And still no responses.  Terrible.

I have read through it 3 times I think.  I thought it was interesting that you had us reading it and then Pastor Johnson came behind you and said the same thing. I'm still trying to get the message in it's entirity out of it...

yeah i wanted to read it once a week and johnson challenged us to read it once a day, whoa! i'm trying to get it all down too. i think that's where it helps to have a couple of different versions on-hand, or to even read it outloud. i hear it differently when i read it outloud. 

i like in chapter 4 where it's talking about abraham's two children. he gives the analogy of how we are not children of the slave woman but children of the free woman, meaning we are not in bondage to the law. just trying to grasp the whole thing of not being stuck under the law but being saved by God's grace and having freedom because we walk in the Spirit. it's a lot to chew. glad we've got a couple of weeks left =)

OK.....I guess I didn't comment here before because I didn't want to be the first.  I've read Galatians twice. I have the Message version, which is really different, but interesting.  I like older versions because of how beautiful it sounds, but this version gives me a different perspective.

One of the parts that really stood out to me was the by-faith-not-by-works part.  In my version it says,

"We Jews know that we have no advantage of birth over 'non-Jewish sinners.' We know very well that we are not set right with God by rule-keeping but only through personal faith in Jesus Christ. How do we know? We tried it—and we had the best system of rules the world has ever seen! Convinced that no human being can please God by self-improvement, we believed in Jesus as the Messiah so that we might be set right before God by trusting in the Messiah, not by trying to be good." Galatians 2:15-16. 

It was kind of a revelation when Pr Johnson first talked about it in the last Fusion message.  Then, while reading this book and noticing how much Paul talks about it, it kind of sank in.  God doesn't care what you do...He cares about what Jesus did for us.  We are sinners, our sin does not shock Him.  What He wants us to do is not strive to be better, to make Him proud, to be better people.  Paul says, "If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily. " Gal 2:21.  At the same time, it is having the revelation of the kind of sacrifice Jesus did for us that drives us to live for Him.  Not because we feel that we NEED to do it, but because we WANT to do it.  Because of what He did.  We love Him because He first loved us.  It's not an obligation, it's what we were made for.  It's a response of love.

This is also important because it takes a burden off our backs.  Instead of always trying to be better, and always falling short, we realize that we don't need to.  "And that means that anyone who tries to live by his own effort, independent of God, is doomed to failure." Gal 3:9-10ish.  Also, it is a HUGE part of our relationship with God.  "The obvious impossibility of carrying out such a moral program should make it plain that no one can sustain a relationship with God that way. The person who lives in right relationship with God does it by embracing what God arranges for him. Doing things for God is the opposite of entering into what God does for you."Gal 3:11-12. It's that rest that we talk about.  The trusting in God and His ways that should be so easy, but is soooo hard.

I guess this spoke so much to me because of how I am.  It's so easy to have a plan of stuff to do and then at the end you know you'll get a grade according to how you did.  I need the tasks, the jobs, the works, the PLAN.  I'll follow it and it will all be good.  If not, then I'll look back, evaluate what I did wrong and make the needed changes to the plan.  This believing thing should be easy, but it's not.  I keep catching myself taking the wheel and pushing God aside.  As if I'm a better driver than Him.  Or I catch myself freaking out, and then I feel God giving me a tight hug and saying "HEY! I'M HERE!" 

Sigh....I've got much to learn.