians, it was originally written in Greek. And the word desire in Greek means to deeply long for something, to ache after something like you have to have this thing, you deeply long for it.

And so what he's saying is that the flesh deeply longs for it. The flesh aches for everything that is opposed to the spirit. That's what the flesh does. And the spirit deeply longs for and aches for everything that is opposed to the flesh. And all of this, all of this keeps you doing from.

Keeps you from doing what you want to do. And that want, when it says, it keeps you doing Keeps you from doing what you want to do. That want is speaking of your will, right? What, what do you want? Right.

That's the question. And the flesh and the spirit war against each other because at times you might want to want according to the flesh, and at times you might want according to the spirit. And whichever one you want, if you have the Holy Spirit in you, you're going to have something at odds with what you want all the time. And so your will, what you want, keeps getting contrasted by an opposing influence. And so this is really helpful for us because Paul, what he has done for us is he has helped us identify that the struggle that we live in this life, when the Holy Spirit, like life becomes a struggle, when you become a Christian, like the Holy Spirit comes and fills you and your life does not suddenly get easier.

The Holy Spirit starts like, convicting you about all of the things that he doesn't like, right? And then. And he works inside of you and he shows you a better way, right? And so you now have this like, internal conflict between flesh and spirit as the Holy Spirit comes and fills you and begins giving you the desires of your Father. And this means ultimately that if we are going to walk by the Spirit, it means that we are going to let the Holy Spirit lead us according to the things that he deeply longs for.

That's what he does. He puts in us his wants and his desires and leads us according to those. And so I think it's an apt question to simply ask, what? What does the Holy Spirit want in me? Right?

If we are to be led by the desires of the Spirit, then we have to ask the question, what is it that the Holy Spirit wants? Now remember, I have say this many times when we read Scripture. We'll take a little tiny passage out and we'll say, okay, what does this passage mean for me? And then we forget everything that came before that passage. So we can't do that here because when he says the desires of the Spirit and we go, well, what is that really talking about?

Well, he's told us in part what the desires of the Spirit are. What is the Holy Spirit trying to do inside of us? He's given us that. So the first thing that the Holy Spirit is trying to do, what the Holy Spirit wants for us is the Holy Spirit wants us to be secure, wants us to know that we have a place of safety and a place of rest. This is where he says, hey, the Spirit of the living God has come into us and cries out from within us, abba, Father, that we would know God as our who loves us, who has adopted us into his family, and that we would find that to be a secure place.

That out of that place of safety we have freedom to grow and to follow after God's heart. And yes, even freedom to fail at times, but then to readjust and come back. Because we know that we are now in God's family. Holy Spirit number one wants us to be secure in our identity as those who the Father has adopted. So that's the first thing he wants.

Now there are five S's here. I did this to make it especially helpful for you. I don't do it all the time, but I just want to. It's a gift from me to you. The second thing Holy Spirit wants is Holy Spirit wants you to be satisfied.

You know how many times the word inheritance is used in this book, right? Inheritance speaks of God has something grand that he wants to give you. He has a gift that he wants to give you, has something better than what he's done in all of time and place. And he's done that thing specifically for you. He is an inheritance, right?

And so what Holy Spirit is trying to accomplish is he's trying to help us rest in, find satisfaction in the things that he has given us. That he's given us promise of eternal life, that he's given us his presence with us in the here and now. That he's given us power to accomplish his purposes in the earth. That he gives us the ability to know and experience the love of God in real time. The Holy Spirit gives us, gives us satisfaction and longs for us to be satisfied with Him.

That's what he wants.

The third thing the Holy Spirit wants is he wants us to be serving, right? So we talked about that whole idea that we're adopted into God's family. And right before Paul goes into this whole thing between flesh and spirit and the contrast between them, he says, hey, would you use your freedom to enslave yourselves to one another? Use your freedom to serve one another, right? That part of coming into God's family is that we now begin to love the people that God loves and has called his own.

Because they become our own too. Because we're all in the same family. And so we take it on ourselves to be servant and servant hearted towards those who God loves. The fourth thing that the Holy Spirit wants is he wants us to be sanctified. Sanctification is a word that speaks of our holiness.

He wants us to be set apart from the way things are. Right? There's a world that works according to a particular system. And he has saved us out of that world. And now he is changing us from the inside out that we might reflect the existence of a different way of being, of a different kingdom.

And so finally, what he wants is he wants us to be sent. Now, the book of Galatians doesn't explicitly get at this, but if we look at other places in the New Testament, this is clearly what the Holy Spirit wants. He's sending us out in the world to be witnesses, to bring evidence of the kingdom near to other people, so that Jesus can come near to other people, so that people can hear the truth of who Jesus is and be saved in believing the truth. See, these are all the things. Like, this is what the Holy Spirit is all about.

Like, you want to get, like the Holy Spirit's desires in your heart and I should just like, tell you, I want to go out of my. To tell you. Like, it doesn't matter what age you are or how far you think you've got. Like, this is the most significant purpose that could ever be given to you, right? To represent the Holy Spirit in whatever place or space that you're inhabiting.

To set out to bring the kingdom of God near. To be in your prayer closet and know that as you pray, the Holy Spirit is listening and he's going to work in areas around you. Like, the Holy Spirit wants to accomplish these things in you, to. To reveal evidence of his love for the whole world through you. That's what he wants.

Here's the thing. All of these are in competition against what your flesh wants. So the Holy Spirit wants you to be secure in Christ and your flesh wants self protection, right? So the Father says, I am your safety, but your flesh wants to be your safety. Your flesh wants to protect yourself.

The Holy Spirit wants you to be satisfied in Christ. The flesh wants self indulgence. The Holy Spirit wants you serving. And the flesh wants you selfish. The Holy Spirit wants you sanctified, right?

Set apart according to God's way. And the flesh wants you to do your things your way. The Spirit wants you sent to build God's kingdom, and the flesh wants you to build your own kingdom. So this is our response to the grace that God has given us. When God shows His grace as and he welcomes us into his family.

And he does all of this not by anything that we do, but according to everything that Christ did. He gives us this grace by the Holy Spirit to now be led by his very desires we give ourselves to be led by what the Holy Spirit wants. So again, remember, we're discerning. Paul gave the framework of discernment. We're discerning.

If a work of the flesh is finding repeated manifestation in my life, it's repeatedly coming out and working its way out in my life. What that means is that then in at least one of those five categories, I am being led by the flesh and instead of by the Spirit, right? Like, if I am to discern what's going on in me, and if I see a work of the flesh working its way out of my life, then what that means is I have to look at one of those five categories and ask the question, like, where am I not surrendered to what the Holy Spirit is doing right now? If I see a work of the flesh in a given circumstance, should I stop doing the thing? Yes, I should stop doing the thing.

But that is to say, like, the solution is not merely stopping. There is a solution that's called like having the Holy Spirit transform our desires or give us his desires. So verse 18, verse 18 of Galatians, chapter 5. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. So when we are brought to life by the Holy Spirit, we get set free, right?

We come into freedom. Nobody else, you just need to know, nobody else has this freedom. Christ has a specific freedom that he has given and made available only to people who trust in Him. And so you have this very special freedom that Christ has provided. Everybody else is going to be judged by the law and found wanting.

But believers in Jesus are judged by the works of Christ and by what he accomplished for our sake and the message that his blood speaks about us. And so now we have freedom. We will not be judged by the law. We have the freedom to be judged by Christ. And that is freedom in the Spirit.

That's freedom from the power of sin. Sin used to have power to condemn us, and it no longer has that power. And so then if we. If we aren't being led by the Spirit, then we. What that means is that we are being led by something else, which is why he provides the list so that we can identify when we are being led by something besides the Holy Spirit.

So we'll go to the list. Now, the works of the flesh are evident. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. The list is intentionally chaotic, like you're going to sit down and try to organize It. And I confess because this is just how I think and who I am.

I'm going to try to organize it for you this morning a little bit. But it is intentionally unorganized. Right. It's as if Paul was just like trying to give like a smattering of examples and then basically just said, you get the idea. Right.

But we need to know that what Paul is doing is that he is speaking with moral clarity. There are innumerable pressures on pastors and church leaders and even on you as you seek to live faithfully the calling of God in your life in front of others. There are innumerable pressures to not speak with this kind of clarity.

Paul could have said, yeah, you know, well, we're all saved by grace, so none of this really matters. He doesn't say that. He clearly identifies things that the Holy Spirit does not lead towards.

There's just a lot of moral fogginess in our culture right now. There are all sorts of people justifying all sorts of behaviors based on what they say the Holy Spirit led them towards. And as Bible believing Christians, we ought to be committed to moral and biblical clarity. And in such foggy times. And so there, there are four categories.

Again, I told you I was going to organize. I think there are four clear categories of rebellion here. The first is the category of sexual rebellion. He says sexual immorality, impurity and sensuality.

Sex is one of the most powerful tools that has been given to human beings. God made it intentionally for it to be pleasurable. God made it int it to be enjoyed. And he made it intentionally for a specific context. The marriage relationship, it is a gift.

It is God's gift to the marriage relationship to bind that relationship together. And any attempt to remove that gift from its proper context is in rebellion against God. It is, it is the rule of yourself trying to take this thing on your terms instead of leave it in God's terms. So let me give some examples that work this out because there are present day examples of how this works out. He uses these words.

He might use different words if he were writing to the church today based on the smattering of realities of sexual immorality in our world today. So use of pornographic images would fall into this category. Fantasies about other people would fall into this category. Now you might ask me, why is that opposed to God? Some of you, that will be obvious.

To some of you, it may not be so obvious. Why is that opposed to God? Because those are images of God on that screen. Those are images of God in that picture. In your Head.

And what you are doing is you are reducing the dignity of those images by using them from. For your own selfish ends. And you might say, well, that person made that decision on their own. I don't care what they say about their dignity. God has called you to honor their dignity.

The Holy Spirit does not do these things. And your heart is at odds with God about the purpose of his images and his purposes for your mind when you engage in them. Let me name a couple of additional things that folks into this category. Practices of homosexuality or bisexuality or exploration of other kinds of gender identities and stuff like this. This falls into this category in Paul's mind because they oppose God's intention in creation.

Right. Holy Spirit does not lead to these things. Finally, just for those who are dating, there is the reality that like any kind of sexual interaction within a committed relationship, if the committed relationship is not marriage, then the Holy Spirit is not involved in that expression of sexuality. It's the flesh. So you just need to know that pole to engage in that is rebellion against what the Holy Spirit is leading towards.

Now, let me. If I've said anything here and you like, I feel exposed by this. I feel like I've been named. If that's you, let me tell first off that you are not alone. We live in a culture that is constantly pushing us to remove all boundaries around this stuff.

And we live in a time where as the Lord redeems people in this age, in this time and place, one of the major things that he is redeeming people from is broken and rebellious sexuality. And so here's the thing. None of what I've said this morning is condemnation against you. It is invitation. Would you start following the Holy Spirit's lead in these things and find your satisfaction in him and his way, as opposed to your way?

So that's the first category. The second category is spiritual rebellion. We have here idolatry and sorcery. We've done a handful of teachings on this stuff in the last few years. So I'm going to do.

In just a bit, I'm going to do a list, just a quick list to run through here. But idolatry, first of all, is a classification of worship of things that claim to be God but are not God, Right? And the Bible identifies for us that these things are actually demons, right? Demons pretending to be gods. And I classify them within this kind of holding to the perspective that.

So this idolatry, right? Holding to the perspective that there are like the perspective that there are many ways to God, you know, that's idolatry. That's other gods trying to put themselves on the same level as the one true God, right? You might think, like, oh, that some people might find their way to God in Buddhism. If you think that some people might find their way to God in Buddhism, you need to note that that is idolatry, right?

That's believing that there is some other way to God besides Jesus, who says, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

And so these seeking after other religions, or maybe you're not seeking after, but you just generally affirm that. Yeah. Although those other religions can get you there as well. That is an agreement with idols, and you need to come out of agreement with idols. And so the second category that's up here is sorcery.

I just gotta. This is where I'm gonna give you the list. I'm just gonna tell you a series of things that are seeking to activate spiritual power, right? So fortune tellers, tarot cards, Ouija boards, palm readers, crystals, spirit guides, seances, mediums, psychics, talking to the dead, making vows in the name of other gods, or making vows unto death. What I mean by that is you say, if I do not perform all the words of this vow, let my head be struck from my shoulders, or something like that.

There are people who actually make those vows. Energy healing, the use of psychedelics, right? And things like these. Right? We could keep going.

All of these are ways of opening your life up to spiritual power. Now, some people who do this and some people who traffic in these things, they are charlatans, they are pretenders. They're not operating in real things. But there are people who do these things who do operate in real spiritual power. But the distinction is that it is spiritual power obtained in the flesh, right?

It is obtained out of my own desires. It has nothing to do with submitting to God and giving my life to him and receiving the grace that he's given me. Pursued on means that have nothing to do with what God desires. And so, and I'll just say one more thing, just to not create any kind of fear or sensationalism or anything. All the people who might traffic and those kinds of power are nothing compared to the Holy Spirit's power.

We need to be really clear about that. So if I haven't, this is just to let you know if I haven't named something that you struggle with yet.

We're definitely going to get 100% of the room in this next one. So we'll all Be there.

Relational rebellion is the third category. Enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy.

You know what I love? Paul named these first kind of two categories. And those are the things that, like, you know, like, most like good people, they're like, yeah, get them right.

And those of us who might be prone to more self righteousness listened to him and we thought, you know, as he listed, like, oh, we're doing pretty good. Yeah, I'm lit by the spirit. Look at that. I'm not gonna go through the whole list of everything that's written up here because they're all basically things which put us against each other. But church, I just want to tell you something about me.

When I have a project or I have a responsibility that I'm working on at home, I have something that I need to focus on. And one of my beautiful girls comes up and either does something in our home or does something outside of my expectations. The way that I think things should be going right now, my impulse is not to patiently correct or patiently sit with them or give them another direction or help them do according to the right expectation. That is not the impulse that is in me. The impulse in me is to erupt in a fit of anger.

That's what's in me. And at times that fit of anger could become like yelling that yelling comes out and then I'll be like, oh, shoot. Or at times that fit of anger can become. I can become really sarcastic when I get angry. And at times that fit of anger can become a joyless, annoyed, temperamental attitude that I adopt for anywhere between the next 5 and 500 minutes until either the Holy Spirit or my wife says, hey, what's going on?

So listen to me, Paul. Put fits of anger in the same list as idolatry and sorcery.

So insofar as you entertain fits of anger, you do so in rebellion against what the Holy Spirit wants.

Number four, appetite, rebellion, drunkenness, orgies and things like these. These are sins of excess. So wine is not a sin in scripture, Getting drunk on wine or any other alcohol. Absolutely, 100% is. Is.

So how do you go from drinking wine to getting drunk? You drink too much of it. There's sins of excess. Right? So.

So orgies are as that word up there. It's a fun word. And every time we say, I just imagine everybody like, oh, what's going on there? So they are just the ancient world's version of a college frat party. Like that is because what do you do?

Like, you go and Other translations call it carousing or revelries. But the idea is that you engage in overindulgence that leads to risky behavior. You engage in substances, whether that be alcohol or whether that be something else, where you take your inhibitions off, where you do things you would not do in your right mind. And you engage, that is in. You do it in a mind that's been warped by the substances that you engage in.

And so these things lead you to greater indulgence of your desire to be your own God.

All right, so now I'm going to go back. So that's the list. That's the list that we worked through. I'm going to go back because I want to revisit something he said at the beginning of verse 19. He says, now the works of the flesh are evident.

So Paul wrote this list because these were the things that were common in the Galatian culture. But like I said, he might pick a different set of words to use for us to address our culture. He uses the word evident. And that word evident just means obvious. Like it's plain on its face.

It's clear to see what these things are. Paul says, these are the things that are obviously easy to. To do when you are your own God. Everything oriented around the self and self indulgence and self production. It produces the works of the flesh.

And so just let you know, no one has to teach you how to do these things. Like, you don't have to strive to accomplish these things. No one has to train you in how to do them. They come to you naturally. And that's why Paul says they are evident, they are obvious.

So verse 21, he says, I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Now, wait, isn't the whole point of this letter to say that we are not bound under a law? And so did Paul just give a law and say, well, you can't be saved if you don't follow the ethics that I just give you? And to that I want to say two things. Literally, those who do such things means those who make a practice of doing such things, those who do such things repeatedly without resistance.

I just want to let you know and give you a place of security. If you struggle against the flesh, you struggle because the Holy Spirit is in you, right? So you don't fall into this category of those who do such things because the Holy Spirit is now in you and struggling against your flesh. Right? He is speaking here, Paul is speaking here of people who make A practice of doing such things without resistance or conviction or a desire to change.

These people, he says, these are the ones who are not inheritors of the kingdom. He says they don't inherit eternal life, not because they do the things, but because they don't really have faith in Jesus Christ as their Savior. That's why, he says, those who do such things without resistance, those who make a practice of doing such things, it would seem that, well, if you don't have that resistance and that struggle in you, then you haven't believed in Christ to invite the Holy Spirit into your life, like your salvation. So I just want to let you know your salvation is not in jeopardy if you are struggling against sin. It's those who experience no impulse to change, who show themselves to belong fully to the flesh.

But for those of us who do believe, Paul gives us this kind of beautiful promise. And this is what really, what this whole thing is about. I just want to revisit the main point this morning. The key to overcoming the flesh is surrendering to the Spirit.

So what I have basically one for us this morning, and it is this. Surrendering to the Holy Spirit starts with security and satisfaction in Christ. There's a reason that security and satisfaction were the things that I put at the top of the list, because this is the Holy Spirit is helping us to experience something as a result of our belief. Like, this is what actually changes your heart when you don't just believe in your head that you are secure because your Father loves you, but you experience in your heart that you are secure because your Father loves you.

Right? So I'm just going to throw this out there. I cannot survive in this role that God has called me to without the secret place of prayer where I meet God in His Word. And I let Holy Spirit examine me and I give him kind of space. He needs, like, clean sin out of me.

And I confess my sin and I'm aware of my shortcoming. And I receive grace in my time of need. And I pray. I pray in that place. I spend time in that place in order to convince my soul that nothing else is satisfying to me besides him, that if he is not in my satisfaction, that it is not satisfaction.

And I make myself in that place. I make myself available to his direction by His Word and by His Spirit, to kill whatever appetites in me are resisting him, to give space to whatever brings life in me. I die to my desire to be an impressive leader. I die to my desire for my wife and my kids to be impressed with me. I die to my need to appear or be right or correct in every circumstance.

I'm training my soul that Christ is my security and not my pride and not my impressiveness and not my skill. Because if I do not train myself constantly to find everything I need in Christ, and then I rest in the beauty and the truth of what he's done, that he is enough for my appetites, that he is my defender even if the whole world should turn against me, if I actually believe that, then I can afford to die to the things that I would do to protect myself.

If I actually believe that I can afford to die to the things that I seek after for self indulgence.

And so the call to repentance and surrender is a call to quit seeking after other things, to be enough for you and to simply let Jesus be enough. So, church, would you pray with me please?

Holy Spirit, we just give you space.

Would you come and bring to our attention any place where, God, we're seeking after other things to be enough. God, we're seeking after other things to protect us.

Holy Spirit, would you take what we know about your desires from our head and by your power, would you take it and apply it to our hearts?

God, I've preached words up here, but at the end of the day I know that my words don't do anything.

Would you take and solidify the reality of your leadership into our hearts, cause us to be changed from the inside out.

So Holy Spirit, we trust you as we turn our attention to the table, to communion. God, as we literally eat bread and drink juice to say that you are the food for our life.

God, would you cause.

Our subsistence what we rely on for life? Would you cause it to be fully contained in you?

We ask these things in Jesus name. Amen. Amen.