Smorgasbord Tuesday: Fruit of the Spirit Self-Control

Okay, get out your box of Kleenex (sniff, sniff) this is the last week with the fruit of the Spirit! This has been a 9 week journey and I hope that you have had as much fun as I have had. Okay, I could go on and on but I'm really just stalling because today's fruit of the Spirit is self-control. Who really wants to talk about self-control? Anyone? I see no hands!

This journey began with the fruit of the Spirit love and I think that was the perfect start, because love is the foundation of this whole thing: knowing that we are loved by God and then giving love to all those around us. The journey ends with self-control and I again think this is the perfect ending to this topic. Just like we can't do any of this without love, self-control is the perfect way to get all those other things we talked about into action.

Self-control as a fruit of the Holy Spirit is a perfect example of this balancing act that we've been in this whole journey. One the one hand, these are fruits of the Holy Spirit and so we know that it is an attribute of God that we get to have in our lives. On the other hand, we know that these fruits aren't just "mystical" things bestowed on us without any effort on our part. Self-control is something that we need to put into action, but we also see that it is a fruit of the Spirit, so to have it in a life-changing way will not exist apart from our relationship with the Holy Spirit! I don't know how you've landed on this journey with understanding this balancing act but I've definitely leaned way more into the Holy Spirit to receive all these fruits than I ever have before, and self-control will be no exception!

As we probably all well know self-control is not an attribute of American culture rather the opposite of self-control i.e. self-indulgence is rampant in our society. From Nike's "Just Do It" to commercials that say "Have it NOW" we and our children are being bombarded by the exact opposite message. I am asking you to take an extra minute to step back with me and see exactly what the Bible has to say about the benefits of self-control in our lives.

Proverbs 25:28
Like a city whose walls are broken down
is a man who lacks self-control.

The full appreciation of this verse is lost on us because of cultural differences, but today's version might say "like a country whose missile defense system is broken, is a man who lacks self-control." As we see in this verse and will see in verses to come self-control is our system of protection. I believe one of the most important things you can teach your children is self-control. The ability to control yourself and not give in to every urge that comes your way will go a long way for your kids. Also, as I said earlier the other fruits such as patience and faithfulness will not work very well unless you have learned to control and stop those initial fleshly reactions.

If you read the book of Titus you will see the word self-control emphasized and given out to everyone. It asks older men, young men, older women and young women to be self-controlled. It also states that elders and deacons should exhibit self-control. We learn in II Timothy that the lack of self-control will be a sign of the last days. Let us, as the people of God, rise above our society and our culture and exhibit self-control and teach our children to be self-controlled. This is not something that is for the "mature" in Christ but it is a necessity for our protection and the protection of the church. We have seen far too often in our culture the damage that is done to the body of Christ when those in leadership are caught in a sin that took place because of the lack of self-control.

I Peter 5:8
Be self-controlled and alert.

Your enemy the devil prowls around

like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.

Resist him, standing firm in the faith.

This verse warns us to be self-controlled and alert. Guess what, you have an enemy out there prowling around and he is looking for a wide open door to run through. It seems like the lack of self-control is one of the ways of opening up the door to the enemy and saying pick on me, pick on me! We, however, can and should resist him and one of the ways we do this is through exhibiting self-control.

I Thessalonians 5:8
But since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled,

putting on faith and love as a breastplate,

and the hope of salvation as a helmet.

Putting Your Clothes on will be one of the ways you can operate in the area of self-control.

2 Corinthians 10:3-5
For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does.

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.

A second way to grow in the area of self-control in your life is to take this verses to heart and begin applying them. Take whatever area you are struggling in the area of self-control whether eating, anger, lust etc and begin to submit those thoughts to Christ. We have the power to demolish strongholds. Lets begin doing it!

Smorgasbord Tuesday: Fruit of the Spirit Gentleness

Maracuya (Passion Fruit)

We only have a couple weeks left looking at the fruits of the Spirit. I am kind of sad because I've really enjoyed the whole process. I've learned a lot about the Holy Spirit during this process; I hope that you have learned some new things too!

This week's fruit of the Spirit is gentleness. I think people tend to attribute this trait as a feminine quality, but the more I've been reflecting on it I think men can and should be really good at this fruit, too. I've come up with a definition of gentleness from “Jaime's dictionary:”

Gentleness:
the recognition that you have
the power to break, harm or destroy
the object you are interacting
with because it is precious, fragile
and inferior in power compared to you.
Because of this you choose to restrain your
power and instead use your power to
protect it for its benefit.

I came to this definition by thinking about when we tend to use the word gentle. The scenario that came to my mind was when we talk to toddlers who want to see a baby. The phrase you always hear is, “Be gentle.” Why? Because we recognize the toddler has the power to hurt the baby and that they need to consciously restrain their power in order for the baby to be protected from harm.

Like I said earlier I think as a society we tend to attribute gentleness as a feminine trait but I believe it can be a very masculine trait if men would recognize the meaning of gentleness.

Ephesians 6:4
Fathers, do not exasperate your children;
instead, bring them up in the training
and instruction of the Lord.

The Lord is very clear that fathers play an important role in training their children to know and understand the Lord. Men by design are powerful creatures in both statures and in word. One of the ways they can achieve the goal of bringing up their children is by treating their children with the gentleness and this can only be learned by being with the Lord.

Philippians 4:5
Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near.

I think this verse clearly points out that one of the evidences of the nearness to the Lord will be gentleness. If gentleness is lacking in your personal life I would suggest doing a few things. One is to get near the Lord. This can happen through prayer, worship, reading your Bible and fellowshipping with others.

The second thing I would suggest is to take time to reflect on what gentleness means. This understanding of gentleness has already started helping me respond to my kids in a more gentle way. I am recognizing that I have power with my words. My words can either destroy or protect their spirits. By consciously recognizing this fact it has helped me to restrain myself when I interact with them. I don't have to prove my “power” to them by being forceful with them. Often times, I think disciplinary struggles flare when there is a power struggle going on. In the end, the parents lose their tempers and gentleness is the farthest thing from their minds (of course I know this only from observation not experience :). The parent is trying to prove to the child that they are in control. However, when you eliminate the power struggle because you are the one in the place of power, you will find that it will be much easier to discipline and to do it with gentleness. You are the one in power in your relationship with your children you do not need to establish this over and over again. If you've “lost” that power with your children, then first reestablish this as a fact in your own mind. You are in control and you have the power to protect or crush your children's spirits. Since you have that power choose to restrain it and use it in a manner that protects and nurtures your child instead of in a way that crushes and destroys their spirits. (For more on parenting check out my post on Training Children.)

Finally, for the greatest understanding of gentleness meditate on the character of God. As we have seen with all the fruits; these character traits are from God ALONE and He blesses us with opportunity to have them in abundance in our lives. He is the All-powerful One. He is the Creator of the Universe! He is powerful we are not! He could choose to force Himself upon us and have us follow Him out of fear and trembling alone. Instead, He restrains His power and came to us in the form of a man, Jesus.

Zechariah 9:9
See, your king comes to you,

righteous and having salvation,

gentle and riding on a donkey,

on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

Matthew 11:29
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,

for I am gentle and humble in heart,

and you will find rest for your souls.

Or look at I Kings 10:11b-12

Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart
and shattered the rocks before the LORD,
but the LORD was not in the wind.

After the wind there was an earthquake,
but the LORD was not in the earthquake.

12 After the earthquake came a fire,
but the LORD was not in the fire.

And after the fire came a gentle whisper.

Look at God and how He desires to come to you. As we talked about last week He desires to bring us to repentance through kindness. He also has approached us with a gentle spirit. Gentleness in no way lessens who He is rather it enhances His amazing power.

I hope you enjoy this week basking in the gentleness of the Lord, and letting those around you benefit from His gentleness coming out of you!

Smorgasbord Tuesday: Fruit of the Spirit Faithfulness

This week's fruit of the spirit is faithfulness. I feel that I have a grasp of understanding about this fruit because of my husband. This month we will be married 8 years and we dated for 8 years, so we've been together for 16 years. During our wedding ceremony it was mentioned that one of my favorite qualities of Josh was his faithfulness. That quality still remains one of my favorite quality traits of him. If you have the opportunity to become Josh's friend you have made a friend for life. It doesn't matter if you turn your back on him, or reject him, he will remain faithful to you despite of you because his faithfulness is not dependent upon who you are but it is dependent upon who he is.

Because of this amazing quality trait in my husband I think I am able to have a greater understanding of the faithfulness of God.

2 Timothy 2:13
If we are faithless,

He will remain faithful,

for He cannot disown himself.

God's faithfulness to us is not dependent upon who we are but it is dependent upon His character. We can know without a doubt that God will never abandon us because it would go against His character, who He is, to do that. It has nothing to do with me or my faithfulness but it has everything to do with Him.

I feel blessed to be married to a man that has a genuine character trait of faithfulness. Now I know Josh is a human being, but I have no fears or qualms of him ever being unfaithful to me because I know it would go against the core of who he is. His being unfaithful would require him not only to breech our relationship but it would also require him to go against a core part of himself. Being in a relationship with someone who has a character trait of faithfulness does several things for you. One thing it does is it removes fear. I don't have to worry about what he is doing and I do not have to worry about our future together . I also don't have to try to be a certain way in order to keep his affections on me and me alone. Another thing faithfulness does it creates an atmosphere for trust. I can trust Josh and I can trust the activities that he is doing even when I'm not around because he has promised to be faithful.

I hope this description of my husband gives you a clearer understanding of God and His faithfulness. When we get a grasp of God's faithfulness towards us it will set us free to be ourselves. His love and commitment to us has nothing to do with who we are but has everything to do with who He is. He will not disown us, because to do so would cause Him to disown Himself. So we don't have to live in fear of losing God's faithfulness towards us and we don't have to try to be somebody else in order to keep His affections on us. He loves us just the way we are and He always will. When you remove this fear of abandonment trust can fill its place. If you truly believe that God will always be faithful to you and will never abandon you then you can trust Him through whatever circumstance you find yourself in. There may be times when you think He has left you, or that He is no where to be found. You don't have to fear though that He has given up on you, or found someone else to care about and so now He has no time for you anymore. Instead, you can trust that He has your best interest in mind, and even though you maybe can't see Him at the moment He is caring for you because He alone is the Faithful and True One (Revelation 19:11).

Reflect this week on the faithfulness of God to you. As always, I believe when you grasp the character of God not only in your head but in your heart it will begin to flow out of you naturally to others.

Finally, if fear and abandonment have been a part of your life story I truly believe God desires to speak to that wounded place in your heart. He has promised to never leave you or forsake you. He is asking for you to give Him the broken places of your heart and allow Him to move in them. Do not draw back in fear but let the Great Physician take the wounded places and breathe His life into them.

Smorgasbord Tuesday: Fruit of the Spirit Kindness

Whoops, I just realized I went out of order! Last week was supposed to be kindness not goodness, oh well. Anyway, how was your week with goodness? It ended up being my favorite week thus far. I had several situations where I needed God's goodness and I would pray before I entered the situation and say, “Lord, send your goodness.” It was exciting to watch and see what He would do. It was also exciting to think about all the good things in my life and to give Him all the glory for those things! How was your week with goodness? Did you learn anything new?

This week's fruit is kindness.

Romans 2:1-4
You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God's judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God's judgment? Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness leads you toward repentance?

Romans 2 shows a negative connection between judgment and kindness. So I thought we could focus on that this week. Kindness to me is being thoughtful, doing something nice for somebody whether a person deserves it or not. The Bible has a lot to say about not judging others and I personally am grateful for all those verses. Judging is something that I struggle with and I blogged about it before during Self-righteousness vs God's righteousness. Romans 2:4 always jumps out at me when I read it, “Did you not know that God's kindness leads you to repentance?” If you are anything like me, when you see a problem in someone else's life you want to get up in their face and help them extract it; right now! The last thing that comes to our mind is the idea of being kind to them right where they are at. Yet how is God with us? We think we have it all together especially when we are comparing ourselves to others, but slowly, kindly, and patiently God pulls back the layers in us and reveals to us another sliver. At that point in time, we can receive God's kindness, repent and allow Him to remove the sliver, or we can yank back and run away with the sliver still intact and the pain of having it exposed. We need to recognize the power of kindness to bring positive change.

Proverbs 25:21-23
If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat;

if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.

In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head,

and the LORD will reward you.

As usual, God asks us to treat people in a manner that is opposite of our natural reaction. God asks us to be kind to others whether they deserve it or not. Our job is not to worry about how they will respond to our kindness; whether they will react positively or negatively to it. What we do know is that God will operate through the pathway of kindness not judgment.

If you struggle with this concept the easiest place to start learning about it is by looking at your own life and how God treats you. When you recognize His kindness and mercy to you, it will begin to soften your heart and allow you to look at others through His eyes of kindness. So there is lots to do this week with the Spirit! Reflect on God's kindness towards you and begin to offer the fruit of His kindness to others.

Be blessed,

PS Today's the last day to comment, add e-mail subscription and/or follow my blog in order to qualify you to win one of the 2 books! I look foward to hearing from you.

Smorgasbord Tuesday: Fruit of the Spirit Goodness

Pulasan by the bunch by goosmurf

So how was patience exhibited in you this past week? I was satisfied with my week and found myself intentionally looking to the Holy Spirit when I needed patience. I often thanked Him when I got it. My sister Wendy, checked in on me too during the week and asked me how I was doing in the patience category. She mentioned that the topic of patience had been brought up in her home already 2-3 times early in the week. I love how the Holy Spirit will run through an open door to help bring light to a topic. If you have a minute let me know how patience operated in your life last week.

This week's topic is goodness. I realized as I was getting ready for the post this week that I don't recall ever hearing a sermon on this subject. In addition, I've never really contemplated what goodness actually means or tried specifically to ask the Holy Spirit for more of it in my life. Love, patience, joy ~ those are all things I've thought and heard a lot about. So I'm excited to spotlight this fruit this week. What I have to share in this post comes from what I've already started learning with the Holy Spirit.

I started out by typing "goodness" in the keyword search at Biblegateway.com and was able to see all the times it was used in the Bible. When the word shows up in the OT it is only used in reference to God not man. Then I was reminded of what Jesus said to the rich young ruler, "Why do you call me good? No one is good - except God alone (Mark 10:18)." After contemplating these two thoughts, I was then very humbled that the Holy Spirit offers us the opportunity to have goodness in our life. What I am continually astounded by as we are studying the fruits of the Spirit, is that the fruits are pieces of God, who He is as a person (comes through relationship not religion:). As Jesus said, only God is good, yet because of Jesus we are offered the gift to have goodness in our life. We not only benefit personally by having goodness in our life, but we also benefit others by offering them the goodness of God through our lives (check out How Do You Taste? for more on this topic).

My prayer for this week is rooted in Psalm 139:23-24:

Search me, O God, and know my heart;

test me and know my anxious thoughts.

See if there is any offensive way in me

and lead me in the way everlasting.

Goodness in our lives will only exist because of God and because He offers Himself to us. We need to submit our hearts to God on a daily basis. We learn from Galatians 5 that the fruit of the Spirit is our way to experience freedom in Christ. We have a daily battle occurring between our flesh man and our Spirit man. Just like exercise, it is not enough to know what to do. You can fill your brain with knowledge but at some point if you want to see results you need to apply what you have learned to your life. If you don't apply it you won't see the results. The same is true of our walk with God, it is not enough to know about the fruits, we need to put them into action when we come across a situation where the fruits need to be applied:

Romans 2:13

For it is not those who hear the law

who are righteous in God's sight,

but it is those who obey the law

who will be declared righteous.

So I encourage you to look to God this week to learn more about what His goodness in your life means and how it will look. Remember that:

Ephesians 2:10 says,

For we are God's workmanship,

created in Christ Jesus to do good works,

which God prepared in advance for us to do.

You are God's workmanship, He loves you and has offered all of His goodness to you. He has good works for you to do this week. Keep your eyes open and see how you can bless others on behalf of your Father.

Smorgasbord Tuesday: Fruit of the Spirit - Patience

Mahesh Kanna's Mangoes

So I'm starting to wonder what I was thinking 4 weeks ago when I thought it would be a good idea to go through the fruit of the Spirit. This journey for me has been like holding a big mirror up to my face and realizing it is full of dark permanent ink. In other words, yeah I need the Holy Spirit and His fruit in my life. The trees are looking awfully bear. How do you look?

Today's fruit is patience and I am by no means an expert on this fruit. I decided that if I were to ever have another child her name would be Patience because that was the next thing I needed to learn. Repeating the word, Patience, 20 times a day keeps the concept on the forefront of your mind! So like I said patience is not my greatest strength which gives me all the more reason to lean into the Holy Spirit.

I guess the theme that has been emerging for me during this journey the last 4 weeks is SURRENDER. I do; I surrender. You grow up a Christian, read the Bible, etc and people begin to look at you like you might be onto something. It starts to creep into your mind, yeah, I am something, I've got this thing down, I know how to be a Christian. Then, you look in the mirror, the word of God, and you realize left on your own you are still a dark stained mess:

Song of Solomon 1:5-6

I'm dark but lovely,

women of Jerusalem,

dark like the tents of Kedar,

like the curtains of Solomon.

Don't look at how dark I am,

at how dark the sun has made me.

My former pastor Shane Holden does a beautiful series on the book of the Song of Solomon relating it to our Christian walk. He hits on the verses above and talks about how we are dark, full of sin, but yet in God's eyes through His grace we remain lovely to Him. My point in all of this, is we need the Holy Spirit ~ like I've said before. If you see things in me that you like and enjoy, it is only there by the grace of God living through me (Put Your Clothes On! and Uprooting a Besetting Sin talk about some of the ways I've grown). I have a few friends that say to me, "Oh, your sooo patient." Well, guess what, I'm not! Any patience I do exhibit I give full credit to the Holy Spirit on those times because He has to reign me in a lot, but I often regrettable escape His grasp and go ahead with what I want to do. We are still working on this one together.

So here is a definition of patience for you scholarly types: The capacity to endure hardship, difficulty, or inconvenience without complaint. Patience emphasizes calmness, self-control, and the willingness or ability to tolerate delay (from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/patience).

If you are like me and patience isn't your strong point, join the club. You need the Holy Spirit and like I said, He will grab a hold of you: your tongue, your thoughts, your actions if you let Him. And when you fail, you jump back into His arms and say, "Let's try it again. You go first this time."

So pull out your journals and let loose. Remember, if you leave a comment, you will get your name entered into the drawing for Sailing Between the Stars by Stephen James.

Love ya,

Smorgasbord Tuesday: Fruit of the Spirit ~ Peace

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zenera/582873622/

So how are you doing? We are on week three of "feasting on the Holy Spirit." The last two weeks we looked at love and joy. Today's fruit is Peace.

John 16:7

Nevertheless I tell you the truth;

It is expedient for you that I go away:

for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you;

but if I depart, I will send him unto you.

Today I've decided to discuss the idea of peace by looking at the Holy Spirit as a Comforter. Why and when do we need peace? We need peace when things are a mess. One of the modes I believe the Holy Spirit brings us peace is through the mode of comfort. Before Jesus died, He promised the disciples that the Holy Spirit would come. One of the main ways He chose to describe the Holy Spirit was that the Holy Spirit is a Comforter. This isn't just a "job" of the Holy Spirit but rather it is who He is ~ just like God is love. If you are needing peace and comfort in your life right now you need the Holy Spirit. You don't need a list of things to do, or a new way of thinking. You need the Holy Spirit period. That is why this Christianity thing comes down to a relationship and it is not a list of rules and things to do.

Philippians 4:6-7

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything,

by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving,

present your requests to God. And the peace of God,

which transcends all understanding,

will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

The kind of peace and comfort that the Holy Spirit brings transcends our understanding. Why? Because the Holy Spirit will walk with us through ANYTHING. The peace of the Holy Spirit is not a free pass to get us out of hardship and trouble, rather He stands before us in the midst of hardship and trouble and guards our hearts because our hearts are the wellsprings of our lives (Proverbs 4:23).

No matter what you are going through I continue to pray that you will allow the Holy Spirit to be who He is and to do what He does best in your life. He is COMFORTER and He brings peace which passes all understanding. He will guard your heart.

So if you are journaling on this journey ~ hit your journals. How is love growing in your life? How about joy? What areas in your life do you need the Holy Spirit to be the Comforter and bring that peace?

Be Blessed,

Smorgasbord Tuesday: Joy

So we are currently going through the fruit of the Spirit on our Smorgasbord Tuesdays. Last week the fruit was love. How did it go for you (please share:)? It was actually harder than I thought it would be. The Lord gave more than enough opportunities to show love; and frankly a lot of the time, I did not feel like loving. I kept hearing "ask the Holy Spirit for love" and I found myself saying, "I don't feel like loving right now, so I'm not going to ask." Just being honest. So I think I went down on my number instead of up. I'm still in agreement with what I said last week, we need the Holy Spirit to help us to love but we do need to ask even when we don't feel like it.

This week's fruit is joy. I've been thinking about the topic all week and I want to say joy is deep and wide and I am only going to skim the surface of it with what I've been thinking about.

I Thessalonians 5:16-18 Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

James 1:2-4 Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

The Bible makes it pretty clear that joy is an essential to a successful walk in faith. People want to know what God's will is it's pretty simple: be joyful ALWAYS, pray continually, always give thanks! Yikes, not so easy is it? That is where the Holy Spirit comes in again. As I said last week, we need to invite the Holy Spirit to do what He is more than willing to do. Our flesh, as I experienced last week, wants nothing to do with God's way. It wants to rebel and say no. Joy in whatever circumstance you face I would surmise is impossible if you are not receiving it through the Holy Spirit. We don't have to be joyful at the circumstance, but joy is what gets us through the circumstance. Perhaps joy is the light that bring us through the darkness. My former Pastor Shane Holden said, "No matter how bad things get in this life, you always know that when this life is over we are going to heaven and then things don't look so bad." James said consider is pure joy because of what it will produce. Jesus, "endured the cross because of the joy set before Him (Hebrews 12:2)." He is our example of how to be joyful and we can only learn this kind of joy by fixing our eyes in Him.

The world views faith as a crutch for weak-minded people. They just don't see or understand, how tough it actually is to walk in God's way. He asks us to do some pretty hard things but guess what, He doesn't expect or ask us to do it on our own. Instead, He asks us to surrender to Him and allow Him to work and move through us to do the impossible. So this week work on inviting the Holy Spirit to bring joy into your life ~ no matter what circumstance you find yourself in at this moment in time.

Okay, so I said joy is complicated and deep. This is just one tiny facet of joy. I am passing along a sermon which hits it from a completely different angle but I personally found it very informative in understanding what joy actually is:

"Advent Joy" by Elliot Pollasch 11/30/08

In addition I blogged about this topic a couple weeks back: Joy

Finally, John Eldredge addresses joy a lot in his book Walking with God, so that's another place to begin diving deeper.

Oh, and you can always read the Bible: there are 248 verses containing the word joy!

So don't forget to write in your journal about where you are with the concept of joy, so you can look back over the upcoming weeks to see what you've learned.

Be blessed,

Smorgasbord Tuesday: The Fruit of the Spirit: LOVE

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bithead/30909049/

So I've decided we will study the Fruit of the Spirit for the next 9 Smorgasbord Tuesdays. Summer is approaching (it's dragging it's feet in WI) and the thought of wearing a swimsuit is upon us. If you are like me, you may have to shed a little of that winter coat you collected over the last 6 months. My sister Wendy and I are doing Jillian's 30 Day Shred together; for us it is more like Jillian's 45-50 day shred, with a few treats in between (it's the thought that counts right?).

Anyway, as I am trying to clean up my diet and exercise it always turns me to applying God's Word into my life(way more enjoyable to me than exercise); hence the idea to study the fruit of the Spirit, to make our spiritual lives more healthy. How do you get fruit in your physical part of life? You either go to the grocery store, or you go directly to the source the fruit tree. You can't just pick it though, you need to eat it in order to get the benefits. The same it true in our Christianity. Do you want the fruit of the Spirit in your life? All you need to do is go to the source and ask for it. Other ways you can "taste" it is by hearing it at church or by reading the Word on your own. But very simply, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, you have the Holy Spirit inside of you, tapping His toes waiting for you to give Him permission to move. Start asking Him for His help and you will see the difference that it makes.

So this week's fruit is LOVE. What is love? Love is patient, it is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not self-seeking, it keeps no record of wrong, it always trusts, always hopes, always preservers. Love comes first, in the list of the fruit because it is the foundation of our lives; nothing is of value if it doesn't contain love. We love because He first loved us. The greatest commandments are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and then to love others. We can't successfully live this life without love. The way to be most successful at living this life is to go to the source who lives inside of you, who wants to help you and teach you how to love!

So here is what I'm asking you to do. If you don't have a journal you should have one! (Don't worry, I only write in mine at least once a month...) Anyway, write down the fruit of the week in your journal and put the rank you would give yourself currently in applying this to your life (from 1 ~ I stink to 10 ~ I've got this down pat!). Now this week take the fruit of the week and apply it to your life ~ not on your own strength though but by asking the Holy Spirit! I'm not about us gritting our teeth and pushing through, because that only lasts for so long. I'm about us experiencing the real freedom that comes only through the working of the Holy Spirit. Next week I will remind you to look back at your journal and write your new number and see if there has been any difference. Get the idea?

Be excited! I am.