Christians, the word of God is powerful, prayer is essential and fasting is beneficial.
But… we can read the Bible, fast and pray all day… then someone “presses our buttons the wrong way” and they get from us a bad reaction instead of the fruit of the Spirit or what we could describe as “the heart of the Lord.”
True or not true? For me it’s true.
It’s easy to confuse time spent in spiritual activities with actual real Christian virtue in everyday life.
How do we bear this fruit? It’s the fruit of the Spirit.
Our flesh is our biggest enemy as born again Christians. We can be either in the flesh or in the spirit… meaning we can, in a given situation, be motivated and led by our carnal nature or by the Holy Spirit. It’s one or the other.
In times of testing, in that crucial moment, what counts is not all my previous spiritual activity but am I willing to take up my cross and follow Jesus in that moment?
That’s when the cross becomes the key to victory… not only for Jesus… the cross is now mine to take daily.
To take the cross is to be ready to deny the flesh. To deny the flesh is impossible without the grace of God and the work of the Holy Spirit in my life.
The result? The fruit of the spirit in us showing something of the heart of the Lord to others… especially those closest to us.
- Mark Saunders