Galatians 5:1 Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

	In our prior considerations, we dealt with several elements of our spiritual walk before God which serve to develop this truth of standing fast in the Liberty of the Lord. They were the truths of a constant prayer life before our Lord and the working of patience in our beings. As we saw, prayer is a matter of continually uplifting others unto the throne of our God of Mercy and Grace, and laying down our wants and our desires for His will to become our very life in prayer.
	The matter of patience, is as well, directed from God and becomes evident only as we are put to the test of our utter reliance upon God. Our Lord's witness is being attacked be every stratum of this earthly society. There are governments at work today trying to eliminate the testimony of Christ through a renewed persecution of believers. In the light of all this world chaos; the physiological, psychological, and neurological developments taking place in our time, the Church's need is to learn an utter reliance upon God for its very survival. That can only be enlarged through the worked patience of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of His people, in prayer, as we earnestly seek after Him alone to be our salvation. We need to learn to wait for His deliverance.
	Now, let us reflect on a third element which works to the fulfillment of God's heart in a living relationship with Christ in His believers, that of faithfulness. There is a distinct difference between steadfastness in the Lord and faithfulness to the Lord. The fact is that we cannot be steadfast, standing fast in Christ, without first, a faithfulness unto Christ being established in us. 
	The same is accurate with all these truths, they are interconnected and vitally part of each other to such an extent that they can not be separated from the others. Prayer leads to steadfastness, as steadfastness requires continual prayer. Patience is worked in us as we stand fast, but to stand fast requires all the patience of God to wait for Him to prove Himself over and over again. Faithfulness is required of the believer before one can stand fast and give evidence to that faithfulness. At the same time, standing fast develops an even larger commitment to our faithfulness unto God because of the enlargement of our understanding of how God is working to accomplish His glory.
	As such, what is true of faithfulness on our part that serves to work our steadfastness unto God? Initially involved in our faithfulness is the dealing of the Holy Spirit to establish our faith unto God. It is the faith of the believer's trust in God that is entrenched in an active hearing of the Word of God. It is a hearing that is made part of us as we open the Scripture and seek after the Holy Spirit to speak all truth to our hearts. It is a hearing that listens to the anointed Word as it is being brought forth in messages and Bible Studies. It is a hearing that is honed as we gather together, not forsaking the fellowship of believers, but rather joining our hearts together as one to listen to the Word, and to sing the Word in songs of praise, and to let the life of God's own Words be our bread of life.
	Please permit a gentle aside at this point, but the worship of our hearts can be discussed in terms of a family gathering together to share in the sustenance of life at the dinner table. Whether the meal be frugal, simple, and without garnished and polished plates, or whether it be an ornate feast with all the trimmings, the satisfaction is the same. Many a poor man or woman find as much satisfaction in the bread and honey, as the rich in all the fancy sauces and caviar. The distinct difference, in what we find to be satisfying, as the church, is the heart with which we gather together. If we are joined to celebrate the Lord, and seek but to receive of Him, no matter what the course He sets before us, we will find complete satisfaction. Sometimes, it may be but a pot of lentil porridge, simply meeting the needs of the day in providing sustenance to make it through another one. At other times, it is an endless array of delicacies which delight every fiber and aspect of our being.
	We do have those times, when it seems like bread and water alone, because of our heart's condition of self-seeking which refuses to eat at the table of the Lord and seeks, rather, after the table-scraps of this earth. Then, because we are refusing to eat, we find our meager meals of spiritual food as just sufficient to maintain our salvation, but not much more. It isn't that God does not lay all the stores of His riches before us, that is fully set on His banquet table in the Word of God. But, sometimes, we refuse to go to Him because we do not want to! We prefer the crumbs that fall to the ground at the table of this present age because we feel that there must be more, or more precisely, because we do not want to be dependent on God for our every meal. 
	Whenever we are in our disobedience, when we are not fully in line with the Holy Spirit, we have a tendency to pick and to choose when it comes to the Word of God. We like this verse or we like that portion of scripture, yet reject the rest because it is too hard. There are too many things that prick at our conscience, so we choose not to read the Bible at all. We will go to church, but only as long as the minister refrains from addressing the issues that we covet. When that takes place, and it always will when we are wallowing in self, we will find another church, less abrasive, or just not go at all. 
	There are so many reasons that we permit to excuse our lack of feeding on the Word of God in our faithlessness unto God. We put value in things that are of no spiritual significance, yet they hold the highest priorities of our beings. To stand fast in the Lord is to hold Christ and His Glory as preeminent in our lives. Nothing is permitted to rend us from our commitment to Him and to the Word of God which proclaims Christ Triumphant. This is faithfulness. It is a constant feeding upon the Word of God to know Christ and Him more abundantly. It will require sacrifices on our part, adjustments that this world will attack in all its efforts to unseat the Word of God in our beings. It will demand constant vigil that everything in our essence is in line with the Word of God. That can only be accomplished as we give ourselves to the Holy Sprit in prayer and study and fellowship in the Word of God.
	This is what is meant by active listening. It is not just sitting together and being in attendance during church services. It is placing a value upon God that each one of us needs to have worked livingly into our hearts. Our earnest desire needs to be brought into line with what is truly part of this active listening to the Word of God. This is where each one of us needs the support of our fellow brethren in Christ to make our hearts open to what it means to listen to God's Word, and I covet your prayers in this line, because I know what is and is not true of my heart before God this very evening. 
	Active listening is a lingering desire after the Holy Spirit to prepare our hearts, before the delivered message. It is a time spent in scripture beforehand, in earnest relish after the Lord to make Himself more fully known into us, unto us, and through us. Then, during the message, it is an active searching of our hearts before the Lord to allow Him the freedom and the opportunity to expose and to cleanse and to validate the scriptural basis of any sharing. Afterward, it is the discerning power of the Holy Spirit which is beseeched to bring our lives into conformity with the Word of God, to make the truth of Christ to become life in us. And, my brothers and sisters, that will require a death of the thing that we hold dearest, our self-life and our self-will. We will experience events and trials which are a direct response of God to our prayers, if they be truthful, to have more and more of Christ's life worked into us.
	As is evident, there is nothing passive in hearing the Word of God. It is never sufficient to just attend church services and feel that we are hearing the Word of God. That is where many of us feel that we have such a spiritual basis in our lives. We would never miss a message or a Bible Study. We attend every gathering of the Church, and yet we do so without hearing the Word of God. We attend in our physical bodies, but our spiritual beings are entangled in concerns of every type, maybe even in a famished coma for lack of sufficient sustenance because we stubbornly refuse to partake of the Bread of Life.
	Yes, hearing the Word of God develops faithfulness, because our entire being must be focused on God in order to rightly hear. Our essence must be in subjection to Him in order for the Word to take root, and our entire trust must be in God as He extinguishes our self-life and enlarges the life of Christ in us.
	The next constituent of faithfulness is found in the just requirement of obedience. In Deut. 26:16, we have another charge of the Lord to His people This day the Lord thy God hath commanded thee to do these statutes and judgments: thou shalt therefore keep and do them with all thine heart, and with all thy soul. Consider the words before us this evening. There is no possible way to keep and to do the will of God apart from Him. Christ service was to make a way for us to completely bless God by fulfilling all the points of the Law for us. His work was to such completion that we are now in full right-standing before God in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. But this does not discount the fact that we are to keep the Word of God in complete obedience in our heart and soul. The difference is that the Word is no longer a requirement that points to our lack of spiritual abilities apart from Christ, but rather our desire as Christ works His life in us. Rather than being a burden, the Word of God is our very delight and purpose of being.
	As such, our vantage point needs to be revised from the earthly perspective of seeing the Scriptures as a book of restricting rules that hinder our actions, to the heavenly truth of pointing to the person of Jesus Christ in whom we are victoriously freed from sin and shame and now seated on high in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
	As that truth is made part of our essence, so will we desire to obey the Word, and be distraught when we do not live our lives in accordance with every precept of the Word of God. It will not be a matter of guilt or shame that will cause us to desire to seek after the Will of the Father, not when our lives are seeking after faithfulness unto God. It will be a matter of having displeased the Father, which will cause our spiritual nature to seek after His forgiveness and His strength to do that which is His desire in this life that we have given Him. 
	The reason that it will no longer be a matter of guilt and shame is that these call attention to our selves, rather than to Christ. As a believer, we need to see and to live in Christ's ability. The reason to obey is not to avoid punishment and guilt, but to please God which is our true spiritual desire in Christ. We obey, not because we have to, but because we want to!
	Unless that truth be worked into our hearts, there is no manner of steadfastness before God. How will we be able to defend the lentil patch of our spiritual inheritance against the onslaughts of this world's powers, lest there be obedience to stand as the Lord directs - to never give up one inch of that which the Lord has for us in His Word? 
	Obedience to God means that we are faithfully willing to give ourselves to His guidance and to His direction and to His manner of dealing with us in every respect. It is a constant denial of our ways in direct preference to His ways in the lives of ourselves and in the lives of those whom we love so dearly. As husbands, as wives, as parents, as children, we need to give ourselves utterly to the Lord to be made willing to have the Holy Spirit establish Christ as the foundation of our families. In that truth, we will be willing to trust God to deal effectively in our loved ones, which is sometimes the hardest thing for us to trust Him to do. We see the paths that they are traveling, and we want to do everything in our power to alleviate their ills. The issue, however, is do we trust God to do all things in His way not to alleviate, but to change their heart, and our heart, which are the root of the problem? Are we willing to obey Him to the very loss of our most beloved possessions, as did Job of old, in order to prove the worthiness of God to be faithful, to obey Him in everything? 
	James correlates our Galatian text in his Epistle, Chapter 1, verse 25, But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed. There is a blessing that is ours in steadfastly holding onto the Lord Jesus Christ, no matter what the odds against us, no matter what the cost in terms of this earthly realm. There is a relationship which is beyond the comprehension of our finite minds in the vitality of the Holy Spirit to work life beyond measure within our beings. 
	The world casts its aspersions upon those who settle for nothing less than the Lord. It demeans and derides those who will not settle for less than Christ in every situation. And, it does so because of the immense joy and satisfaction that can be found only in Christ. Because the world can not have this relationship in its utter refusal to acknowledge Christ, so will this present age attack everything that holds forth Christ in an effort to despoil the joy that is part of Christ's kingdom. 
	This is the worldly order of things, to so confuse and to ensnare anyone who will give ear to anything apart from Christ. This is where the true blessing of the Holy Spirit, God's gift of understanding and faithfulness presents Himselfand proves Himself. As we rely upon Him to be our prayer life, to be our patience and to be our faithfulness, so will He bring us to the point of steadfastness in the Liberty of Christ. None of this can be done through any human effort whatsoever! It is all a direct working of the Holy Spirit within us to make our desires the very heart of God. John 14:23 encapsulates this very truth, Jesus answered and said unto him, If any man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. 
	Abiding in Christ, that is the true relationship which is open to those who stand fast in Him. It is the relationship that is mutual, because as we abide in Him, so He abides in us and He is our very Liberty, our very Life to the complete glory of the Father on this earth, and forever.
	This is the calling of Christ unto His own, that there be a living relationship of the believer abiding in Christ, as Christ abides in the believers, His Body, His Church. As this is evident, so will the Father and the Holy Spirit find their glory and their rest in the Church. 
	As we conclude this evening, let us leave with the prayer in our hearts that the Holy Spirit will have the complete freedom to do all that is necessary to teach us to stand fast in Christ that God's glory will be accomplished, in our lives, in the lives of our loved ones, and in the rest of the members of His church. That God's heart will find full satisfaction, not just in the great by-and-by, not in some future day, not tomorrow, but today, this evening, this moment as we, His Church give ourselves to stand fast the Liberty of Christ!
 	Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.