Wow. With this being the first blog of the website, I have to say – welcome! I honestly cannot believe that this goal of mine is finally a reality.

As this is the first entry, let me explain how this will work.

Every Monday and Thursday, I will make a post corresponding to the chapters in whatever book we are going through (ex: today we are starting in Galatians; today will be chapter 1, Thursday chapter 2, and so on), and at the end of the book, we will summarize the book, and go over what Biblical principles we can apply to our lives.

I started independently studying books of the Bible about a year ago, and dissecting each book chapter by chapter is the easiest way for me to take in as much information as possible. I started with Paul’s letters in the New Testament because I wanted to start my Bible study journey with replacing my worldly thoughts, actions, and principles with Biblical ones.

We will start in the book of Galatians, and today we’ll be going through the first chapter!

Paul starts this letter with a greeting that contains recognizing himself as “an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead.” This greeting sticks out to me because Paul points out that he does not follow man – he worships God and God alone.

In verse 6, Paul begins his message to the Galatians by saying that he is “astonished that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you in the grace of Christ.” Whenever I read that, I think to myself, “How could someone ever turn away from God?” until I put my name into the text. “Anne, I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting Him.”

And that’s tough to take, but the Bible is supposed to convict and correct you. The truth is, in one way or another, we have all put something above God. After humbling myself, I came up with some questions that come to mind that we can ask ourselves when we start to feel prideful in our doings.

Why is it so easy for us to dismiss God, but have no hesitance for worldly things?

What do you prioritize? — or if you want to get real — Who is your god?

Yikes. That’s a tough pill to swallow.

It’s easy to think about the important things in our lives as priorities; however, I think it becomes difficult when we start to realize that the things we see as “important” are really the things we worship. The things you worship in your life become your god. Now, I know what you’re thinking. “But Anne, I don’t worship these things in my life, they’re just really important to me.” And to that I ask, how important? Let me give you an example. Let’s say there’s an event at your kids’ school on a Sunday morning, or that there’s a big baseball game (go Braves) the same night your Bible study group meets. See, if I stay at home to watch the Braves game without even thinking about my small group, then my priorities have already been switched, and baseball has become my god. Or if you decide to go to that parent meeting with your kid’s principal, then your child’s school – or even your child – has become your god. And whether you realize it or not, you have influence – there is always someone who notices your actions. Whether it’s your child’s homeroom teacher praising you for making it to that meeting, or your roommate who’s used to seeing you leave for Bible study, the people around us notice what we do. We have influence in everything that we do – and we are influenced in many other things we do.

Do you see where I’m headed with this topic?

We have to be careful of not just the influence we are giving others – knowingly or otherwise – but we also have to recognize where we are being influenced. The question “Who is your god?” then becomes “Are you allowing a new god in your life because of the influence of people around you?”

We’re all humans (well, most of us). We all want to be liked. But can that be a bad thing? Like anything else, of course it can. We all want approval from others, but why do we feel like it is necessary? We can say we don’t care about the opinions of others all we want, but the truth is that (in one way or another) we ALL seek validation from someone or something that is not God. But Paul preaches against this. If we go down to verse 10, we see that Paul says, “For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.”

So, again, why are we so worried about what others think of us? Those people you want validation from don’t determine your eternity. Only God can do that. In the summer of 2023, I wrote and delivered a message on this very topic for my youth group at church. I talked about how, whether we want to admit it or not, we are all afraid of judgement from others in one way or another. And honestly, I still am sometimes. Even starting this blog, I felt afraid of what others would think of me. But I was looking back on my text messages with my pastor at the time, and he said, “it’s not Anne teaching, it’s God teaching through Anne.” Little did I realize that Paul says the very same thing in the next section – in verses 11 and 12. “For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel. For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.”

God is always working in our lives. He’s definitely worked in mine.

If you’ve ever seen the movie Wonder, you remember the line, “You can’t fit in when you were born to stand out.” I think that is more than just a happy-go-lucky principle to add to our lives – I believe it is absolutely biblical. Paul talks about when God “set me apart before I was born” (v. 15) and this is where I see the biblical comparison to a simple saying that got popular 6 or 7 years ago (how crazy is it that 2017 was 7 years ago??). We are to be set apart for God simply because that is how we were created. 1 Peter 2:9 says that we are “a chosen race” and “a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.”

You and I are to be set apart for Christ, and we are to live as such. One of my mottos is “walk with Christ, live like Christ, love as Christ,” and I read that in my prayer journal every day.

The takeaways from this chapter can be summed up in a few major points:

• Be careful of what you prioritize,
• You have influence and you are influenced daily,
• The people around you do not determine your eternity, and
• You are called to be set apart for Christ.

I’ll end this entry with one last thing. Remember how I said God is always working in our lives? He is working in yours, too. One reason why I cannot be convinced that God isn’t read is because He turned a persecutor into the man who wrote 28% of the New Testament and arguably the most memorable apostle. There is nothing that God cannot do. No matter who you are or what you’ve done, God loves you and wants a relationship with you.

That’s all for today, everybody. Next time, we’ll dissect chapter 2 of Galatians, and talk about what else Paul says about faith.

With love,

Anne :)