How to Stand Fast in Your Faith: A Message for Gisborne

From the sermon preached on August 2, 2026

Standing firm in faith is not about gritting your teeth and trying harder until you run out of energy. It is about knowing what you have already been given and refusing to hand it back. Pastor Greg Freyer's message from Galatians 5:1 explains why so many people, inside and outside of church, keep circling back to old patterns, and what it actually takes to stop.

Pastor Greg opened by admitting something most of us feel but rarely say out loud: history has a way of repeating itself, in nations, in businesses, and in our own lives, unless something actually changes. He pointed back to the story of Abraham, a man who tried to solve his own problem before he learned to trust a promise instead. That old story, Pastor Greg said, is still the clearest picture we have of the difference between earning something and receiving it.

This post walks through the three parts of that message: where the pattern of trying to earn our way started, what it means to actually be children of promise, and why standing firm in faith is something you choose again every single day, not something you settle once and forget.

Pastor Greg took the church back to Genesis 15, where Abraham had nothing to offer God except his own uncertainty. Abraham had no heir, no plan, and no way to fix that on his own. God told him to look at the stars and simply believe a promise he could not yet see fulfilled, and Genesis 15:6 says Abraham believed the Lord, and it was counted to him for righteousness.

That is the heart of faith over works salvation. Sarah could not wait, so she gave her servant Hagar to Abraham, and Ishmael was born from a human plan rather than a divine promise. Isaac came later, born only because God kept his word, not because anyone engineered it.
Pastor Greg used that contrast to show that faith over works salvation was never a new idea invented for modern churches; it goes all the way back to the first family God called out.

The honest, uncomfortable part of faith over works salvation is admitting that most of us still default to Sarah's approach. We try to manage our own outcomes and call it faith. A small, honest step this week is naming one place where you have been trying to manage an outcome instead of trusting God with it.

Pastor Greg then turned to Galatians 4:28, where Paul tells the church in Galatia that they, like Isaac, are children of God's promise. That phrase, children of God's promise, was not meant as a vague comfort. It described people whose identity rested on something settled rather than something they were still hoping might work out.

He illustrated this with his own kids at Christmas, rattling off wish lists they had no real claim to, simply hoping a gift might appear. Being children of God's promise is the opposite of that kind of hoping. First John 3:1 says we are called the sons of God because of what he has already done, not because of what we might eventually earn.

Pastor Greg was honest that this promise does not remove every hard thing from life; it gives you solid ground to stand on while hard things happen anyway. One small step here is simply naming, out loud or in a journal, one promise from scripture you are choosing to stand on this week rather than just hoping about.

This is where Pastor Greg landed on Galatians 5:1: stand fast, therefore, in the liberty with which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Freedom from sin bondage was never meant to be a one-time experience you look back on fondly; it is something you keep choosing not to walk away from.

He told the story of Desmond Doss, a World War II medic who refused to carry a weapon on conviction, yet ran back into gunfire on Okinawa's Maeda Escarpment 75 times to carry wounded soldiers to safety. Doss later said he simply repeated to himself, "just one more," each time he went back. Pastor Greg connected that same quiet, repeated choice to what it looks like to stand fast in freedom from sin bondage day after day, not just once.

Standing firm in faith, he said, is rarely one dramatic moment. It is choosing, one more time, not to go back to what used to control you. A practical step this week is picking one specific old pattern and telling one trusted person that you are not going back to it.

Galatians 5 sits right at the hinge of Paul's letter, moving from doctrine into daily practice. Galatians 5:1 is the verse Pastor Greg kept returning to, because it names both the freedom already given and the danger of trading it back for something familiar.

This table is not about picking a side intellectually; it is about noticing which column describes how you have actually been living this year.

Standing firm in faith rarely happens in isolation. It happens in the middle of ordinary weeks, whether that is an early shift near the port in Kaiti or a quiet evening at home in Mangapapa. The same questions about bondage, freedom, and what you can actually stand on show up whether you live close to the river or further out toward the wider Tairāwhiti region.

Bay Light Baptist Church meets most Sunday mornings, and Pastor Greg would rather sit and listen to your week than convince you of anything. Whether Gisborne, Kaiti, or Mangapapa feels like home, there is a low-pressure place nearby where these same questions get talked through out loud.

Pastor Greg's message traced one long thread from Abraham's uncertainty to Paul's charge in Galatians 5:1: what God promises, he keeps, and what he has freed you from, he does not ask you to go back and re-earn. Standing firm in faith is not a one-time decision made at an altar years ago; it is Desmond Doss's quiet "just one more," repeated for the rest of your life.

If you would rather start with a conversation before you ever walk through a door, Pastor Greg is happy to have one; join us here.

If you want to take a next step toward Bay Light, plan your visit here.