What I'm holding in my hand here is a glove. Now the glove by itself is very flat and it's kind of limp and useless, really. I cannot do anything with it. I can't grasp anything with it. It can't move, really. It has no life or dynamism in itself. But it's still a glove.

Now, I want you to remember that, because I'm going to compare the glove with a Christian today.

But I want you to notice now the difference. When my hand goes inside the glove, it comes to life. It takes the shape of my hand.

It takes the movement of my hand. As my hand move, the glove moves. My fingers and my thumb

causes glove to come alive. Then when I show you first,

everything my hand can do, this glove can do, right?

Why?

Because my hand is formed inside the glove.

And the glove takes on the shape of my hand. Now, today I'm going to

submit to you that 21st century Christians in the West are like this glove. Anemic, ineffectual,

defeated, and immature. They may have started well, but then they got stuck in a spiritual ditch somewhere.

They may have started well, but their growth got stunted. They may have started in God's power.

But then they end up with self-help and self-positive thinking? Why? Paul gives us the answer in Galatian

chapter 4. I want you to know, as you're finding it in your Bibles, that verse 19 of Galatians 4

is the bedrock of the entire chapter. It is the foundational stone of the whole chapter.

My little children, for whom I am again in pains of childbirth until Christ, is what?

Formed in you. What does that mean? What does it mean? Here's the glove again. My hand is formed in

this glove. In the same way, we are only effective when Christ is fully formed in us. We are only

having power in life to defeat sin, having victory in life when Christ is formed in us.

We can only bear fruit when Christ is born in us and formed in us.

And Paul here in Galatians chapter 4 is in anguish.

I wish you get the depth of the meaning of that word. Anguish.

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