The 260 Journey

Day 167

Today’s Reading: Galatians 5

Karl Wallenda, the great tightrope walker, fell to his death in 1978 from a seventy-five-foot high wire in downtown San Juan, Puerto Rico. Here’s what his wife, Helen, said about the fall:

All Karl thought about for three straight months prior to it was falling. It was the first time he’d ever thought about that, and it seemed to me that he put all his energies into not falling rather than walking the tightrope.

He was virtually destined to fall.

As Christians we are commanded to walk in the Spirit. We are not commanded not to fall. Those who pursue not falling end up like Wallenda. Those who think about falling and failure never really walk. Galatians 5 teaches us how to walk and not fall. Today, with God’s help, we will walk with God.

The apostle Paul gives us these fighting words: “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh Galatians” (5:16). The opening word of this verse, But, is a response word. It’s a response to having healthy relationships and not hurting people.

Here is the verse before it: “But if you continue to criticize and come against each other over minor issues, you’re acting like wild beasts trying to destroy one another!” (verse 15, TPT). Paul is saying, Do you want to not fall into criticism and hurting one another?

He didn’t say “bind the devil” or be free from a critical spirit or even “just stop it.” He said that we can win if we walk.

Just like Wallenda. Walk!

Walk in the Spirit.

A father and son arrived in a small western town looking for an uncle whom they had never seen. Suddenly, the father, pointing across the square to a man who was walking away from them, exclaimed, “There goes my uncle!”

“How do you know when you have not seen him before?” his son asked.

“Son, I know him because he walks exactly like my father.”

If we walk in the Spirit, the world should know us by our walk. The apostle Paul said walking is a weapon. It’s how we fight. When we walk by the Spirit, we will not carry out the desires of the flesh.

What is the flesh? That is our old sinful nature that is always popping up. In fact, we find a whole list of those fleshly desires in verses 19-21:

Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. (Galatians 5:19-21)

To try to fight each one of them would take a lifetime, and even at that, winning seems impossible. So Paul says, “Here’s how you fight. If you walk by the Spirit, you will not fulfill those fleshly desires.”

This is important: he did not say they won’t come and attack you. People think that once you become a Christian, you won’t have evil thoughts any more. Paul says, that’s not true, you will get the desire, but you don’t have to fulfill the crazy thought. Because walking in the Spirit is now your focus.

It’s not a run or a jog but a walk. Even a child can walk. But for the Christian, that walk is valuable. Why?

A Christian can commit any sin a non-Christian can commit but he can’t commit it without a fight. Because when we walk in the Spirit, God is helping us to keep moving forward. We need the Holy Spirit to walk.

Every time you choose to go to church, you are walking in the Spirit.

Every time you choose your family over yourself, you are walking in the Spirit.

Every time you choose to spend time in the Bible, you are walking in the Spirit.

Every time you choose to be kind, to be generous, you are walking in the Spirit.

Walking is your weapon. Walking is how you win. Just keep moving forward.

The best story about winning with walking is the children of Israel. When they left Egypt after four hundred years of slavery, they came to the Red Sea. The Egyptians decided they wanted them back. They wanted the old relationship with them, just as our desires of the flesh want us back. So they hunted them down. The children of Israel had the Egyptians behind them and the Red Sea in front of them. What did God tell them to do? He did not tell them to fight the Egyptians, to fight the past, to fight the old enemy.

God told them to walk . . . walk in unchartered territory. He wanted them to walk through the Red Sea. God split the sea in half and the children of Israel walked through on dry ground. When they got to the other side, the Egyptians tried to follow them, and God closed the water on top of them. They beat the Egyptians by just walking forward.

Your past will try to come after you, but you can outwalk it every time when you walk in the Spirit.

The story is told about a little boy who was flying a kite. It was a windy day, and the kite kept going higher and higher. Finally it got so high that it was out of sight. A man passed by and saw the little boy holding onto the string. The man could not see the kite, and he asked the boy, “How do you even know you have a kite up there?” The boy replied, “Because I can feel it.” Although we cannot see the Holy Spirit, we should be able to sense His work in our lives changing us and helping us to walk each day.

Day 166

Today’s Reading: Galatians 4

In his autobiography, Buck O’Neil tells what it was like being a black man who played professional baseball before African-Americans were allowed to play in the all-white major leagues. By the time the color barrier was broken in 1947, O’Neil was considered too old to play in the big leagues, as were most of his teammates. Many of his friends grew bitter about their missed opportunities. O’Neil writes:

At a reunion of Negro league players in Ashland, Kentucky, a reporter from Sports Illustrated asked me if I had any regrets, coming along as I did before Jackie Robinson integrated the major leagues. And this is what I told him . . . “Waste no tears for me. I didn’t come along too early—I was right on time.”

That was the title of his autobiography, I Was Right on Time.

And that’s what today’s chapter is about, perfect timing. God’s timing couldn’t have been any better than when Jesus came to earth. The apostle Paul confirms that:

When the right time came, the time God decided on, He sent his Son, born of a woman, born as a Jew, to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law so that He could adopt us as His very own sons. (Galatians 4:4-5, TLB)

Here is where it gets really amazing. Why couldn’t God have timed it any better? Let’s answer the why by looking at history.

When we look at history, the coming of Jesus was perfect for two reasons. Centuries earlier, Alexander the Great had conquered most of the known world, which didn’t just bring Greek culture to the world, it also unified the planet with one language, Greek. That’s why the New Testament is written in Greek.

After the demise of the Greeks, the Roman Empire picked up where Alexander left off and the Romans started expanding but doing something that would make the Good News of Jesus expand also. The Romans opened the way for expansion over three continents through roads and safe sea travel. They brought order to intercountry travel. One language and a world that was able to be traveled in. That’s a good time for Jesus to come.

But it gets crazier. This is why God is right on time.

I was recently reading apologist Dinesh D’Souza’s book What’s So Great About God. In it he quotes statistician Erik Kreps. Think of Erik’s numbers and think of our Galatians verse for today: “When the right time came . . . He sent His Son.”

Now buckle your seat belts.

The Population Reference Bureau estimates that the number of people who have ever been born in human history is approximately 105 billion. Of this number, about 2 percent were born . . . before the birth of Christ. “So, in a sense,” Erik Kreps notes, “God’s timing couldn’t have been more perfect. If he’d come earlier in human history, how reliable would the records of his relationship with man be? But he showed up just before the exponential explosion in the world’s population . . . only 2 percent of humanity had previously been born, so 98 percent of us have walked the earth since the redemption.

God is so smart. His timing is impeccable. That is one, big, great reason that God knew the right time to send His Son. When most of the world would be born after Jesus died. Someone said, “Stress makes you believe that everything has to happen right now. Faith reassures you that everything will happen in God’s timing.”

God’s whole plan was the adoption of humanity. We see this in Galatians 4:5: “God sent Him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that He could adopt us as His very own children” (NLT).

There is something special about being adopted as opposed to being born. Olympic skater Scott Hamilton was adopted as a child and often teased for it. “You aren’t the real son of your parents,” they’d said and laugh. Hamilton took their mocking as long as he could, until finally he told them, “My parents chose me, but your parents were stuck with you!”

He came at the right time to adopt everyone He could.

Day 165

Today’s Reading: Galatians 3

The letter to the Galatians is a call back to reintroducing the simplicity of the gospel message. It’s so simple that the formula has not been changed for five thousand years. And Galatians 3 tells us something epic and answers a question I have been asked many times: how did the Old Testament people become believers or Christians?

How did those in Genesis through Malachi have a relationship with God?

This may surprise you, but there’s no better New Testament letter to answer this than the book of Galatians. Paul says this:

Even so Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham. The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “All the nations will be blessed in you.” So then those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham, the believer. (Galatians 3:6-9)

These words are incredible. Paul associates so many New Testament salvation words with Abraham: Abraham believed; reckoned to him as righteous; God preached the gospel to Abraham; and finally called the believer.

Wow! This sounds like a Christian from the book of Acts not someone from 2000 BC, from the book of Genesis. Abraham the believer is a great name for the Old Testament patriarch.

How did an Old Testament person become a Christian? Simple. The same way we do. They were called upon to believe God—just as the book of Romans tells us that belief in God makes us righteous, or reckoned.

I love that word. Reckoned is a word Paul uses for the result of belief. The word means to impute. To make it even simpler, it is to put into an account. It’s like watching a spy movie and the characters are electronically sending huge sums of money to a Cayman Island account. This is what happens to those who believe in God: God sends righteousness to your account. Righteousness is not from stringing together a bunch of obedient successes and good days in being a Christian. Righteousness is imputed, reckoned, sent to our account, like to a Cayman Island offshore account. It’s something huge . . . righteousness.

All because we do one thing: believe in God.

That’s the gospel of the New Testament and that was the gospel of the Old Testament, which Abraham had preached to him.

Jonathan Whitefield was preaching to coal miners in England, and he asked a man, “What do you believe?”

“Well, I believe the same as the church,” the man said.

“And what does the church believe?”

“Well, they believe the same as me.”

Seeing he was getting nowhere, Whitefield said, “And what is it that you both believe?”

“Well, I suppose the same thing.”

That’s elusive belief. The question we should ask is, what did Abraham believe? I think Hebrews 11:6 tells us: “Without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.” The writer of Hebrews says that we must believe that He is. That means Abraham believed all that God disclosed about Himself. That God is exactly who He said He is.

Why is that important?

First, it’s not making up things about God’s character but believing what He reveals. And for Abraham, it started with “God is one, not many,” like the polytheistic cultures he was surrounded by. Abraham did what Martin Luther King Jr. expressed: “Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”

Apologist Ravi Zacharias said: “We have a right to believe whatever we want, but not everything we believe is right.” As time progressed all the way to the book of Galatians, it still holds true that we must believe that He is. God has shown us a lot more. He has shown more of Himself through His Son Jesus. Belief is based on God disclosing Himself, revealing Himself, and the pinnacle of God’s self-revelation is in the person of Jesus.

Everything starts to make sense when you believe God. C. S. Lewis said it best: “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it, I see everything else.”

So how did Old Testament saints become Christians? The same way we do. Abraham believed God is. We do the same. We must believe God is. The only difference is that to believe that He is became so much clearer in God’s Son Jesus.

Day 164

Today’s Reading: Galatians 2

Barnabas was not even his real name; it was a nickname given to him by the people in the early church. His real name was Joseph. In Acts 4 we read that Joseph was so positive in his conversations that people nicknamed him Barnabas, because everything he said made them feel great.

His journey starts in Acts 4, and the last verse we get about him is in Galatians 2, today’s chapter. This is Barnabas’s journey on how a really good man ended up pretty bad. Strap in for a jolting journey.

I remember reading something interesting about the first Olympics in Greece. The ancient Greeks, the originator of the Olympic games, had a twist to some of their running events. The runners were all given torches before the race, which they had to pass on in a relay. The runner who won the race was not the man who crossed the line in the shortest time but the man who crossed it in the least time with his torch still burning.

That sounds about right for every Christian. We want to make sure we are not just doing “stuff” but doing things with a heart on fire for God.

Let’s check out Barnabas’s torch. His journey is all through Acts. He was the encourager in Acts 4. By Acts 9, we can see why he is called “encourager,” because his gift was exactly what the apostle needed at his conversion. Paul, who had been bringing havoc to the early Christians through imprisonment and death, had a vision of Jesus on the road to Damascus and became a Christian. There is a big problem, though: no one trusts Paul. They think it’s a ploy to kill more Christians. Enter Barnabas:

Listen to these verses in Acts 9:

Upon arrival in Jerusalem he tried to meet with the believers, but they were all afraid of him. They thought he was faking! Then Barnabas brought him to the apostles and told them how Paul had seen the Lord on the way to Damascus, what the Lord had said to him, and all about his powerful preaching in the name of Jesus. Then they accepted him. (Acts 9:26-28, TLB)

If it weren’t for Barnabas, Paul could have chucked it all and said forget this Christian thing if this is the way His people act. Truth be told, if there were no Barnabas, there may not have been a Paul. Barnabas played a key role in the church and in Paul’s growth and ministry.

Barnabas and Paul even go on the very first missionary journey together to share the gospel. Then in Acts 15, the torch seemed to have a gust of wind come against it. A very big disagreement happened between disciple and discipler, Paul and Barnabas, right before the second missionary journey. It was over whether they should take a young man named John Mark. These words in Acts 15 are important to note before we head to Galatians 2:

There occurred such a sharp disagreement that they separated from one another, and Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus. But Paul chose Silas and left. (verses 39-40)

And then that’s it. No more mention of Barnabas until Galatians 2. It’s been six years after this disagreement. Now we read the last verse in the Bible about Barnabas, and we find out where the torch is:

When Peter came to Antioch, I had to oppose him to his face, for what he did was very wrong. When he first arrived, he ate with the Gentile believers, who were not circumcised. But afterward, when some friends of James came, Peter wouldn’t eat with the Gentiles anymore. He was afraid of criticism from these people who insisted on the necessity of circumcision. As a result, other Jewish believers followed Peter’s hypocrisy, and even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. (Galatians 2:11-13, nlt)

Barnabas, the encourager. Barnabas, the visionary. Now Barnabas, the hypocrite.

Paul’s ministry partner, Paul’s first mentor, Paul’s co-pastor and co-missionary became a hypocrite.

That word hypocrite is such an ugly word. It’s a Greek word that means actor on a stage. You start acting instead of being who you really are.

How does that happen? And how did it happen to Barnabas? The first verse about Barnabas, the encourager, was in Acts 4, around AD 30. The last verse about Barnabas, the hypocrite, was in Galatians 2, around AD 54. That’s twenty-four years later. Barnabas was finishing his race as a hypocrite with the torch going out.

Barnabas, no longer on the mission field, was back and had found a group of people bitter just like him. He was with people who fueled his fleshly flame and not the spiritual flame. If you are with people who let you talk about your offense that you have with others and they don’t challenge you to fix it, then you are with the wrong group.

Barnabas went to be with a group of people just as dysfunctional as he was.

So here’s the question: how does a really good man end really bad?

And the question for us: can this happen to me?

I don’t think I am out of bounds to think Barnabas’s choice stemmed ultimately from the disagreement he had with Paul in Acts 15. Something got in Barnabas’s heart when it happened and he didn’t fix it by resolving it. What’s dangerous about these kinds of issues is that what doesn’t seem to be a problem at first, over time can become toxic.

Which tells me something important: time doesn’t fix all wounds. A wound unfixed over time corrodes the heart. It is an awful doctor; it mistreats and deceives its patients. It isn’t time but forgiveness that heals the wounds.

I think God may be showing us through Paul and Barnabas’s relationship not to take disagreements lightly. Unresolved conflict has a way of blowing out our fire. As Rick Warren said, “It’s always more rewarding to resolve a conflict than to dissolve the relationship.” We can’t finish well with unforgiveness.

Barnabas’ journey should have ended in Acts on three missionary journeys with Paul and spreading the gospel. Instead a good man ended his journey by telling his people his side of the disagreement. Barnabas was supposed to finish with the torch burning, declaring the Good News.

One of my mentors and friends, Winkie Pratney, was insightful when he said, “There are a lot of happy young sinners, but you don’t see happy old sinners. Sin does not age well.”

Boy, that’s the truth. Sin does not age well.

Acts 15 to Galatians 2 was six years. This disagreement sat in Barnabas’s heart for six years. The sin didn’t age well.

Day 163

Today’s Reading: Galatians 1

A biography always ends with a person, their story, and what they did. A testimony is different. A testimony ends with what God did. God is the star of a testimony. A person is the star of a biography.

The old saints used to say, “No test? Then no testimony.” The test is what gives us the testimony and the story. I grew up always hearing the word testimony. We don’t hear that anymore. It’s a forgotten form of storytelling that needs to be reintroduced. We used to call it “testimony services” in my church when I was growing up. It was in those services we got to hear people’s stories.

The basic plot line to a testimony is this: “It’s bad, really bad. I was at the end of my rope. Jesus stepped in. And this is what He did. He rescued me.”

I grew up in a storytelling family. We would have incredible Christian heroes sit around our table at home and share their stories with us. And if I wasn’t there, I would hear the stories from my parents. I heard how Pennsylvania country preacher David Wilkerson started Teen Challenge in New York City. How converted gang member Nicky Cruz went from killing people to preaching to them. How Sonny Arguinzoni, a notorious New York drug addict, got saved and started a movement of churches worldwide called Victory Outreach. How my dad witnessed miracles when he was evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman’s bodyguard when she was in town and he was off duty with the NYPD. My parents told me about the healings they saw through the ministry of Smith Wigglesworth when he would come to their church, Glad Tidings, in lower Manhattan. I got to hear stories from Paul Yonggi Cho, pastor of the million-member church in Seoul, South Korea, as he sat at our dinner table.

All these stories would inform and inflame. That’s what a testimony does. It sets us on fire and helps us realize how amazing God is.

We’re missing these stories today, especially for our youth. Eugene Peterson calls it “historical amnesia” and has this to say about it:

"Another characteristic of the adolescent that has spread into the larger population is the absence of historical sense. The adolescent, of course, has no history. He or she has a childhood, but no accumulation of experience that transcends personal details and produces a sense of history. His world is highly personal and extremely empirical.

As a consequence, the teenager is incredibly gullible. . . They may know the facts of history and read historical novels by the dozen, but they don’t feel history in their bones. It is not their history. The result is that they begin every problem from scratch. There is no feeling of being part of a living tradition that already has some answers worked out and some procedures worth repeating."

I’m so happy my parents connected me to the stories of God’s people. It helped me see a much bigger picture than my own small world.

In today’s chapter, Paul tells his testimony. And he also shares how people realized that what happened to him couldn’t have happened unless God stepped in. That this was nothing short of a miracle:

The only thing they heard about me was this: “Our former enemy, who once brutally persecuted us, is now preaching the good news of the faith that he was once obsessed with destroying!” Because of the transformation that took place in my life, they praised God even more! (Galatians 1:23-24, TPT)

Shannon L. Alder once said, “God can deliver you so well that some people won’t believe your testimony.”

Someone said it like this:

God formed man.

Sin deformed him.

Education informs him.

Religion may reform him.

But only Jesus Christ can transform him.

Paul made it to the final “only Jesus Christ can transform him” part. Most people tell their story and stop at the education part. Transformation happens with Jesus not from a university degree.

This is Paul’s testimony: “Our former enemy, who once brutally persecuted us, is now preaching the good news of the faith that he was once obsessed with destroying!” Or to put it another way, Paul was saying, “The people I was persecuting are now on my team. The religion I made fun of has changed my life.”

What a story Paul had. And when he told his story, people were drawn to God not to Paul. That is the mark of a powerful testimony. We hear crazy stuff and realize only God could have gotten them out.

There is something powerful when people tell their stories. In fact, the Bible says that these stories have devil-defeating ability. Listen to Revelation 12:11: “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony” (KJV). The “him” they overcame is Satan. The apostle John is saying something profoundly powerful—that your testimony is right up there with the blood of Jesus in defeating the devil. That will make you think twice about what God has done in you and for you.

Tell your story. The Kingdom wins, people glorify God, and the devil is defeated.