Envoy Discipleship

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  1. 4d ago

    Month 10 - Justice & Mercy | Week 4: Guest Speaker Father Stephen Gadberry

    Month 10 - Justice & Mercy | Week 4: Guest Speaker Father Stephen Gadberry Guest Q&A with Father Stephen Gadberry Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly. Shawn Ryan Show appearance: Anchor Scripture “…to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” - Micah 6:8, ESV Guest Q&A with Father Stephen Gadberry Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly. What happens when faith moves beyond what we believe and begins shaping how we actually live? As we close Month 10 of ENVOY, we’re joined by Father Stephen Gadberry, a Catholic priest and former U.S. Air Force serviceman who served in Iraq before entering the priesthood. We’ve spent the past few weeks studying Micah 6:8. This week, we turn to the practical realities of living it out. Drawing on his experiences in military service, priesthood, and everyday discipleship, Father Stephen shares some valuable lessons about discipline, humility, mercy, and loving others when it’s inconvenient. 1. Before we can do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly, what needs to change within us? Father Stephen began by explaining that justice and mercy are two sides of the same coin. Justice recognizes wrongdoing and the need for change. Mercy doesn’t ignore that wrongdoing but offers help toward restoration. He described God’s invitation to repentance simply: “You need to change. But I’m going to help you change.” For Christians, this means being willing not only to correct others but also to accompany them through the difficult process of transformation. 2. How has your understanding of strength, discipline, and sacrifice changed through military service and priesthood? Father Stephen sees significant similarities between military service and priesthood. Both require discipline, structure, sacrifice, and a willingness to put something greater than ourselves first. He challenged the assumption that freedom means living without restrictions. Discipline, he argued, actually creates freedom by helping us overcome the desires and habits that would otherwise control us. “It’s a lot harder to love our neighbor if I can’t make my own bed.” His point was that faithfulness in the small responsibilities of life prepares us for greater acts of service. 3. How do we discern when faithfulness requires us to speak and when humility requires us to listen? Father Stephen encouraged us to approach conversations with humility rather than treating them as something to control. “A relationship is not something that we possess. A conversation is not something that we possess. It’s something that we enter into.” We rarely know the full story of the person standing before us. Listening allows us to recognize their humanity before rushing to correct, challenge, or defend our position. Sometimes courage means speaking truth. Other times, it means having the humility to listen first. 4. Who has God used in your life to teach you that mercy is harder when it becomes personal? Father Stephen spoke about the friends and fellow priests who know his weaknesses and imperfections yet continue to love him. Their example reminds him how much mercy he has personally received. “If God and these other people are so good to me, why would I not be good to them?” Mercy becomes easier to extend when we remember how much we’ve needed it ourselves. That doesn’t remove accountability, but it changes the spirit in which we approach others. 5. How does God move us from reluctantly showing mercy to genuinely loving it? Father Stephen distinguished between acting out of duty and developing a genuine desire to serve. Duty isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Marriage, priesthood, military service, and Christian discipleship all involve commitments that require faithfulness even when we don’t feel enthusiastic. But Christian maturity takes us further. Love means willing another person’s good for their sake, without expecting something in return. We may begin by doing what’s right because we know we should. Through spiritual formation, God increasingly changes our desires so that we begin to love what is good. 6. How do you represent Christ to someone suspicious of Christianity or hurt by the Church? Father Stephen’s advice was direct: “Proceed with listening first.” He encouraged us to hear people’s experiences before attempting to correct their conclusions. Acknowledging someone’s pain doesn’t require abandoning biblical truth. It creates an opportunity for honest conversation. He also spoke about welcoming difficult questions rather than treating doubt as something threatening. Our task isn’t simply to win arguments. It’s to represent Christ with truth, gentleness, and genuine concern for the person before us. 7. If someone’s Christianity has become comfortable and disconnected from the needs of others, where should they begin? Father Stephen offered a surprisingly practical challenge: “Do something uncomfortable every day. Do something you do not want to do every day.” He shared a story about repeatedly leaving his clean laundry piled on a recliner rather than folding it. Eventually, he felt convicted about avoiding such a simple responsibility while being entrusted with the much greater responsibility of caring for others. The lesson wasn’t really about laundry. It was about developing the willingness to do what’s necessary, even when it’s inconvenient. If we continually avoid small sacrifices, we’ll struggle when loving our neighbor requires larger ones. Putting Micah 6:8 Into Action One theme ran through our conversation with Father Stephen: discipleship becomes visible through ordinary decisions. Justice requires more than identifying what’s wrong. Mercy requires more than feeling compassion. Humility requires more than thinking modestly about ourselves. They call us to act. And often, those actions begin in the places we already occupy: our homes, workplaces, churches, friendships, and daily responsibilities. As we finish Month 10, consider three questions: Justice: Is there someone I need to help, restore, or treat more fairly? Mercy: Who needs kindness from me, particularly when offering it will cost something? Humility: Where do I need to listen, accept correction, or take responsibility rather than defend myself? Choose one practical act of obedience this week. It doesn’t need to be dramatic. It needs to be faithful. As Father Stephen reminded us, sometimes learning to serve God begins with doing the thing we’ve been avoiding. Closing Prayer Father, thank You for the mercy You’ve shown us through Jesus Christ. Teach us to pursue justice without losing compassion, extend mercy without expecting repayment, and walk humbly without seeking recognition. Give us the discipline to be faithful in small things and the courage to love others when doing so is difficult. May our lives increasingly reflect the character of Christ. In Jesus’ name, Amen. I’m glad you’re here. Let’s run the race - Eyes Up, Chin Up! Grace and peace, Sam Johnston Youtube Channel | Spotify | Instagram | Free Christ-Focused Business Course This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit christfocused.substack.com

  2. Sep 30

    Month 10 - Justice & Mercy | Week 2 & 3: Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.

    Month 10 - Justice & Mercy | Week 2 & 3: Love Mercy. Walk Humbly. Learning to offer the mercy we need and surrender the pride that resists it. Anchor Scripture “…to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” - Micah 6:8, ESV This week we will be covering: The life grace produces Week 2: Love Mercy When mercy costs us something Remembering what we have received Week 3: Walk Humbly The prayer that stops comparing The Lord who chooses to serve Gentleness without pretending The God who delights in mercy It’s possible to love the idea of mercy without particularly enjoying the practice of it. We appreciate forgiveness when we need it. We’re grateful when someone considers our circumstances, gives us time to change, or refuses to define us by our worst decision. But when another person needs those same things from us, mercy can suddenly seem less reasonable. We remember what they did. We wonder whether they deserve another opportunity. We become concerned that kindness might allow them to escape too easily. Humility presents a similar difficulty. We admire it in other people, especially those with influence or authority. Yet receiving correction, surrendering credit, or admitting that we were wrong can feel considerably less attractive. These questions reach beyond our personalities. They expose what we believe about grace and whether receiving it is changing us. In Week 1, we considered the call to do justice. Across these next two weeks, our attention turns to the next two expressions in Micah’s command: loving mercy and walking humbly with God. The question before us is not simply whether we approve of these qualities. It is whether we’re willing to become people whose relationships, motives, and responses are increasingly shaped by them. The life grace produces Before moving further, remember where Micah’s words belong. In Micah 6:1–8, God confronts His people while recalling His faithfulness to them. He brought them out of slavery and preserved them along their journey. The questions that follow propose increasingly extravagant offerings. Verse 8 redirects attention from what someone might bring to God toward the life God has already required. The point is not that an impressive religious contribution can compensate for an unchanged heart. God calls His people to faithful obedience. For Christians, this must never become a message about earning salvation through improved behaviour. Ephesians 2:1–10 establishes the order: God acts mercifully toward sinners, salvation is His gift rather than our achievement, and those saved in Christ are created for good works. We are not trying to become merciful enough for God to accept us. We are asking what His mercy should produce in people who have received it. Grace removes our grounds for boasting. It does not make our treatment of others unimportant. Week 2: Love Mercy The expression we commonly know as love mercy appears in the ESV as love kindness. The Hebrew noun, hesed, is used for kindness, mercy, and faithful love. Here, Micah calls God’s people not merely to perform occasional compassionate acts, but to cherish this kind of goodness. That makes the command more searching than it first appears. We can help someone while resenting every minute it takes. We can forgive while ensuring that the other person never forgets how generous we have been. We can meet a practical need while quietly enjoying the difference between their dependence and our apparent strength. Loving mercy asks God to change not only what our hands do, but what our hearts value. This does not mean waiting until we feel compassionate before acting. Sometimes obedience begins with doing the good we recognise while honestly asking God to change our reluctance. The aim, however, is not permanent generosity through gritted teeth. It is a growing willingness to seek another person’s good. Mercy must also be broader than forgiving wrongdoing. People need compassion because they are grieving, lonely, hungry, exhausted, or vulnerable, not only because they have made poor choices. In Deuteronomy 10:17–19, God’s concern for the fatherless, the widow, and the sojourner takes practical form. His people are commanded to reflect His care. Their response is rooted partly in remembering their own experience as strangers in Egypt. Remembering changes how we see people. The person needing help is not simply an interruption. They are someone whose dependence should not be difficult for us to understand. We have needed patience, provision, welcome, and support ourselves. Some of us need those things more urgently than we are willing to admit. When mercy costs us something Jesus takes mercy into the relationships where we are most likely to resist it. In Luke 6:27–36, He commands His disciples to love their enemies, act for the good of those who hate them, and pray for those who mistreat them. He challenges a way of loving based entirely on exchange: helping those who help us, loving those who love us, and giving where repayment is expected. The pattern He sets before His disciples is their Father’s kindness, which reaches even the ungrateful and the evil. Their mercy is to reflect His. That brings the teaching into uncomfortable territory. Can I genuinely desire another person’s good when their gratitude is unlikely? Can I pray for someone without turning the prayer into a request that God prove me right? Can I help without making the relationship another opportunity to secure influence or recognition? These questions do not make wisdom unnecessary. They reveal how easily calculation can occupy the place where love should be. We might be willing to help someone who is pleasant, appreciative, and likely to improve quickly. We can struggle more with the person whose needs are repetitive, whose manner is awkward, or whose circumstances do not lend themselves to a satisfying story. There are appropriate limits to what any of us can carry. But we should be honest about the difference between recognising a limit and deciding that someone has become inconvenient. Mercy asks us to notice the person rather than merely evaluate the usefulness of helping them. Remembering what we have received Jesus addresses the relationship between received and withheld mercy sharply in Matthew 18:21–35. A servant owes an enormous debt that he cannot repay. His master releases him from it. The same servant then encounters someone who owes him a much smaller amount and refuses the patience he himself had requested. When the master hears what happened, he condemns the servant’s refusal to extend mercy and hands him over for punishment. Jesus concludes with a serious warning about refusing forgiveness from the heart. The contrast is deliberate. The mercy the servant received should have changed the way he treated someone else. We should not use that comparison to tell a wounded person that what happened to them was insignificant. The point is not that wrongdoing does not matter. It is that God’s mercy cannot be treated as irrelevant to our response. John Chrysostom draws a closely related connection when discussing the Lord’s Prayer. In Homily 19 on Matthew, section 9, he explains that remembering our own sins teaches humility, while the command to forgive others works against the desire for revenge. He sees Jesus teaching people not only how to pray, but how their prayers should reshape their treatment of others. That is worth pausing over. Prayer can become a place where we rehearse someone else’s failures before God. Jesus teaches us to bring our own need for forgiveness into that same room. The question changes. It is no longer only, What do they owe me? It becomes, How should someone who depends upon God’s forgiveness respond? For some of us, the first honest prayer might be an admission that we do not presently want the other person’s good. We want them embarrassed, inconvenienced, or proved wrong. Naming that desire before God is better than dressing it in respectable language. Mercy does not require us to pretend we were not hurt. It calls us away from making another person’s suffering the condition of our satisfaction. Week 3: Walk Humbly Mercy and humility belong together because pride continually finds reasons why other people should receive less patience than we do. We understand our own pressures. We know the history behind our reactions. We recognise the difference between what we intended and what actually happened. But with someone else, we can move quickly from observing a failure to making a settled judgment about who they are. Humility interrupts that certainty. Micah places humility within a relationship with God. The command is not simply to develop a modest personality, but to live before Him with a willingness to be taught and led. Our conduct toward others belongs within that daily dependence. (Micah 6:8) This is not an invitation to pretend that we have no abilities or that every opinion is equally sound. It is a refusal to make ourselves the final authority over our lives. A useful question is not simply, Do I think of myself as humble? It is, What happens when I am corrected? The prayer that stops comparing In Luke 18:9–14, Jesus tells a parable to people who rely upon their own righteousness and treat others with contempt. A Pharisee and a tax collector enter the temple to pray. The Pharisee names his religious practices and contrasts himself with other people. The tax collector stands at a distance, acknowledges his sin, and appeals for mercy. Jesus says the tax collector returns home justified rather than the Pharisee. The problem is not that fasting and giving are bad. It is that religious obedience has become evidence in a case for personal superiority. There is an especially uncomfortable detail: the Pharisee begins by thanking God. His self-reliance is expressed in religious language. Mentioning God does not prevent him from using a

  3. Sep 18

    Rally Call M10 | W3 - Guest Speaker: ALONE S11 Finalist Timber Cleghorn

    Rally Call M10 | W3 - Guest Speaker: ALONE S11 finalist Timber Cleghorn Christ in the Wilderness: A Conversation with Timber Cleghorn ENVOY Rally Point | RiverLife Fellowship Anchor Scripture “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”- Micah 6:8, ESV We’re now in Month 10 of ENVOY’s 12-month discipleship journey at RiverLife Fellowship. Over the course of this year, we’ve been asking what it looks like not simply to know the teachings of Jesus, but to actually live them, at home, at work, in our relationships, and particularly when life becomes difficult. Our current month has taken us into Micah 6:8 and the call to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God. Alongside those studies, this Rally Point gave us an opportunity to explore another theme that every disciple eventually has to confront: resilience and steadfastness in those matters. For this ENVOY Rally Call, I was joined by Timber Cleghorn from Season 11 of Alone for an honest conversation about following Jesus through grief, isolation, uncertainty, and the pressure to prove ourselves. Timber grew up off-grid in southern Indiana and went on to train in linguistics and work overseas in humanitarian settings. His experience includes serving in remote communities and conflict zones, alongside his life as a husband, father, and wilderness survival teacher. But it was his willingness to speak openly about Jesus, including the difficult parts of believing, that made this conversation particularly valuable. Our Guest: Timber Gelghorn History Channel - LINK Instagram Channel - LINK Website - LINK YouTube Channel - LINK Book - LINK This session brings us particularly to walking humbly with God. Timber’s story challenges us to consider whether our confidence rests in belonging to Christ or in our ability to produce the outcomes we want. We prepared seven questions from the group. The conversation moved naturally between them, so the summary below gathers the relevant insights under each question. Where a question wasn’t addressed separately, I’ve made that clear. 1. What did your relationship with Christ look like when everything familiar had been stripped away? Did the isolation deepen your faith, expose weaknesses, or change your understanding of dependence on God? Timber’s answer began before Alone. He explained that the stripping away had already started through personal bereavement and humanitarian work in war zones. His younger brother had died in an accident, and he had encountered devastating loss while trying to help people in Afghanistan and Ukraine. He entered the Arctic carrying grief, confusion, and questions about prayers that hadn’t been answered as he had hoped. He still believed in God, but he was wrestling with what that belief meant amid everything he had witnessed. The wilderness initially offered no immediate escape from that internal turmoil. For the first two or three weeks, he carried the same unrest with him. Gradually, however, the external quiet became something deeper: “There began to be silence in my soul.” Timber described a renewed conviction that God saw him, was with him, and cared about what happened to him. He wasn’t describing an audible voice, but a deeply personal awareness of God’s presence. Takeaway: A change of surroundings doesn’t automatically resolve what we carry inside. Make room to bring your actual condition before God, including the questions that remain unresolved. 2. Did the experience test your conviction that “God is enough”? What happens to that conviction when comfort, food, community, and control are removed? This question ran through the whole conversation rather than receiving one separate answer. Timber described entering the experience determined to keep praying and seeking God without insisting on a particular result. He was candid that this posture initially included emotional exhaustion and confusion. It wasn’t a polished account of effortless surrender. Over time, his emphasis became clearer: God’s presence mattered more than securing the outcome he wanted. He could ask for food, protection, or success without treating those things as a test God had to pass. Later, he made the distinction concrete. Receiving a moose after praying did not mean he could expect God to provide a moose every time he asked. One answered prayer was something to receive with gratitude, not a formula for controlling the future. Takeaway: Pray specifically and honestly, while resisting the temptation to make your trust in God conditional on one particular answer. 3. Were there moments when Scripture or prayer became especially real? Was there a passage, truth, or prayer you kept returning to? Timber recalled day 17, when he was exhausted from processing and preserving the moose. Persistent rain made the work difficult, and he was afraid that the meat would spoil. Alongside the practical pressure was the fear of wasting the animal and being judged publicly for it. Then he remembered a friend’s advice before he left: while working hard to feed his body, he must also remember to feed his spirit. He sat down and began reciting Psalm 27, starting with its declaration that the Lord is his light, salvation, and strength. For Timber, Scripture became nourishment he needed in that moment. He described receiving strength to continue, and Psalm 27 remained central to his experience. His account also brought us back to ENVOY’s earlier teaching on daily bread. We need the Word within reach of our memory and attention, especially when pressure makes it difficult to think clearly. Takeaway: Spend time with Psalm 27 this week. Read it slowly, pray through it, and begin committing a portion to memory. 4. How did you process suffering with God? What did exhaustion, disappointment, and uncertainty teach you about biblical perseverance rather than simply “being tough”? Timber spoke movingly about the effect of witnessing suffering he could not prevent. He described how those experiences had unsettled his confidence that God was close and attentive to the details of human life. In the Arctic, that confidence began to return. Cold, exhaustion, and isolation remained real, but he experienced them differently as his awareness of God’s presence deepened. He described moments when hardship and genuine joy existed together because he believed God understood and was beside him. We also discussed the importance of bringing anguish to God. Scripture gives us language for lament, protest, and questions. We don’t have to disguise pain before approaching Him. The conversation returned to the cross as evidence that God takes evil and suffering seriously. Jesus entered human suffering; our pain is not foreign to Him. Takeaway: Perseverance can include tears, questions, and lament. Bring those things into prayer instead of assuming you must first become strong enough to speak to God. 5. What did the wilderness reveal about your identity? As a husband, father, provider, competitor, and, first and foremost, someone who belongs to Christ? This became one of the most significant parts of the conversation. Timber recognised that he had entered the competition carrying a need to recover his sense of worth after experiences he regarded as failures. Winning offered the possibility of proving that he was capable, strong, and successful. Looking back, he could name what was happening: “I was trying to find my identity in my victories.” He then described an early morning beside a mist-covered meadow and lake. A moose moved through the scene, and for once he could neither pursue it nor film it. He simply watched. In that stillness, he experienced a conviction that the animal did not have to achieve something extraordinary to possess value as God’s creation. He began applying that truth to himself. His limitations, losses, and inability to rescue everyone did not erase the fact that God had made him with intention. Timber connected this change with his eventual decision to leave the competition. Proving himself through victory no longer held the same power over him. He was equally clear that this remains a daily choice. He still has to resist defining himself through achievement and return to doing his best from a place of belonging. Takeaway: Take your responsibilities seriously, but don’t ask success to establish your worth. Ask where achievement has become something you need in order to feel that you matter. 6. What did extreme isolation teach you about other people and Christian community? This question wasn’t addressed separately in the recording, so there isn’t a distinct answer from Timber to reproduce here. However, relationships remained present throughout his account. A friend’s counsel helped him remember to nourish his spirit. His family featured in his reflections on grief, hope, and purpose. He spoke appreciatively of the opportunity to encourage other believers and closed by praying that we would encourage one another in walking with Jesus. For our discipleship, these moments offer a useful reflection: even an experience of profound solitude can be sustained by words, love, and truth received through other people. Making room for quiet before God and receiving support from Christian community can belong together. Takeaway: Consider whose encouragement has helped sustain your faith. Thank them, and make room for an honest conversation with someone who can walk alongside you now. 7. How do we remain faithful when hardship doesn’t quickly go away? What would you say to someone facing unemployment, grief, family pressure, financial strain, temptation, or a prolonged difficult season? Timber returned to “Even If” by MercyMe, a song he had listened to repeatedly before entering Alone. His central encouragement was to continue trusting and honouring God without treating faith as

  4. Sep 17

    Rally Call M10 | W2 - Guest Speaker: ALONE finalist Andrew Thomas Price

    Rally Call M10 | W2 - Guest Speaker: ALONE finalist Andrew Thomas Price Resilience, Solitude & the Discipline to Keep Going ENVOY Rally Point | RiverLife Fellowship Anchor Scripture “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.” - Luke 6:36 We’re now in Month 10 of ENVOY’s 12-month discipleship journey at RiverLife Fellowship. Over the course of this year, we’ve been asking what it looks like not simply to know the teachings of Jesus, but to actually live them, at home, at work, in our relationships, and particularly when life becomes difficult. Our current month has taken us into Micah 6:8 and the call to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God. Alongside those studies, this Rally Point gave us an opportunity to explore another theme that every disciple eventually has to confront: resilience and steadfastness in those matters. And for that conversation, we welcomed someone who has had resilience tested under circumstances few of us will ever experience. Our Guest: Andrew Thomas Price History Channel - LINK Instagram Channel - LINK Website - LINK YouTube Channel - LINK Andrew Thomas Price represented Wales on Alone: The World Championship, becoming one of the final competitors remaining in one of television’s most demanding survival challenges. There was no camera crew following him through the Arctic. Andrew had to film himself while finding food, building shelter, managing the elements and confronting the psychological effects of prolonged isolation. He entered the competition with more than 20 years of experience teaching survival skills, yet even that preparation couldn’t remove the uncertainty of the environment. Andrew was also refreshingly open during our conversation about where he stands spiritually. He didn’t present himself as a Christian or try to give us the answers he thought a church audience might want to hear. In fact, when we discussed solitude, he spoke candidly about hoping the experience might help him understand God and theology, while acknowledging that he left without those questions neatly resolved but still open to it. That honesty made the conversation more valuable, not less. Here are the 7 questions that framed our conversation with Andrew and the lessons that emerged. 1. When you were pushed furthest physically or mentally on Alone, what did resilience actually look like? Andrew’s answer immediately challenged the romantic idea of resilience. Much of survival wasn’t dramatic. It was practical. There were 24 hours to fill, tasks that still needed doing, and a body becoming progressively less capable of doing them. Andrew explained that keeping physically busy helped him manage the psychological battle, but it created a brutal equation. Activity consumed calories, yet there were hardly enough calories coming in to replace them. His body began deteriorating, his muscles atrophied, proper sleep became difficult, and he still had to continue doing what needed to be done. Then there was the yellow brick. Every contestant carries a tracking device with a button that ends the experience. In Andrew’s hardest moments, the solution was literally sitting on his belt. Press it and, before long, he could be warm, fed and safe. That made Alone uniquely difficult. Survival was hard, but quitting was incredibly easy. Andrew described moments where his thumb could hover over that button, knowing that all the suffering could stop immediately. Yet he continued. There is a discipleship lesson here. Steadfastness is rarely demonstrated when there is no alternative. It is revealed when another path exists, especially when that path is easier. Sometimes faithfulness simply means not pressing the button today. 2. What did the experience teach you about circumstances you couldn’t control? Andrew entered with a formidable survival skill set. Then, for roughly the first 20 days, almost everything he tried seemed to fail. Fishing didn’t work. Traps didn’t work. Food was scarce. The experience was very different from what even years of preparation had led him to imagine. At one point he estimated his intake averaged roughly 200 calories a day. His mind began searching for escape routes and shortcuts. At one point he could see the glow from base camp in the distance and found himself imagining taking his coracle downriver and raiding the food supplies. He knew it was impractical. He knew it would break the rules. But hunger makes the easy solution remarkably persuasive. Out of that experience Andrew developed a phrase that has stayed with him: “The path of least resistance never goes to where you want to be.” His lesson wasn’t that the easiest path is always wrong. It was that hardship creates an enormous temptation to confuse relief with progress. Sometimes the thing that immediately removes discomfort also moves us further away from where we actually want to go. That applies far beyond the Arctic. There are situations in marriages, careers, friendships, finances and spiritual life where there simply isn’t a shortcut. Some things have to be walked through faithfully. 3. What do you learn about yourself when all the normal distractions disappear? This became one of the most interesting parts of the conversation. Andrew went into the wilderness wondering whether prolonged solitude might clarify some of his questions about God and belief. He told us that he had never fully formulated where he stood on a number of theological questions and wondered whether isolation might cause those ideas to come together. His experience was different. He felt increasingly responsible for keeping himself moving, staying in what he described as the driver’s seat and responding practically whenever negative thoughts began to dominate. He would make a net, sharpen a knife or build snares, turning something psychological into something physical and manageable. But solitude also revealed how easily the mind can magnify something small. Andrew told a brilliant story about suddenly remembering an administrative form connected to his business back in Wales. Completely unable to check what had happened, he began wondering whether he had left the correct instructions before departing. The thought grew. Eventually this minor piece of paperwork had become a catastrophe in his imagination. He pictured returning home to find his business in trouble and huge penalties waiting for him. When he eventually returned, everything was fine. How many times do we do something similar? A thought enters the mind. We revisit it. Then revisit it again. Eventually we’re no longer responding to reality but to a future we’ve constructed internally. The wilderness didn’t create that tendency. It simply removed enough distractions for Andrew to see it clearly. 4. What do you do when motivation disappears? Although we moved through this question organically rather than stopping to ask it separately, Andrew had already given us the answer. Do something. When negative thoughts arrived, he worked with his hands. When food dominated his thinking, he developed a surprisingly disciplined routine. Every morning, while still inside his sleeping bag, he allowed himself about five minutes to imagine the foods he missed, including Swansea’s Joe’s ice cream. Then he got up. For the remainder of the day, he refused to indulge those thoughts and concentrated on the work in front of him. There is wisdom in recognising that motivation and discipline aren’t the same thing. You won’t always feel ready. You won’t always feel optimistic. You won’t always feel spiritually strong. Sometimes the next faithful act begins before the feeling arrives. 5. Did the experience change the way you understand discomfort? Andrew described how his relationship with physical discomfort changed as starvation progressed. Early hunger was one thing. Prolonged deprivation was something very different. His energy rose and fell, and eventually survival became an exercise in deciding where limited energy could most effectively be spent. That produced an important shift. The goal was no longer to make himself comfortable. Comfort wasn’t available. The goal was to manage what remained well. There is a profound difference between those two mindsets. Modern life gives us countless opportunities to eliminate discomfort immediately. Yet not every uncomfortable thing needs to be escaped. Some discomfort tells us that something is wrong. Other discomfort simply accompanies growth, responsibility, sacrifice or perseverance. Wisdom is learning the difference. 6. What did being completely alone teach you about other people? For somebody who values self-reliance, Andrew’s answer was striking. Isolation made him realise just how essential other people are. He began thinking about parents, partners, children, friends and even the dog. He missed not only the obviously meaningful moments, but jokes, quirks and tiny everyday interactions that become almost invisible when they’re constantly available to us. Even the annoying things began to look different. His conclusion was simple: human beings aren’t designed for extended isolation. Community matters. For disciples of Jesus, that should sound very familiar. Christianity was never designed as an individual survival exercise. We need brothers and sisters around us. We need people who encourage us, correct us, pray for us, laugh with us and sometimes simply sit beside us when circumstances can’t immediately be fixed. Self-reliance may be a useful skill. It makes a poor foundation for a life. 7. What would you tell somebody going through a difficult season right now? This was perhaps the most immediately applicable answer of the session. Andrew described reaching the latter stages of Alone and knowing that there was almost nothing left physically to give. Earlier he could collect large amounts of firewood. Later, he couldn’t. So he changed the objective. Get a little firewood. Build a smaller fir

  5. Sep 10

    Rally Call M10 | W1 - Guest Speaker: Bishop Cei

    Month 10 - Justice & Mercy | Week 1: Do Justice Anchor Scripture “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of youbut to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” - Micah 6:8 ESV This week, Bishop Ceirion H. Dewar FSHC joined us for our Rally Point Call to explore what biblical justice means and how we practise it as followers of Jesus. We worked through seven questions from the group, moving from the character of God to the everyday choices we make in our homes, churches, workplaces, and communities. Get the full M1 W1 dispatch below: Our anchor was Micah 6:8, which calls us to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God. Here are the main insights from each question. 1. How should Christians define justice biblically rather than culturally? Bishop Cei began with God’s character. Justice means acting according to what is good, true, righteous, and impartial in His sight. It includes defending vulnerable people, confronting wrongdoing, and recognising every person’s God-given dignity. He particularly challenged selective justice: we cannot demand fair treatment for people we sympathise with while denying it to those we dislike. Our convictions must be tested against Scripture, including when that challenges our preferred political position. Takeaway: Ask what God says, and apply that standard consistently. 2. Why must justice, mercy, and humility remain together? Bishop Cei warned that separating them distorts our response to wrongdoing. Justice without mercy can become vengeance. Mercy that refuses to confront wrongdoing becomes an excuse for inaction. Without humility, we become self-righteous. He brought us back to the cross, where sin is taken seriously and mercy is extended to sinners. Remembering our own dependence on grace helps us defend those who have been harmed while remaining willing to seek the offender’s repentance and restoration. Takeaway: Confront wrong with the humility of someone who also needs forgiveness. 3. What does doing justice look like in ordinary Christian life? His examples were deliberately practical: paying what we owe, defending someone being gossiped about, refusing to repeat allegations we haven’t verified, and treating the cleaner with the same dignity as the chief executive. He also spoke about noticing elderly neighbours, protecting children, feeding hungry people, and speaking for someone who has no voice in the room. Sometimes justice involves lovingly telling someone that what they’re doing is wrong. Takeaway: Begin by examining how you treat the people immediately around you. 4. What can the early church teach us about caring for the vulnerable? Bishop Cei emphasised that the early church built practical care into its shared life. Drawing on Acts, he pointed to believers sharing resources and the apostles responding when widows were overlooked in the daily distribution. His challenge was that compassionate opinions must lead to compassionate action. Churches should consider how their time, resources, and relationships provide meaningful help for people in need. Takeaway: Make care a regular part of church life, with people and resources committed to it. 5. How did Jesus hold truth and compassion together? Bishop Cei used Jesus’ encounter with the woman caught in adultery to illustrate mercy alongside a call to leave sin behind. Jesus resisted her destruction while still taking her actions seriously. For the church, that means recovering the ability to love someone deeply and speak honestly about what is wrong. Compassion must not become avoidance, and truth must be communicated with love. Takeaway: Seek the person’s good in both what you say and how you say it. 6. How should Christians respond when a political movement identifies a genuine injustice? Bishop Cei urged discernment. We should acknowledge a real injustice even when someone we distrust identifies it. But recognising a problem does not make every proposed remedy right. He encouraged us to examine both the claim and the solution against Scripture, human dignity, responsibility, mercy, and humility. He also stressed that the church must hold every political side accountable, because our ultimate allegiance belongs to Jesus Christ. Takeaway: Assess each issue honestly without handing your conscience over to a political party. 7. What is one practical step we can take this week? His answer was simple: “Start with one person.” Ask God who He has placed within your reach. Help a struggling family, defend someone being unfairly spoken about, forgive an offence, or apologise for something you’ve said. Bishop Cei shared that he had recently needed to make an apology himself. Then repeat that faithfulness tomorrow. His closing encouragement was to stop waiting until we can change the whole world and begin making a difference in someone’s life. Takeaway: Choose one person and one concrete act of justice or mercy this week. SNEAK PEEK | MONTH 10, WEEK 2 - LOVE MERCY Anchor Scripture: “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.” - Luke 6:36 Next week, we’ll continue our Month 10 study by looking at what it means to love mercy. We’ll explore mercy as part of God’s character, how Jesus embodies it, and why Christian mercy is never weakness, compromise or the avoidance of truth. The question is simple: Do we only value mercy when we receive it, or have we become people who love to give it? I’m glad you’re here. Let’s run the race - Eyes Up, Chin Up! Grace and peace, Sam Johnston Youtube Channel | Spotify | Instagram | Free Christ-Focused Business Course This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit christfocused.substack.com

  6. Sep 4

    Month 10 - Justice & Mercy | Week 1: Do Justice

    Month 10 - Justice & Mercy | Week 1: Do Justice Anchor Scripture “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of youbut to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” - Micah 6:8 ESV This week we will be covering: JUSTICE BEGINS WITH GOD, NOT WITH US WHAT DOES THE BIBLE MEAN BY JUSTICE? JUSTICE IS MORE THAN PUNISHING WRONG JUSTICE & THE EARLY CHURCH JUSTICE TAKES ITS CLEAREST SHAPE IN JESUS WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “DO JUSTICE”? JUSTICE UNDER THE LORDSHIP OF CHRIST Few words in our culture carry as much moral weight as the word justice. Politicians use it. Activists use it. Churches use it. Corporations use it. We hear about economic justice, racial justice, criminal justice, environmental justice, social justice and many other forms of justice. Often two people can both claim to be pursuing justice while advocating for completely opposite things. That should tell us something. The question for the Christian cannot simply be, Do I care about justice? Almost everyone believes they do. The deeper question is, who gets to define what justice actually is? For a disciple of Jesus, the answer can’t ultimately be a political party, an ideology, a movement, our preferred news source, our own instincts or even the prevailing moral consensus of our culture. If God is Creator, Judge and King, then justice begins with Him. Scripture doesn’t invite us to take whatever our culture currently calls justice and add a Christian motivation to it. It calls us first to discover what God calls just and then to order our lives accordingly. That distinction matters because biblical justice is far richer than the ways the word is often used today. It includes defending the vulnerable, but it also includes impartiality. It involves mercy, but never at the expense of truth. It confronts oppression, but also personal sin. It can restore, but it can also judge. It addresses communities, institutions and societies, but it also reaches into the human heart. Above all, biblical justice flows from the character of God Himself. JUSTICE BEGINS WITH GOD, NOT WITH US The Bible doesn’t treat justice as an idea humanity invented and God later endorsed. Justice exists because God is just. Psalm 89:14 says that righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne. Deuteronomy 32:4 describes God as faithful, just and upright in all His ways. Isaiah 61:8 tells us plainly, “I the LORD love justice.” In Jeremiah 9:23–24, God says that He delights in steadfast love, justice and righteousness. This means something enormously important. God doesn’t become just because He conforms to some standard of justice above Himself. God Himself is the standard. Justice therefore cannot then mean whatever appears fair to us. This has been humanity’s temptation from the very beginning. In Genesis 3:1–7, the serpent invites humanity to seize the authority to determine good and evil for itself. Instead of receiving moral order from God, humanity reaches for the right to define it independently. That same impulse survives whenever we begin with our preferred outcome and then decide that whatever produces it must therefore be justice. Modern societies offer several competing accounts of what justice means. For some, justice primarily concerns equal outcomes. For others, it means protecting individual freedom or individual rights. Others emphasize the distribution of resources, correcting inequalities, punishing wrongdoing or addressing abuses of power. Some of those concerns may overlap considerably with Scripture. Others may conflict with it. Us Disciples, however, cannot simply assume that because something carries the word justice, God therefore endorses everything attached to it. Neither should we retreat in the opposite direction and become suspicious of justice itself merely because the word has become politically contested. Justice belongs to God before it belongs to anybody else. Augustine understood this clearly. Writing as the Roman world around him wrestled with questions of power, government, virtue and social order, Augustine argued that there can be no true justice where God is denied His rightful place. In The City of God, he insisted that true justice ultimately depends upon right relationship with God. This gives us our starting point. Before asking what justice demands from society, the disciple first asks: What does God call good? WHAT DOES THE BIBLE MEAN BY JUSTICE? Two important Old Testament words and ideas help us understand the biblical vision of justice: mishpat and tsedaqah. Mishpat is commonly translated as justice or judgment. It can describe judging wrongdoing rightly and holding people accountable, but its biblical use reaches beyond punishment. It also includes establishing what is right, protecting those who are being wronged and ensuring that people receive what they are rightly due. Tsedaqah, normally translated as righteousness, describes living according to God’s standard of right relationship. The two ideas repeatedly appear together. Amos 5:24 gives us perhaps the most famous example: “But let justice roll down like waters,and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Justice and righteousness cannot easily be pulled apart in Scripture. Righteousness describes life rightly ordered beneath God. Justice is what that righteousness looks like when it moves outward into relationships, communities and situations where things have gone wrong. Biblical justice therefore doesn’t merely identify injustice. It acts. Consider Job’s description of righteous living in Job 29:11–17. He speaks of rescuing the poor who cried for help, caring for the fatherless, defending those without assistance and confronting those who preyed upon the vulnerable. Or consider Isaiah 1:17: “Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.” Zechariah 7:9–10 joins true judgment with kindness and mercy and specifically warns Israel against oppressing widows, orphans, foreigners and the poor. Jeremiah 22:3 commands God’s people to act with justice and righteousness, rescue those being robbed and refuse to mistreat the foreigner, fatherless or widow. This pattern runs throughout Scripture. Why are these people mentioned so repeatedly? Because the widow, orphan, foreigner and poor often lacked the power, social standing, family protection or economic leverage available to others. They could be exploited while possessing very little ability to defend themselves. God repeatedly reveals His justice by showing particular concern for those whom others can easily ignore. Psalm 146:7–9 describes the Lord as the One who executes justice for the oppressed, feeds the hungry, watches over the sojourner and upholds the widow and fatherless. Yet biblical justice also refuses partiality in the other direction. Leviticus 19:15 commands Israel: “You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.” That is an extraordinarily important verse for understanding biblical justice. The wealthy must not receive preferential treatment because they are powerful. The vulnerable must not be ignored because they lack influence. But neither may guilt, innocence, truth or morality be decided merely according to someone’s wealth, poverty, ethnicity, social position or group identity. Exodus 23:2–3 makes the same point. God’s people must neither follow the crowd into wrongdoing nor distort justice simply because someone is poor. Biblical justice demands compassion. It also demands truth. And justice without truth eventually becomes another form of injustice. JUSTICE IS MORE THAN PUNISHING WRONG When many people hear the word justice, they instinctively imagine punishment. Someone has done something wrong. Justice means making them pay. Revenge… right! Scripture certainly contains this dimension of punishment. Evil matters. Wrongdoing cannot simply be renamed, excused, or ignored. God judges because God is holy. But biblical justice reaches further than punishment. It is also concerned with restoration. It asks not merely, Who has done wrong? but also, Who has been harmed? What has been broken? What has been taken? What would faithfulness require us to restore? This is why Micah 6:8 does not simply command God’s people to do justice. The whole command is: “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” Those things belong together. Justice without mercy can become vengeance. Mercy without justice can become sentimental tolerance of evil. And both justice and mercy become distorted when they are separated from humility before God. Jesus makes the same connection in Matthew 23:23. Rebuking the religious leaders, He says they have neglected “the weightier matters of the law,” naming justice, mercy and faithfulness. They had become meticulous about religious observance while overlooking the character of God that their religious lives were supposed to reflect. This remains a danger for the church, because we can defend doctrinal precision while treating people cruelly. We can speak passionately about compassion while refusing to call sin what God calls sin. We can become vocal about injustice in society while ignoring dishonesty, greed, favoritism or exploitation within our own lives. Biblical justice permits none of these divisions. The God who condemns oppression also condemns false testimony. The God who commands generosity also commands holiness. The God who defends the poor also forbids partiality toward them. The God who commands mercy also calls sinners to repentance. His justice cannot be divided into the pieces we find politically convenient. THE EARLY CHURCH TOOK THIS SERIOUSLY It is sometimes suggested by critics that Christian concern for poverty, exploitation and social responsibility is

  7. Aug 27

    Month 9 - Warfare & Holiness | Week 4: More Than Conquerors

    Month 9 - Warfare & Holiness | Week 4: More Than Conquerors Anchor Scripture “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” -Romans 8:37 (ESV) We will be covering: From No Condemnation to No Separation More Than Conquerors in the Middle of Suffering Nothing Can Separate Us Living From the Victory of Christ Sitting With Romans 8 This Week Over the course of this month, we’ve been considering the Christian life through the connected themes of spiritual warfare and holiness. We began with the unseen battle, recognizing that Scripture doesn’t allow us to explain every struggle simply in terms of what can be seen. We then turned to the armor of God and saw that the Christian response to spiritual opposition isn’t fear or fascination, but faithfulness. God calls His people to stand, and He gives them what they need to do so. Last week, Galatians 5 brought the battle even closer, into the desires of the heart, as Paul described the conflict between the flesh and the Spirit and called Christians to walk by the Spirit rather than relying upon themselves. Romans 8 gives us the right place to finish because it takes us from the reality of the battle to the certainty of the outcome. Paul’s language is unmistakably victorious: “in all these things we are more than conquerors.” Yet those words are often repeated without much attention to what “these things” actually are. When we put them back into their context, Paul’s idea of victory becomes considerably deeper than simply overcoming difficult circumstances. The surrounding verses speak about tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, and even death. Paul isn’t describing Christians who are protected from suffering because their faith is strong enough. He’s speaking about Christians who may experience the full weight of life in a fallen world and yet discover that none of it has the power to separate them from Christ. That distinction matters. The victory of the Christian isn’t that hardship never reaches us. It’s that hardship can never finally have us. To understand why Paul can say something so extraordinary, we need to follow the argument he’s been building through Romans 8. From No Condemnation to No Separation Romans 8 begins with one of the clearest statements of assurance in the New Testament: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” It ends with another: nothing in all creation “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” No condemnation at the beginning and no separation at the end. Between those two assurances, though, Paul speaks with remarkable honesty about Christian life. There’s still a battle with sin. There’s weakness. There’s suffering. Creation itself groans under the effects of the fall, and Christians groan along with it as we wait for the redemption of our bodies. Paul even acknowledges that there are moments when believers don’t know what to pray. The Spirit helps us, he says, precisely because we are weak. Romans 8 isn’t written for people who’ve worked out how to avoid difficulty. It’s written for people who need to know whether the gospel remains true when life becomes difficult to understand. That’s the setting for Paul’s question in verse 31: “If God is for us, who can be against us?” Paul clearly isn’t claiming that nobody will oppose Christians. His own life makes that interpretation impossible. He’d experienced rejection, violence, imprisonment, hostility, and persecution because of his allegiance to Christ. The question is much larger than whether opposition exists. Paul is asking whether any opposition is capable of overturning what God has decided to do for His people. His answer rests upon the cross. “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” - Romans 8:32 This becomes especially important when suffering enters our lives because suffering has a way of changing the questions we ask about God. When life is relatively stable, it can be easy to speak confidently about His goodness. When something we love begins to fall apart, when a prayer remains unanswered, when health changes, when a relationship breaks, or when the future suddenly looks uncertain, another question can begin forming beneath the surface: Is God really for me? We may know the theological answer and still feel the weight of the question. If God loves me, why has He allowed this? If He’s near, why does He sometimes feel so distant? If He’s for me, why does so much seem to be going against me? Paul doesn’t answer those questions by explaining the hidden purpose behind every painful circumstance. Scripture never promises us that kind of knowledge. There are things we may understand only years later, and there may be things we never fully understand in this life. Instead, Paul points us toward something God has already made unmistakably clear. He points us toward Christ. The Christian doesn’t finally determine God’s love by looking at whether a particular season has been comfortable. We look at the cross. The God who gave His own Son hasn’t left us to guess about His commitment to us. This is one reason we never graduate beyond the gospel. The cross isn’t merely where Christian life begins; it continues to interpret reality for us when reality becomes difficult to interpret on its own. Circumstances may make us feel forgotten, but the cross tells us that we’ve been loved at unimaginable cost. Shame may tell us that our failure has placed us beyond grace, but Romans 8 begins by telling us that there’s no condemnation for those who are in Christ. The enemy may accuse us, other people may accuse us, and our own conscience may accuse us, but Paul asks who can ultimately bring a charge against those whom God has justified. That doesn’t mean Christianity treats guilt lightly. Quite the opposite. The gospel takes guilt so seriously that it requires atonement rather than denial. Christ has borne the judgment of His people, and because of that, another voice cannot simply overturn the verdict God has given. Paul continues: “Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died, more than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. ” - Romans 8:34 Notice where Paul places the weight of his confidence. Christ died. Christ was raised. Christ reigns. Christ intercedes. His confidence isn’t resting upon the strength or consistency of the Christian. It rests upon the finished and continuing work of Christ. That becomes the foundation for everything that follows. More Than Conquerors in the Middle of Suffering Paul’s next question takes us directly toward our anchor verse: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” - Romans 8:35-39 What follows isn’t a list of theoretical possibilities. Paul names real experiences of suffering: tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, and sword. He then quotes Psalm 44, a psalm in which God’s people are suffering despite their faithfulness. This is important because it prevents us from turning “more than conquerors” into a promise that faithful Christians will somehow be spared the hardest parts of life. Paul is speaking about victory while suffering is still present. Then comes the line: “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” - Romans 8:35-39 The words “in all these things” are essential. Paul doesn’t say Christians conquer because suffering fails to reach them. He says that even when suffering does reach them, it can’t accomplish the one thing that would constitute ultimate defeat. It can’t separate them from Christ. Tribulation can trouble a Christian without removing them from God’s love. Distress can make life feel painfully narrow without altering their standing before God. Persecution can remove reputation, comfort, employment, possessions, security, or freedom. Even death can bring earthly life to an end. None of those things can undo justification, reverse adoption, empty the resurrection of its meaning, or take Christ away from the person who belongs to Him. This helps explain why Christian victory can look so strange from the outside. The apostles themselves didn’t always look like conquerors in the ordinary sense of the word. Many were threatened, beaten, imprisoned, rejected, and eventually killed because they followed Jesus. If victory means escaping suffering, their lives seem to tell the wrong story. But Paul understands victory differently. Rome could imprison him, but it couldn’t revoke his adoption. It could beat him, but it couldn’t undo what Christ had accomplished at the cross. It could put him in chains, but it couldn’t place Jesus back in the tomb. Eventually, Rome could take Paul’s earthly life, but it couldn’t take the resurrection that awaited him. The world can sometimes take far more from a Christian than we’d like to imagine, but it cannot take what it never gave in the first place. Our belonging to Christ doesn’t depend upon the world’s permission. This is also why Christian hope is different from optimism. Optimism usually depends upon the expectation that circumstances will improve. Sometimes they do. God can bring extraordinary deliverance. A relationship can heal. A diagnosis can change. A door can open. A prayer can be answered exactly as we hoped. We should be grateful when that happens. But Christian hope has to be able to survive even when circumstances don’t improve in the way we wanted. It says that even if life doesn’t unfold according to my preference, Christ remains who He is. Even if a prayer receives an answer I don’t understand, the resurrection hasn’t been undone. Even if obedience becomes costly, the cost can’t separate me from the One I’m obey

  8. Aug 20

    Month 9 - Warfare & Holiness | Week 3: Walking In The Spirit

    Month 9 - Warfare & Holiness | Week 3: Walking In The Spirit Anchor Scripture “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” - Galatians 5:16 (ESV) We will be covering: Freedom, the Flesh, and the Spirit What the Flesh Produces and What the Spirit Grows Belonging to Christ and Learning to Walk Sitting With the Text This Week Prayer For The Week Over the last two weeks, we’ve been considering the reality of spiritual warfare and what it means for the ordinary Christian life. We began by looking at the unseen battle, recognizing Paul’s warning that our struggle is not ultimately against flesh and blood. Last week, we turned to the armor of God and saw that as Disciples we haven’t been left defenseless. God gives His people everything necessary to stand firm: truth, righteousness, the gospel of peace, faith, salvation, His Word, and prayer. But even with the image of this mighty armor, it still leaves us with another question. Once the armor has been put on, how does the Christian actually walk in it? That question matters because most spiritual warfare doesn’t arrive in dramatic ways. It comes quietly, through ordinary moments and ordinary desires. It appears when someone irritates us, and we feel the immediate pull toward anger. It appears when another person receives something we wanted, and envy begins working beneath the surface. It appears when an old temptation returns, when pride resists correction, when fear makes us grasp for control, or when resentment begins to feel easier than forgiveness. Spiritual warfare is not only about what is happening around the Disciple. It is also about what is happening within us. This is where Galatians 5 takes us. Paul brings us directly into the inner conflict of the Christian life and gives us one of the clearest commands in the New Testament for understanding how disciples of Jesus are meant to live: “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” The sentence is simple enough to memorize in seconds, but the life it describes takes a lifetime of dependence and focus on the Lord to achieve. Paul isn’t offering a religious technique for becoming slightly better people. Nor is he telling us to summon greater willpower so that we can finally defeat our weaknesses. He is describing an entirely different way of living. Walking by the Spirit. A disciple's life is a life increasingly brought under the direction, power, and transforming work of the Holy Spirit. Freedom, the Flesh, & the Spirit To understand Paul’s command, we first need to understand where Galatians in general has brought us. Galatians is a letter written in defense of the gospel. Teachers had entered the churches of Galatia and were troubling believers by insisting that faith in Christ was not enough. Gentile Christians, they argued, needed to take upon themselves the requirements of the Mosaic law, particularly circumcision, if they were to belong fully among “the people of God”. Paul responds strongly because he understands what is at stake. If righteousness can finally be achieved through our obedience, then Christ is no longer sufficient. The gospel becomes Jesus plus something else. Paul isn’t willing to allow that. Throughout the letter, he insists that sinners are justified through faith in Jesus Christ and not through works of the law. That doesn’t mean works shouldn’t occur, but they are not the justification of our salvation; they are the fruit of it. Christ has done what we could never do for ourselves. He has borne the curse of sin, reconciled us to God, and brought us into the family of God by grace. That is why chapter 5 begins with the declaration: “For freedom Christ has set us free.” - Galatians 5:1 But freedom immediately raises another question. What are we free from and free to do? Our culture generally understands freedom as the removal of restraint. Freedom means being able to choose for ourselves, determine our own path, define what is right for us, and pursue the desires we consider authentic. There is something deeply attractive about that idea, but God gives us a more searching understanding of the human heart. Simply being free to follow our desires doesn’t necessarily make us free. Sometimes our desires are precisely what enslave us. A person governed by anger isn’t truly free simply because they can express it. A person who desperately needs the approval of others may appear independent while being profoundly controlled by the opinions of people around them. A person who can’t say no to sexual desire is not free simply because the culture celebrates the expression of that desire. A person consumed by money, comfort, status, recognition, resentment, jealousy, ambition, or the need for control may possess enormous external freedom while living with very little internal freedom. Paul therefore refuses to separate Christian freedom from Christian transformation. He writes: “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” - Galatians 5:13 Christian freedom is not the freedom to become ruled by ourselves. It is freedom from the powers, desires, and patterns of life that once ruled us. This is the setting I am trying to get you to for Paul’s command to walk by the Spirit. When Paul speaks about “the flesh,” he isn’t simply talking about the physical body. Christianity doesn’t teach that the body itself is evil. Jesus took on a real human body, died bodily, rose bodily, and the Christian hope includes the resurrection of the body. By “flesh,” Paul is describing human life turned inward upon itself. It is life lived in independence from God, where the self becomes the center, and our desires become the controlling authority. The flesh asks what I want, what I deserve, what will make me secure, what will protect my pride, what will satisfy me, and what will allow me to remain in control. Sometimes the answers produced by the flesh are obviously sinful. At other times they are much more subtle. Selfish ambition can look remarkably similar to healthy drive. Pride can disguise itself as conviction. Fear can call itself wisdom. Control can present itself as responsibility. Bitterness can be renamed discernment. Even the desire to be admired can find a comfortable home within Christian ministry if we learn how to surround it with the right language. One of the unsettling truths about sin is that we are often very skilled at explaining it to ourselves. We rarely experience temptation as an obvious invitation to rebel against God. More often, we justify the desire, minimize it, rename it, or convince ourselves that our circumstances make it reasonable. Then the Spirit of God begins His work. The Spirit confronts what we would naturally excuse. He brings conviction where we have rationalized. He turns our eyes toward Christ and begins forming desires for holiness, truth, love, generosity, purity, reconciliation, and obedience. Things that once seemed normal begin to trouble us. Things we once defended become things we confess. Patterns we once followed without question become places of conflict. Paul describes that conflict directly: “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh.” - Galatians 5:17 This explains something almost every serious disciple eventually discovers. Coming to Christ doesn’t mean temptation disappears. We may genuinely love Christ and still discover pride within us. We may believe deeply in the goodness of God and still become anxious when circumstances move beyond our control. We may understand grace and still struggle to forgive someone who has wounded us. We may value purity and still encounter temptation. We may worship God sincerely and then discover how quickly impatience, envy, selfishness, or anger rise when the circumstances are right. It’s easy to interpret that struggle wrongly though. “If the Holy Spirit really lived in me, why would I still be fighting this?” But Paul doesn’t present the conflict as evidence that the Spirit is absent. In many cases, the conflict exists precisely because the Spirit is present. Before Christ, there were desires we followed without seriously questioning them. Now there is another allegiance. Something within us has changed. We cannot make peace with sin in quite the same way because the Spirit is forming within us a love for what is holy. That does not mean we should become relaxed about sin. Paul takes the destructive power of the flesh extremely seriously. But it does mean that sanctification is not usually the story of temptation simply disappearing from the Christian life. It is the story of God forming within His people a new allegiance and teaching them to live according to a new source of life. That is why Paul’s command is to walk by the Spirit. Walking is ordinary. It's repeated. It happens through countless steps that rarely feel dramatic in themselves. We tend to remember the major spiritual moments of our lives: the sermon that changed something in us, the retreat where God met us, the crisis through which our faith deepened. God certainly uses those moments, but much of Christian formation happens somewhere less spectacular. It happens on an ordinary Tuesday. It happens in how we speak to our family when we are tired. It happens in what we do when someone corrects us. It happens in the thoughts we choose to entertain, the places our eyes linger, the words we speak when frustrated, the way we handle disappointment, and the decisions we make when nobody else will ever know. A fruitful life is formed through those ordinary steps. Walking by the Spirit means learning, gradually and repeatedly, to bring those steps under the lordship of Christ. What the Flesh Produces & What the Spirit Grows Paul goes on to describe what life

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Followers of Christ fighting back against doom scrolling, bringing light and salt into the digital landscape. Covering the everyday muses necessary to build the Kingdom of God here on earth within our everyday lives. christfocused.substack.com

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    Envoy by Christ Focused Network
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    62
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  • Copyright
    © Sam Johnston
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