Galatians 2
Rebecca Lightfoot
One of the things we need to be so very careful of, is being wrongly influenced by anything...,especially religious/churchy cliques or even church leaders that may have influence on us.This is what happened to Peter and even Barnabas when they allowed certain religious/churchy cliques to influence who they hung out with/ate with.Galatians 2:11-13,”When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned.For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group.The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.”Here Paul is saying that Peter and Barnabas were being led astray from the “truth of the Gospel”(Gal2:14).I do the same thing when I let what others think and say concern me/influence me more than what God says in His Word,and what Jesus says through His Life,Sufferings,Death,Resurrection,& Ascension.We tend to let our faith get lazy & misdirected when we begin to let what others say and think become part of the foundation of our thinking without first seeking to distill everything through the Word of God with the help of The Holy Spirit(2Cor10:4-5”The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”).It happens to the best of us...it even happened to Peter and Barnabas!Fortunately,Peter and Barnabas had a faithful friend n Paul, in that he was more concerned about the “Truth of the Gospel” than what was going on in churchy cliques and even churchy leadership.Paul had written 2Cor10:4-5 addressing the same challenge in Corinth...now he was personalizing the same message with two of his closest brothers n Christ.Dear Lord,I have been guilty of this very thing in my life,over and over...to not only my detriment,but to that of those closest to me...forgive me...Help me to be more aware of my tendencies to b influenced by anything other than “The Truth of The Gospel”,and lead me to a 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 mindset.