Go To The Ant!

 Go to the ant, you sluggard! Consider her ways and be wise, which, having no captain, overseer or ruler, provides her supplies in the summer, and gathers her food in the harvest. (Proverbs 6:6-8)

 Planning ahead, especially in finances, has never been a strongpoint for me (sometimes a verse just gets personal, you know?), and only recently has any major attempt to change that been made. And while this is often seen as a message for financial responsibility (and sometimes a call for an end of procrastination), there is another, more subtle application we can get from this passage.

 To put this softly, i've been around too many churchgoers outside of church-related functions to be anything but a cynic, and only the fewest (a remnant, if you will) haven't proven the resulting assumptions correct.
 To be slightly more blunt, a lot of people going to Hell will arrive there on a pew. And it's such a tragic thing, it should bring tears to our eyes. In fact, God showed Ezekiel that His judgement would fall on the heads of those who didn't mourn; of the men, women, children, regardless of age, He tells the executioners to "Slaughter them all!" and to "Defile the house! Fill the courtyards with corpses! Get going!" What's more, there's a startling command given; "Begin at my sanctuary."

 The first to receive judgement, it is saying, are those who believe in God, who claim to follow His Law, and yet pass by the crippled man on the side of the road. Those who "love God," but not their fellow man.
And don't get me wrong, "Love always trusts, always hopes, always--" I know. And there is little defense to be made for cynicism, excepting perhaps the fact that we're commanded strictly to avoid those who "retain the outer form of religion but deny its power."
 See, there are those we're to avoid, not just blindly embrace. Love is blind, but it's certainly not stupid. Keeps no record of wrong, but isn't naive. It hopes, but hope is usually encompassed by doubt--or else it would simply be expectation.

 And where this ties up; just because we have witnessed sin and immorality by churchgoers outside of church, if we watch them raise their hands on Sunday and then hear them start cussing or talking about sleeping around with people by Monday, that doesn't mean it has to change us. This is simply those who "retain the outer form of religion but deny its power." They deserve your pity, your groaning, your weeping, your compassion and, if they will hear you, Biblical correction. After all, judgement will come first to those in the sanctuary.
 But go to the ant! It has no leader, no overseer, no ruler; it operates not based on the actions of those around it, but by its own purpose, its own mind, its own work. If you have been wounded because some people look Christian on Sunday but do it all for show, that's between them and God; it's up to each of us to do what is necessary to maintain confidence before Him, which is behaving as His children should.
 Go to the ant. Do not be led astray. Do not look to the left or to the right. Do not look at your "Paul" (your spiritual leader) unless he is of more semblance to Christ than yourself. And should your "Paul" ever stop following Christ, stop imitating Paul, stop following Paul. Look to Christ.
 Imitate Christ so that you may be "Paul" to someone else.

Different View of Favor

 The purpose of this is to maybe set askew the common thought that God's favor somehow implies ease in life.

 Starting off early, we have Noah. Honestly, if i witnessed what he witnessed, i'd have preferred to have been swept away by the waters. All his friends and neighbors, extended family, everyone; wailing and screaming in fear as the first few drops began to fall after the doors of the boat were supernaturally closed. The cries would've grown louder as the rain grew heavier; as the earth itself split to release the firmament from below, the shrieks of men, women, and children would've faded into the roar of water crashing against the sides of the ark. It's hardly a wonder one of the first things he did (after setting up an altar to God) was begin fermenting beverages.
 Next would be Jacob, ever-shadowed by his elder brother, the hunter-gatherer, Esau. His mother, nigh as deceitful as himself, devised a plan to get Jacob the birthright. But what good is a birthright if he leaves his home? He works for his uncle for the better part of a decade, only to get the wrong girl, and then another seven years he labors for the girl he truly wanted--and her womb was closed up. Leah bore him child after child, and yet Rachel, his love, is left without child for decades. She became desperate (as did Jacob) and, after Leah had stopped bearing children, offered Jacob her slave-girl, Bilhah. He bore two sons through her. And Leah then offered her own slave-girl, Zilpah, who then bore two more sons. Eventually, Rachel is able to conceive, and her son is named Joseph, who is betrayed by his brothers and sold into slavery, leaving Jacob to mourn his faked-death. Joseph, the favorite of Jacob, eventually led the Hebrews into Egypt.
 Next comes Moses, that one fellow who was abandoned as a child, raised by those who oppressed his family, flees, marries a woman of another land (and is ridiculed for it), and mocked by his adopted brother.
 Job, the besieged, is chosen to be the target of Satan because God saw him to be a faithful man. God favored him, therefore torment was everywhere in this man's life as Satan wreaked havoc in all the authority that God allowed him to have over Job; wealth, possessions, family, health, everything. Boils upon boils, resulting an insatiable itch covering the entirety of his body that would've felt as an acidic burn if he'd tried to scratch. This man was favored by God. This distraught, helpless, poor man sitting in the ashes of his life.
 Ezekiel's wife dies, and he's commanded not to mourn or weep for her.
 David is hunted by his king like an animal.
 The author of Lamentations, presumably Jeremiah, describes his skin having sloughed off, his bones broken, his teeth shattered by gravel; he speaks of children fainting in the streets, begging for something to drink, dying in the arms of their mothers ("gasping out their last breath in their mother's bosom"); "the children I held in my arms and raised, my enemy has destroyed," he says. If there is a more tragic sight (other than that of a Father watching His only begotten Son, blameless and holy, beaten and tortured, naked and nailed to an execution stake like a criminal) i'd rather not know of it.
 Paul is described as not knowing what he would suffer for Christ's sake, and yet was one we would call favored.
 The greatest affliction, that of Christ on the cross (dubbed his "being glorified"), dripping with the sin of the world; this Man, the only begotten Son of God. Hardly an image of favor. Or is it?

 In all these examples, it would seem the greater the suffering, the greater the favor God has for the object of affliction. We are told in Romans 5 that tribulations bring...hope.
 God promises to withhold no good thing from those He favors, and that all things work out for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. Some examples of good things are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, self control; what of these do not come about except through some sort of suffering? 1 Corinthians 13 says love is, first and foremost, long-suffering; that, if we love, we will suffer long for it. Understanding of joy does not come unless one knows misery. Peace does not come without war; patience without situations that would call for great unrest; kindness without circumstances where one has been treated cruelly; all of these qualities require a grasp of their antonym, an understanding of their absence.
 And God will withhold no good thing from those He favors. Those who love Him and are called according to His good purpose are guaranteed scenarios in which these fruits of the Spirit will have the fertile, volcanic soil where they may blossom and grow (intense struggles). He also promises that, through perseverance, these fruits will set.
 Without rain, there is no harvest. Without trial, no judgement--or mercy.
 He will not leave His favored ones without struggle, or else they would bear no Spiritual fruit.

Fruit of The Spirit pt. II

Some time back, i came to a conclusion about the "Fruits of The Spirit," and recently came to realize something supplemental to that post.

What does an apple tree produce?
Seems a rather pointless question; the obvious answer is apples.
A pear tree produces pears, an orange tree produces oranges, oak tree produces acorns, so on and so forth. A tree produces whatever it's assigned to producing. The thing is, though, it doesn't have to be careful about what it produces. It just does.
An apple tree doesn't have to concern itself with producing apples or not producing peaches. It is given unto producing apples by its nature.
When we give up our earthly nature for Christ's (to be grafted in Him), we don't have to be anxious about what we're producing. A Spirit-borne person will produce Spirit-borne fruit. It just happens because our nature changes into the extraordinary, and the "worldly fruit" (that of self-destruction) is no longer part of us.

If you're going around trying to make sure you're doing things that are of the Spirit, being worried or anxious about what kind of fruit your life is producing, here's part of a verse that i've been fascinated with lately; "Be still, and know that I am God."
Settle down. Relax. Take a breath, and focus on that fact. He's God, He will work through you, will cultivate you. And you don't have to be preoccupied with living a holy life because, frankly, neither you nor i are holy--Christ in us is. Christ in you is righteous. Christ in you is the fruit of the Spirit exuded. It's not by you that you produce Spirit-borne fruit, but by the grace of God through Christ.

Only by acknowledging ourselves as unrighteous can humility be concreted.
Thinking we're worthy of anything, even of being called by Christ to follow Him to our death, is vanity and self-righteousness.
By acknowledging that we're unable to produce wholly good things of our own accord is to confess in our heart that we need Christ for anything and everything. And in the realization of our need for Him, we likewise become compelled to live accordingly, as though we're striving to earn the goodness of Christ's effects on our lives. But we must continually remind ourselves, it's not by our works, it's not by our wills. It's by grace alone that we can do anything good, and so we remind ourselves also to live as Christ-like as we can.

All Things Work Together for Good . . .

Romans 8:28.
Many of us have it memorized without knowing what verse of what chapter of what book it's in.
"Furthermore, we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called in accordance with His purpose;"

That's the CJB translation. That verse doesn't apply to everyone, obviously. "Those who love God and are called in accordance with His purpose."

This verse is speaking specifically to the "called" to God. Some have a natural tendency towards faith, and what a blessing that must be.

But let's look at the two promises in this.

"We know that God causes everything to work together for the good . . ."

That is only one statement, but two things are actually being promised here.

First, we have things working out for the good of God's people. This seems a joyous promise -and oh, how it is!- but we must look at what good is when it comes to humanity. Good is the fruit of the Spirit. Good is loving, good is humility, good is being gentle, good is having hope, good is . . . Good is such matters.

Now look at some other verses for the second promise of this.

Romans 5:3-5;

"But not only that, let us also boast in our troubles; because we know that trouble produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope; and this hope does not let us down, because God’s love for us has already been poured out in our hearts through the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit) who has been given to us."

2 Corinthians 12:7;

"Therefore, to keep me from becoming overly proud, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from the Adversary to pound away at me, so that I wouldn’t grow conceited."

1 Corinthians 13:4-7;

"Love is patient and kind, not jealous, not boastful,

not proud, rude or selfish, not easily angered,
and it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not gloat over other people’s sins
but takes its delight in the truth.
Love always bears up, always trusts,
always hopes, always endures."

Now, look at those verses. These are how we gain hope, humility, and love (for many years, I did not know that 1 Corinthians 13 was a poem), respectively.

1) Hope; through tribulation, trouble, suffering, pain, misery . . . Despair! The very antonym of hope is the means by which we achieve it. We must suffer to gain hope.

We must suffer to achieve this good--and not by our own means, but by the Holy Spirit. Not only are we to accept our trials, but we're to delight in them because they will be used by God for our good.

2) Humility; through a thorn in the flesh, through a messenger of Satan himself. It was likely a constant reminder of his past (it could be anything, but i perceive it to be a memory, possibly of a Christian he'd killed "in the name of God." But that's just my imagination). It was this very thing, this demon, this tormentor, this thing "pound[ing] away" at him that kept him humble.

Humility achieved through, again, suffering. God used this suffering for good.

3) Love; we often think of this passage as being all kind and sweet and soft and mellow . . . But it should be applied to us.

Someone getting on your nerves and not leaving you alone? Be patient (or, literally, long-suffering; suffer endlessly through what you're being put through; that is love).
Return evil with kindness. Don't be jealous that someone who has wronged you is being promoted over you--be happy for them. Don't boast that you have this certain skill, or you have achieved something great. Don't build yourself up in the eyes of others, but elevate them. If someone insults you, hold your tongue; don't be rude, but rather, again, kind.
So on and so forth.

This isn't so easy when it's seen as an application for your own life. Are you living in love?
Do you forgive completely, keeping no record of wrongs (not seven times, but seventy times seven; that's how often we're to forgive a person in a single day--losing track of their sins against us probably around the fourth or fifth)? Do you always bear up, though you have little encouragement to offer? Are you always trusting, to the point of naivete? Do you always have a hopeful perspective to a situation, confident that God is in control, even to the loss of a loved one? Do you persevere, enduring to the end, despite being in a sea where the end is a horizon that is retreating at the exact same pace in which you pursue it?

That is what good is. It's self-sacrifice. It's loss of self for the benefit of others. Our love is good, because it is selfless.

Now, let's look again at Romans 8:28; "Furthermore, we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called in accordance with His purpose;"

See the second promise in this? God is promising we will be tested, we will be stressed, we will suffer, we will know despair and pain and torment.

But the first promise, the obvious one, says that He will work it together for our good, if we wait it out. If we trust. If we hope. If we endure.

Fruit Of The Spirit

There are two primary seasons for a crop; there is planting, and there is reaping. The growing part should not be overlooked, but i'm going to focus this post on the lattermost of this span; the reaping.

In an orchard, trees grow and bear fruit, and the fruit is then harvested to be sold or eaten.

When it comes to spirituality, there are two types of fruit.
Firstly, we have the flesh, which consist thusly: "sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like." (Galatians 5:19-21)
Secondly, we have the fruits of the Spirit, which includes the following: "love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control" (Galatians 5:22-23)

Something occurred to me when my pastor's dad mentioned that the Bible is, in essence, "food" that we must "eat" daily to stay spiritually healthy and strong; we, too, produce fruit. One definition for fruit is "produce," or "result." Fruits of living by the Spirit are results of it. But after looking at the Hebrew text for this and running it through a translator, seeing all the other possible definitions, i've found only one, and it's not merely the "result" of something.

הפרי
That is the word we're looking at here; it's the one that translates to "the fruit" in this verse. Other fitting translations are "fruiting," "fruits," "fruit is (fruit's)," etc.

This verse isn't talking about the result of living by the Spirit so much as it is the literal fruit of it. We produce fruit. A tree does not produce fruit for itself. It produces fruit which will provide nourishment to things around it. We do not merely live by the Spirit to become loving, gentle, joyful, peaceful, etc. We live by the Spirit so we exude these things, and so others can benefit from them. We produce these things for the glory of God, not for our own well-being. So others can experience the love of God through us, the joy of God through us, the peace of God through us, and so on. We were made to nourish each other. In other words, we are the Bible to the world. We are nourishment to the world. We are Christ to the world.

I just thought that was interesting.