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Showing posts from June, 2017

Good fruit: Spiritual Growth in and out of Season

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The bible describes one of the fruit of the Spirit as goodness. The Holy Spirit within us can somehow produce good fruit. This is contrasted with the fruit of the flesh. If we "live in the Spirit" we will not exhibit fleshly fruit. The Bible says that these are contrary to each other. We naturally produce worldly fruit but it must take some supernatural fertilizer to produce spiritual fruit right? Living in the spirit is making the conscience effort to step back and allow God to lead your life. When we make decisions, one thing leads to another and that is how a life is formed. Your previous knowledge and previous choices have led you to the life that you experience today. But what if you had a fork in that road and chose to follow God down a different street? Then His knowledge would change the trajectory of your life. That is how living in the Spirit is. It takes you from living life on your own terms to readjusting your life for spiritual growth that produces good fruit.

Good Grief

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It is good to grieve. It is helpful and healing. When we wait to let go of things that bother us, we tend to emotionally "constipate" ourselves. Sometimes we are backed up with hurtful thoughts and feelings especially in our closest relationships. As a wife, I was queen of stuffing things inside. I would wait and wait to share some of my most deep heartfelt issues with Maurice. I figured that I was overreacting. On a good day, I would say that I was just a forgiving person, but the truth was, that I was not dealing with my emotions in a healthy way. I needed to grieve. Sometimes it was something simple, other times it was overwhelming. When things would finally surface, I would find myself very angry and I would not communicate well at all. Grieving is not just for when we lose someone close to us. It is also for other loses as well. Consider these: Sometimes we grieve our sinful habits! We no longer engage in certain activities and we miss them. There may be broken rel

Not good Enough

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When I measure myself by other people, one of two things happen. Either I am not good enough or I am better by comparison. However, when I use God's ruler, I always come up short on holiness. Always. There is just no way that my goodness even comes close to His greatness! The enemy loves to tell us that we are better than we really are.  He did it to Eve. In the book of Genesis, everything God made was good. Even the trees were good for food. The first mention of evil is in regards to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (Genesis 2:9,17). God said not to touch it or eat it. "Did God really say that you could eat of every tree in the garden?", whispered the serpent. Eve's current level of knowledge was not good enough for her, so she desired to be wise "like God" as the serpent suggested. We often figure that what we have, what we drive, our relationships and our money are simply not enough. We crave more than our current paradise. In this pa