<p><span class="fs-17 fg-mustard bold">For Reading and Meditation:</span><br><span class="italic">     <span class="scriptRef" ref="ro+7:14-8:4">Romans 7:14-8:4</span></span></p><p>Yesterday we ended by saying that God can impart purity as well as impute it, and He then helps us apply it in our daily life and experience. Permit me to share my own personal experience in this connection, not as a model for you to follow, but simply to illustrate how God revealed Himself to me. Following my conversion in my mid-teens, friends assured me that I ought to ask God to baptise me in His Holy Spirit. This, they told me, would give me the power I needed to become an effective witness for Him. I asked God to do this - and in a remarkable encounter with Him, I found the power I sought. But although this experience transformed me overnight from a shy, timid follower of Christ into a fearless witness for Him, I still felt deeply troubled by sinful forces. I fought hard with such things as lust and sensuality until one night, worn down by the inner conflict, I got down on my knees and prayed: "Lord, reach deep inside me and make me truly clean." Again, something wonderful took place - not so much an invasion of power as an invasion of purity. It did not result, I found, in placing me beyond the possibility of a carnal thought, a stab of pride, a trace of envy, but it meant that from that moment to this, I have been more conscious of the Holy Spirit's presence than I have been of sin's presence. Evil was not eradicated in me, as some proponents of imparted holiness believe, but I found that the eagerness for it had gone, and the hunger for it was no longer a clamour. Now, fifty years later, I never cease to thank God for His Spirit's cooling and cleansing touch. </p><p class="center-it italic bold mlr40 mtb20">My Father and my God, although I realise I have to walk my own personal path to holiness and inner cleansing, help me to know at last that same cooling, cleansing touch in the depths of my heart. I ask this for Your own dear Name's sake. Amen.</p><div class="tl-lightgrey mt20 pt20 flexbox-row-wrap jc-around"><div><div class="fs-17 fg-mustard bold center-it">AdditionalVerses</div><ul style="margin-top:0px"><li><span class="scriptRef" ref="ga+5:1-26">Galatians 5:1-26</span></li><li><span class="scriptRef" ref="mt+5:29">Matthew 5:29</span></li><li><span class="scriptRef" ref="ro+6:6">Romans 6:6</span></li><li><span class="scriptRef" ref="ro+13:14">Romans 13:14</span></li></ul></div>

<div><div class="fs-17 fg-mustard bold center-it">Questions to Consider</div><ul style="margin-top:0px"><li>How did Paul exhort the Galatians?</li><li>How drastically did Jesus put it?</li></ul></div></div>

Let a little light into your soul every day with this wonderful devotional from English pastor Selwyn Hughes.

Every Day Light with Selwyn Hughes

"' through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death." (8:2)

<p><span class="fs-17 fg-mustard bold">For Reading and Meditation:</span><br><span class="italic">     <span class="scriptRef" ref="ga+5:1-15">Galatians 5:1-15</span></span></p><p>Permit me to pause in our meditations on the chief differences between the Christian faith and non-Christian religions to turn our eyes inward to the state of affairs within the church. We have not been as careful as we might in relation to this matter of vertical conversion. Oftentimes we have been more interested in statistics than in actual true conversions. The church, generally speaking, has a lot to answer for in this respect. The horizontal has outrun the vertical in some sections of institutional Christianity. This is why in a number of countries church leaders will not baptize converts until they have received some clear teaching on what the Christian life is all about. In Paul's day, as we see from our text, the main question being asked was about circumcision - whether or not that was essential. Paul threw the emphasis on being a new creature. Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts, he said, is faith expressing itself through love. Conversion will involve a miraculous change; when it doesn't then it is not true conversion. What sort of change? There will be the slaying of the beast within, the gathering of the discordant forces of the soul into harmony, the cleansing of a stained conscience, entry into a more abundant life, and a deep inner sense of fellowship with Christ. Conversion doesn't have to be cataclysmic to be real either. The underlying facts are a new life, a new relationship. But it is as much a miracle as the calling forth of Lazarus from the dead. </p><p class="center-it italic bold mlr40 mtb20">O God, save us in the church from the peril of horizontal conversions-people changing in relation to one another but not in Your direction. We want the real and only the real. Send us Your Spirit in even greater measure. Amen.</p><div class="tl-lightgrey mt20 pt20 flexbox-row-wrap jc-around"><div><div class="fs-17 fg-mustard bold center-it">AdditionalVerses</div><ul style="margin-top:0px"><li><span class="scriptRef" ref="1co+6:1-11">1 Corinthians 6:1-11</span></li><li><span class="scriptRef" ref="ac+13:39">Acts 13:39</span></li><li><span class="scriptRef" ref="ro+5:1">Romans 5:1</span></li><li><span class="scriptRef" ref="ga+3:24">Galatians 3:24</span></li></ul></div>

<div><div class="fs-17 fg-mustard bold center-it">Questions to Consider</div><ul style="margin-top:0px"><li>What word is used to describe the process of conversion?</li><li>What does it mean?</li></ul></div></div>

"... in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value." (v. 6) 

<p>You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free … Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin … Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.<br><br>Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage … For you, brethren, have been called to liberty; only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” § Having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. § For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives. But if the husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband.<br><br>The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. § I will walk at liberty, for I seek Your precepts.</p>

Daily Light on the Daily Path or Daily Light is a Christian daily devotional scripture reading published by Bagster & Sons about 1875. It has been reprinted continually since then. It consists of brief groupings of scripture passages which speak to prominent Biblical themes—two themes (morning and evening) for each day of the year. It appends no commentary, but simply allows scripture to speak for itself.

Evening Daily Light

 The perfect law of liberty. 

<p><span class="bible-text "> <sup class="verse-num ">14 </sup>For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”    </span></p>

For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”<ft>1</ft><cr>1</cr> 

Galatians 5:14

 14 For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”   

From Wikipedia: 

The New International Version (NIV) is an English translation of the Bible first published in 1978 by Biblica (formerly the International Bible Society). The NIV was published to meet the need for a modern translation done by Bible scholars using the earliest, highest quality manuscripts available. Of equal importance was that the Bible be expressed in broadly understood modern English.

The NIV is published by Zondervan in the United States and Hodder & Stoughton in the UK. The NIV was updated in 1984 and 2011 and has become one of the most popular and best-selling modern translations.

OT: Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia; additional sources;
NT: UBS Greek New Testament; Novum Testamentum Graece; additional sources;

New International Version

 For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

<p><span class="bible-text ">For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”    </span></p>

 For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”   

Bible Verse of the Day

August 21, 1999

Galatians 5:14 NIV

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