The Bridge Community Church | Leadington

We tend to think faithfulness is the feeling of loyalty we have when things are going well. But the Spirit produces something sturdier than that in us. Faithfulness trusts God's heart even when His hand is doing something we did not ask for. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were not delivered from the fire. They were met in it. That distinction matters for how we live with strong faith!

Titus 3:4-5 puts it plainly: "But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy" (ESV). We received this before we could ever show it. That is the ground everything else stands on.

We tend to think gentleness is softness. It is not. It takes very little strength to be harsh with someone who has blown it. It takes real strength to look at a person in their failure and say, here is another chance. That is what God does with Jonah. He confronts him, yes. He never avoids the truth. But he confronts him without crushing him.

 The joy of Jesus is bigger than your circumstances.

Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:14 that "the love of Christ controls us." That word, controls, is the same idea as compels, constrains, and holds us to a course. The love we show doesn't come from the inside out. It flows from what Christ has already done for us while we were the ones in the ditch.

The Spirit works where Christ is trusted. Not where you perform well enough, but where you actually trust Him with the ordinary moments of this week.

Paul does not ease into it. The very first line of Galatians 5:1 is a declaration: "For freedom Christ has set us free." Not a suggestion. Not a hope. A statement of what has already happened. Christ set you free. Past tense. Done.

Paul loves the church in Corinth with a love that costs him something. He has visited them twice. He is preparing a third trip. He has written letters that were hard to write. And in 2 Corinthians 12:15, he names what is underneath all of it. He says, "I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls."

When you are weak, you are not finished. You are just in the right position for His strength to show.

In 2 Corinthians 11:16-21, Paul is confronting a church that has developed what I call spiritual Stockholm Syndrome. The Corinthians were bonded to false apostles who were exploiting them, enslaving them, even striking them in the face. And instead of rejecting these men, the Corinthians were defending them. Why? Because those apostles were preaching what the Corinthians already wanted: self-glory dressed up as spirituality. Worldly success with a religious veneer. A God who blesses the impressive and the credentialed.