“The eyes of the LORD are upon the righteous, And his ears are open unto their cry. The face of the LORD is against them that do evil, To cut off the remembrance of them from the earth. The righteous cry, and the LORD heareth, And delivereth them out of all their troubles. The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; And saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.”
Psalm 34:15-18 KJV,https://bible.com/bible/1/psa.34.15-18.KJV
Cultivate What Matters
Imagine you have two seeds in your hand and you can only plant one. One seed grows easily, but it produces produces ugly, terrible tasting fruit. Cultivating the other seed takes time and consistent attention—but the fruit it produces is beautiful and delicious. Which seed would you choose to plant, water, and grow?
In Galatians 5, the apostle Paul talks about two types of fruit our lives can produce: fruit of the flesh and fruit of the Spirit. “The flesh” refers to our desires that pull us away from God’s Holy Spirit. Those desires produce hate, impatience, bitterness, selfishness, rudeness, chaos, and self-indulgence—and God has no association with such things.
But when we commit our lives to Jesus, He gives us His Holy Spirit. The power of the Holy Spirit helps us “crucify” the desires of our flesh and put them to death. And when we crucify those desires, we create room for the Holy Spirit to produce fruit in us that leads to positive life change.
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