Galatians 5:16 This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.

Sojourn is defined as a temporary stay. It does not feel like a stay does it? It feels like a journey and when it is used in the bible it is most often used in reference to traveling in a place that is not your home.

We are born into this world and for the longest time it is all we know. This world is our home but yet we are promised that it is not. It is all we know. This is the life we experience every day. Yet the promise is a new life, an abundant life, but it is here in this world where we are born. We are still here temporarily yet the amount of time that we spend “in the Spirit” makes us feel like that life is where we are sojourners.

I have spent hundreds of hours writing thousands of words and hundreds of pages in describing how to “Walk in the Spirit”. I lived out that writing over years and when I got through, I felt I had not explained anything. Words cannot replace doing.

This world we live in is a familiar place. It is literally all we know in sight, sound, taste and touch. It is sensual. This verse in Galatians says as much. Walking in the spirit is a denial of those senses, or at least those things that our senses lead us to do. Walking in the spirit is the closest thing we have as Christians to being home. It is all we have in this world that belongs to our home to come.

We should experience as much as possible this “Walking in the Spirit” while we are in this strange land so that when we go home, we will be at home.

Deuteronomy 6:5 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

This is the passage read in the pastor’s sermon. Here are my notes from that verse.

“All we are is His, a given self is being lost in Christ.”

Let me first say that the pastor did not say or preach that. I cannot say that any one specific thought gave birth to that note. Over the years I have been impressed with things like the worship song, I Surrender All, Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost for His Highness, and even secular imaging of “Lost in Your Love”. What might have happened is a composite of truths that were summarized in just one moment.

I give it to you to understand it from your own experience. Your depth of experience with love will be different than mine. It is not better or deeper or more profound than anyone else. It is yours. I can tell you what it means to me, they are my notes. Only you can take a verse and make it personal.

I will be the first to admit that surrendering yourself to another is scary. You feel out of control. If you have control issues you may find that difficult if not impossible. I dare say that when most of us come to Christ the last thing we are thinking about is surrender. I was in pain and I just wanted the pain to stop. At that particular moment in my life I wasn’t thinking about love.

1 Corinthians 13:11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

It is not a coincidence that this verse appears right after the bibles best description of how love acts.

1 John 4:18a There is no fear in love;

Being lost in Christ is not a fearful thing.