Heart Work

Some words within the Word surely take a life time to absorb to the point that they truly become a part of who we are.   And, the real truth is that some Words will always be more of an impossibility than a spiritual reality because we are too dependent on making it happen in our own strength.  One such Word is found in the letter to the the church at Galatia.  Toward the end of chapter five, we read, "...the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control."  (Galatians 5:22-23)     

These are not spiritual qualities which are enabled to grow in us out of sense of oughtness and determination, but out of our willingness to give the Spirit of God room to work in the inner part of our lives.  We often race into the verses figuring out ways we can live according to these words without accepting the fact that they grow in us because of One who is outside of us who desires to live within us.  In these troubling days there is such a need for these words to not only take root in us, but to grow in us.  

As we focus on others, their failures, and our rightness, we shut the door to the work the Holy Spirit can do in us.  What He desires to do in us is to create from within a heart that expresses itself in every dimension of life according to the spirit of Christ.  The hard attitudes and unforgiving spirits which we never see in Christ are not seen in us if the Spirit has been given control.  To see them living out in the world as personal expressions of  our inner being surely means there is heart work to be done.