As I read this I felt how real God is and how we aren’t robots just programmed to obey God. We are created in His image and will show emotion and live in this world with sadness, sorrow, pain, suffering and trials but they are all to help us develop our love for God. As it said, “…the kind of sorrow God wants us to experience leads us away from sin and results in salvation.”
Metal gets refined and as we go through these things and they lead us to repentance we are being refined. It is so much more real when we live and have our own relationship with God and we go to Him and lay our lives down at His feet. Jesus came to bridge the gap and showed us exactly how to do that. We need to accept that and continue to refine ourselves as we grow and learn to be Christ-like.
I love what Paul shares in chapter 7 verse 1, “Because we have the promises, dear friends, let us cleanse ourselves from everything that can defile our body or spirit. And let us work toward complete holiness because we fear God.” Yes Paul said “let us work”, free gifts are exciting and awesome but only if you accept them and use them. A free gift that sits on our shelf or in our garage doesn’t do anything for us, but a free gift that is used is amazing.
I heard John Kitna speak on Saturday at the FCA Fiesta bowl breakfast and he shared a story about his youngest son that was a great example of this. He asked his son if he was a swimmer and his son said yes, but he really didn’t know how to swim he just liked standing in the water. It wasn’t until he actually worked at swimming and got fully in the water and swam was he a swimmer. We need to get in with Christ and work to live our lives differently. God will do the hard parts we just need to surrender and follow what Jesus has already shown us.
We started out learning about the sorrows and the things we would go through as we mature in Christ but now let’s look at the fruit of the Spirit that are shown when we are full of the Spirit. Galatians chapter 5 verses 22 and 23 say, “But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. There is no law against these things!” Ask yourself this question; Am I feeling these things in my life, if not why? Amen