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. There were the truth of a constant prayer life before our Lord and the working of patience in our beings.
	Again, we are not concerned with the appearance of prayer which is so prevalent in the church of this day, but the true spiritual prayer that finds its essence in the Holy Spirit and flows forth unto the glory of God. Even our very words of prayer are to be fully directed and lead by the Holy Spirit in manners that serve to but search our hearts before the throne in order for God to accomplish that which He desires to His glory in us, about us and through us unto others. It is a matter of continually uplifting others unto the throne of our God of Mercy and Grace, and lying down our wants and desires for His 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. Whenever we seek to get out of the dealings of God because they are too painful to bear, our beings are witnesses to the fact that God needs to establish more and more of His working of patience in our hearts. We are to be so satisfied and resting in the Lord that we do not desire relief from our afflictions, but rather desire that God be completely glorified in them to His ends on this earth. 
	It is the matter that faced the Apostle Paul with his physical difficulty. He prayed for the Lord to take it from him, but never allowed it to distract from the work of God unto which he was called. As a matter of fact, he refers to all the torments of this realm as but light afflictions when seen in the context of the glory of God to be revealed in us, the Body of Christ. This is the entire point of the discussion of patience being manifested in us as the Church, in the midst of our tribulation on this earth. We cannot bear the things that are ordained for those who are truly desirous after a living relationship with God. Ask God about those saints who have preceded us in the early years of the church. Hebrews Chapter 11 is filled with the general accounts of the treatment of this world toward those who precisely long for God's majesty to be seen on this defiled orb. The early church was persecuted to the very deaths of believers for the sport of the citizens of Rome, because they refused to disavow their hope and faith in God. Since that date, to this present time, Christians are consistently placed into the arena of the choice of God or of this world. In China, at this very moment, a government is working to eliminate the scourge of Christ through a renewed persecution of believers. In these times of physical deprivation, the Church needs to learn an utter reliance upon God for its very survival. That comes through the worked patience of the Holy Spirit in the heart of His people as they earnestly seek after Him alone to be their salvation. They learn to wait for His deliverance.
	In this country, the need for patience is evident in an even more deadly manner. We need to wait on the Lord for the strength to endure the psychological onslaughts of this present age. A recent article in a prestigious Christian magazine was filled with the supposedly Christian advice to assimilate psychological methods and mediums to more effectively deal with spiritual problems. This utterly devastating practice has become popular within the churches of today because there is no desire after the patience of the Lord. Today, in our instant society, when everyone wants everything and they want it now, people, Christian people have given themselves over to the lust after self-satisfaction that is available with no waiting. Why spend days and months and years on our knees before God in prayer, when we can have instant results by assimilating and accommodating our beliefs to be in line with the counsel of this earth. Sure, it will not satisfy my spiritual craving, but at least I am doing something now to deal with this problem that is causing me aggravation. So what if my difficulty is spiritual in nature, my psychoanalyst has prescribed this medication which will take away my feelings of guilt, at least for a while.
	Such is the continuing state of Christianity in this present age. Rather than a seeking after God, a standing fast in the Lord, there is too little desire after God to work the patience that is prerequisite and part of our developing a living relationship with Him.
	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. When we ended last week, it was with the statement that there is a distinct difference between steadfastness in the Lord and faithfulness to the Lord. The fact is that one cannot be steadfast without first, a faithfulness unto Christ being established in us. 
	The same is true with all these truths, they are interconnected and vitally part of each other to such an extent that they can not be separated from each other. 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, but standing fast develops an even larger commitment to our faithfulness unto God because of the enlargement of our understanding of what God is working to accomplish to 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 working of the Holy Spirit to establish our faith unto God, the faith of the believer's trust in God that is that is entrenched in an active hearing of the Word of God. It is a hearing that is joined unto by us as we open the Bible and seek after the Holy Spirit to speak all truth to our hearts. It is a hearing that listens to the anointed ones of God who share of the message of Christ to the flock as God gives forth explanations and messages of Christ's essence of Truth and Life. 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 found 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 in 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 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. 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 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 our tables 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 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. Other things that are of no spiritual significance, yet which we place in 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, and that only can 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 as someone shares scriptures and testimonies about Christ. It 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 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.
	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 feel that we have such a spiritual basis to 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 behest 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 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. He is 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 they are no longer requirements that point 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. There are a great many Christians who spend so much wasted energy and time lamenting their inability, rather than seeing and living 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 inheritance against the onslaughts of the world's powers, lest there be obedience to stand as the Lord directs and 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 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 to the utmost. That is why we are willing to trust God to deal effectively in their beings, 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, yet do we trust God to do all things in His ways not to alleviate, but to change the heart which is 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 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 Sprit to work life beyond measure within our beings. 
	The world casts 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 only be found 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 own. It will spread vile and deceit in order to prevent the truth of Christ from invaded and removing the earth touch from the lives of its captives. It will bring forth all manner of solutions to the problems of this realm's own creation, not to relieve, but to further bind and enslave its hostages. 
	This is the worldly order of things, to so confuse and 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 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 all is as 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 is our very Liberty, our very Life to the complete glory of the Father on this earth, and forever.
 	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.