The 7 ResolutionsSýnishorn

Join God

If Satan can’t keep us from going to heaven when we die, he certainly wants to keep us from living in God’s power until we die.

This spiritual battle for trying to live the Christian life in our strength is best seen in Galatians 3:1–3:

“O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?”

Paul is asking the Galatian Christians if God’s power was enough to save them but not enough to sanctify (grow) them. He is appealing to them to live life in the same power that saved their life—the Spirit of God!

You face the same spiritual battle, and it’s probably daily—the struggle to allow the God who saved you to continue to change you. We are only saved by the Spirit’s power, and yet we try to get sanctified in our power. It’s downright foolish! Growing up and attempting to produce spiritual fruit in our strength will never succeed, and it’s exhausting.

This tendency to take God’s role in our lives and try to assist in some way is very natural. In a broken world, we’ve been trained to believe that if anything is going to get fixed or a situation changed, we have to do it. But instead, God invites us to partner with Him, to learn that we are friends of Jesus and that the real power for living comes from joining God.

In resolving to join God, you’re saying yes to living in a new manner that liberates you from striving and trying harder to live the life of a disciple of Christ. “For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13). Let this little verse come fully alive in your mind, and it will be one of the greatest epiphanies you’ve ever experienced—it was for me. God wants to reorder your life in a way that trusts, rests, and relies on His strength.

PUT IT INTO PRACTICE

• Pray and ask God to reveal any striving activities you’ve grown accustomed to.
• Confess all past striving in your strength to God and agree how painful it’s been.
• Thank God that His grace holds the power to do in you what you could never do in yourself.