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| Good Fruit. Photo Credit: Google |
Been thinking about eternity, and what matters.
How Jesus says 'verily verily' before the issues he wants you to take to your heart.
My random thoughts though are on how to remain fruitful as a believer. I am not certain if I feel fruitful. It is not because I am not doing, or doing activities that make me feel like a Christian. It is because I have not been walking with my Father. I have been trying to work for God, work for validation as usual.
One of the ways I know I am not walking with God is when distractions/sin try to sneak in and take my attention away from what matters. It means that I might still be holding the phone and talking in the earpieces but it might have gotten disconnected.
Strangest things: A gift can still be working even when intimacy has been lost. How sad, when intimacy is the most valuable thing, it is having a piece of God, it is having all of God inside of you.
Holy Spirit, help Your own. (Moi).
So in order to renew my mind a bit, so that in the midst of all the hullabaloo, I can see what matters most. I don't have it all together most of the time but I have a God who takes care of me.
And when it seems like I have it all together, I just might be depending on self which is never good. The goal is to depend on the Spirit of God to be to us everything that we need to run our Christian race and win.
So much to talk about but the focus is Peter and His talks on how to have a fruitful Christian life.
2 Peter 2:1-2
1Rid yourselves, therefore, of all malice, deceit,hypocrisy, envy, and slander. 2Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation.
There was a time I once was unknown and no one cared to slander me. Once I could be slandered and resist it. I was reading one of the devotionals I read regularly and the author said, resist defending yourself, and I realized that I hadn't. There were times I didn't, and not resisting was the flesh speaking.
Another version calls it the sincere milk of God's word.
Hmmm. Sincere o. Help us Holy Spirit to be sincere. To take the sincere milk of God's word. To receive the word that builds us up. To not hear through one ear and lose the encouragement through the other because the earth is more real to us than heaven. Or escaping hurt is more important than staying open to you.
Would I go back?
No. Where I am is a blessed place. I have God's help available to me.
God is saying in this verse, rid yourself. So it is something that can be done. God never asks us to do what can't be done.
Malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy and slander. Rid yourself of them.
This is my mission for 2019. I like the place where I am but some pruning must be done for some things have crept in unawares. I am not trying to be perfect. I am choosing to do the word of God even when it seems so tough to get it done. I want God proud of me and I want the Holy Spirit helping me daily. I don't want to be part of the contributing factor to delaying myself from what God has for me. Help me, Holy Ghost.
So I will use this therapy:
2 Pet 1:5-9
I want people to matter to me because God cares about people, I want the word of God to matter more.
Be diligent.
Be diligent to add something to the faith you have.
Thank God for the faith I have in God. Thank God for the faith of God that is at work in me. God expect me to add virtue to it.
Virtue for each individual is the excellence corresponding to the talents committed to him. God expects you to become excellent in the administration of the gift of God, the talents, the virtue, the endowments that He has bestowed on you. He expects you to become excellent in relating to your family and friends. To everyone you come across daily. This is your responsibility.
He wants you to grow in the knowledge of God, in the knowledge and application of the anointing, in the knowledge of the Holy Spirit, what pleases Him and what grieves Him. He wants you to understand how He expects you to walk by studying and seeking Him out. He wants you to understand all that you would require to be successful in your spiritual life. He wants you to know
And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness;
God wants you to have self control. Without self control you would not be able to have reign over your spirit and over situation and circumstances. He wants you to practice self control in all things. He needs you to rule over your flesh by the Spirit of God.
He wants you to be patient with yourself and with others. I have been finding myself hating patience. When altercations happen and God is holding me responsible, I have found myself getting angry and insisting that He hold other Christians responsible and not just me.
Kingdom is about responsibility. So I have taken responsibility that came from my lack of patience which was as a result of my lack of trust in God. I must trust at all times that God is good to me. He is good, yes. He is also good to me and mine. He's a good Father and He can be trusted without me throwing on others who are fallible because they are human. Even I am fallible when I don't depend on the Holy Ghost. So my responsibility is to draw nearer to the Lord. When I come to Him, He comes even closer. He is willing always.
He expects me to be godly even when I am tempted to behave ungodly like the ungodly and the compromising Christian.
I forget that the compromising Christian does not get the best of God. I want His best. I want to seek Him in the morning and in the evening. He is like my very needed air supply. Why would I go after carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide when I have oxygen.
And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.
He want me having brotherly kindness, and love. I know what a sacrifice it is, because this is what Jesus gave. I know what the counterfeit looks like because I have the Holy Ghost and I know when what I am giving is not the real deal. God delights in the real deal. When we present ourselves as a living sacrifice and give brotherly kindness and love, the recipients know they have been touched by God because humanity is naturally selfish but God is love.
To die to self and to love like Jesus is to be under the influence and control of Yahweh the King of kings.
For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
This part does not need too much English. When we do the above, we know that we will be fruitful in our knowledge of Jesus Christ because we have surrendered to do the word of God as the Holy Spirit leads us.
But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.
When we resist doing what pleases the Lord and the Holy Spirit, are our eyes not closed again to God's kingdom? Have we not forgotten that our sins have been separated from us? Are we not viewing ourselves from earth even while we seat in heavenly places with Christ?
Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall:
This is one sure way to not fall.
When we do the things that have been listed in 2 Pet 1:5-9 we will never fall.
PS. Do not try to do these things without the Holy Ghost, you will fail without the help and counsel of the Holy Spirit. You will be frustrated, legalistic and still failing.
If you ask for the help of the Holy Spirit and receive His counsel, it will be like a walk in the park and doing this will soon become as natural as breathing.
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