Category: Fruit of the Spirit

  • Daily Grind

    God hand blends us to serve

    I have a confession to make … I enjoy a good cup of coffee. As with most things, too much coffee is not good for you, but in moderation it does no harm.


    I will also confess that I’m no connoisseur, but I do prefer some coffees over others. I don’t know the difference between Jamaican Blue Mountain, Hawaiian Kona or any other specialty blend. I might be able to tell them apart, but that would be the extent of my ability. I couldn’t tell which one was a “better” blend; I just know that I like some blends more than others.


    In Canada, the coffee shop is the social equivalent of the British pub. It’s where people gather for a beverage and a bite over some conversation. I have been frequenting one chain for more than 30 years, I won’t identify it by name, but it has brought the expression “double-double” (meaning double cream and double sugar) into broad usage and it is not four-bucks.


    Coffee is made from the roasted and ground beans of the Arabica or Robusta coffee plant. There are many other varieties of coffee but only these two groups are used as many of the others are toxic. Within the Arabica and Robusta groups are hundreds, perhaps thousands of sub-varieties making the selection of coffee virtually unlimited, certainly too varied for my undiscerning taste buds.

    As I emptied yesterday’s filter basket and started to make a fresh pot for the day, I meditated on coffee beans.

    Coffee beans truly are an amazing thing. You can make a cup of coffee just by soaking the beans in cold water. It would be weak and flavorless, but it would still be coffee.

    Or you can roast and grind a bean blend that is to your taste fresh every day and brew with boiling hot water. Same coffee and same water, but what a difference in the results. Just the application of some heat combined with a little crushing and grinding make all the difference in the world.

    That’s the way God works in our lives too. Oh He can and will use a hardened heart like Pharaoh or Judas Iscariot, but what a difference when He works with a willing heart. Yes we’ll undergo the heat from the trials of life. Yes we will be ground and shaped. When that happens though, the sweetest of all brews results.

    But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also behave in accordance with the Spirit. Galatians 5:22-24 NET

    Now God doesn’t grow us all in the same place, nor does He heat or grind us all in the same way. Different coffees from different regions, combined, produce differing flavor coffees. It is the same with us. He chooses us, heats us and grinds us to make us the best possible “brew” with our lives.

    Are you going to work with Him to allow the most delightful cup or will you fight Him all the way and end up with a weak flavorless cup?

    Until next time, may you learn to understand the trials of life are managed by God and give thanks.

    Kevin

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  • There Is No Fruit of the Spirit without Holy Spirit

    puffball mushrooms

    Ah, the humble mushroom. There are approximately  20,000 classified varieties, with more being catalogued all the time. They come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. These colorful and often strange-looking organisms have been used in cooking and traditional medicine for millennia.

    This morning’s pic is a puffball mushroom, one of several varieties. Actually, that isn’t quite accurate. This is the fruit of a puffball mushroom.

    The puffy bodies of mushrooms that we are familiar with are only a small part of the mushroom. The larger portion of the fungus is its extensive mycelium, hidden beneath the earth or other substrates.

    The mycelium can be massive. According to one source, “The largest known living organism on earth is a fungus – an underground mycelial mat of the honey fungus in the Blue Mountains of Oregon, covering an incredible 2,385 acres.”

    If there is no mycelium, there is no mushroom fruit.

    The same holds true in the spiritual realm. If there is no Holy Spirit at work in us, there can never be fruit of the Spirit.

    For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 1 Corinthians 2:11-14

    The Holy Spirit allows us to discern things of the Spirit. It gives us the seed to grow spiritually. We nurture those seeds through spiritual disciplines such as reading Scripture, prayer, worship, serving, fasting, confession of sin, and more.

    All the spiritual disciplines in the world cannot grow the fruit of the Spirit if we don’t have Him. People of many faiths practice spiritual disciplines, in truth, often putting Christians to shame with their devotion and faithfulness. Yet, in the end, their efforts will prove fruitless because they don’t have Him. 

    Are you seeing the fruit of the Spirit in your life? Certainly, fruit is seasonal, and some fruit takes longer to mature than others, but if there is none, there is a problem.

    You may need to stop and ensure you are right with the Lord. Then you need to nurture what He has provided. 

    My prayer is that you become increasingly conformed into the image of Jesus and bear a vast harvest of the fruit of the Spirit. May your life reflect Him well.

    Be blessed

    Hallelu Yah / Praise God 

    Kevin

    Gleanings From The Word – Experience an extraordinary God in ordinary life. 

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    Fruit of the Spirit
    Every Member Is Necessary — 1 Corinthians 12