Scarborough Marsh is one-half mile from our condo, a twelve-mile walking, biking trail. Wow!!
Our Post is Inspired by The Holy Spirit.
When he got home away from the crowd his disciples questioned him about the parable. He said to them, “Are even you likewise without understanding? Do you not realize that everything that goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters not the heart but the stomach and passes out into the latrine?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) “But what comes out of a person, that is what defiles. From within people, from their hearts, come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly. All these evils come from within and they defile.” Mark 7: 17 – 23
We are not going to write about the evils Jesus listed.
Paul in Galatians chapter five at the end of his list of evils said, “And the like.” This I found very interesting. After thinking about what Paul wrote about the list of evils, his comment “And the like,” means satan’s always changing his methods of trying to get us to live in the world and not in the “Spirit World.”
Paul when he listed the Nine Fruit of The Holy Spirit his next sentence said, “Against such there is no law.”
That’s it; nine words, and there is no expansion, and this has been true for almost two thousand years.
I am also more convinced as I get older that we are truly called into a relationship with God; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
In the Jail I met a man, Mike, not his real name, I forgot it, and we were talking about God and Love, and he broke in and said he, Mike, had never experienced love.
Next Mike asked how do I grow in love?
With this question, I realized how stupid I had been for so long in my earlier life. I had been blessed by being raised in a family filled with love. My mom showered me with kisses, she would say to me before I walked out of the door, “plant one on home plate,” and we kissed, and she then told me she loved me. It’s too bad I didn’t realize at that time how blessed I was to be in this type of relationship with Mom.
Dad was born in the twenty’s and at that time men didn’t hug and kiss or say they loved us. I later found out this was also true with other dads born in that era.
Our loss.
Later in my fifties, I was encouraged by the Holy Spirit to give dad a hug and tell him I loved him. It was awkward at first for me, but a whole new relationship developed. I only wish we had done this a lot earlier, but I’m glad we did it when we did.
Gail, our sons, their wives, and families, many friends, and you in your comments have told me of your love.
I’m Blessed!
Mike’s question opened my eyes to what I had taken for granted. The love so many people who have come into my life. I wonder how many other people reading our post have suffered from the same problem of not fully appreciating how blessed we truly are?
Over the past eight weeks, we have talked about Mike’s question.
We told Mike to learn “the nine,”
Mike did!
We told Mike to tell satan to, “Get behind him, “
Mike did!
And,
We told Mike to thank God for the difficulties God has ALLOWED in Mike’s life.
Mike did!
Guess what?
Mike started to live in Peace.
Notice we didn’t say, Love.
This to me is very interesting because it was Peace that started my journey into developing a relationship with God. What I didn’t appreciate, at the time, is that Peace is a subset of Love.
We grow in our knowledge of Peace then we gravitate to wanting to grow in our relationship with God and find
Love!
I read the Seven Story Mountain, by Thomas Merton, and Merton said that it was Peace that drew him into wanting to grow into a deeper relationship with God.
Once Mike identified Peace in his life, something he had never known before the jail Bible Study program, he now had a solid reason to chase after a relationship with God.
After Peace came Joy and before Mike left the Jail he had found a whole new life and was looking to grow in Love.
I know people who told me they found Joy and Peace walking their dog, doing gardening, or just walking They hadn’t, I think, up to this point connected the dot’s, or maybe they had, and I didn’t hear them properly, but they felt that this was not the same as when I find Peace reading the bible, or entering into a formal prayer time.
This is NOT true.
Anything that brings Joy and Peace is from God.
God uses many different ways to draw you to Them.
We aren’t all the same.
We greet God in different ways and in different settings.
Celebrate the Peace when you live it, don’t question it.
satan can’t give you Joy and Peace.
So, when you do experience Joy and Peace, celebrate that God is working in your life. It may not be in the classic manner laid out by others or by the church, but so what, Joy and Peace only come from God!
We recommended The Chosen in one of our first posts, and something came to mind, Holy Spirit, as I was typing this post.
Season 1 Episode 5.
Peter’s fishing boat has been filled with fish, and Peter is rescued by Jesus from prison and losing everything.
Peter tells Jesus to, “Depart from me for I am a sinful man.”
The first four episodes of The Chosen, show this statement to be very true.
Jesus says to Peter, “Follow Me and become a fisher of men.”
Peter asks, “What does a fisher of men mean?”
Jesus responds, “You catch them and I’ll sort them.”
This last statement by Jesus has helped change my life.
Why?
My life is so much easier. I don’t have to judge, we just have to love. We are asked to catch men, fish, Jesus will sort.
One of the biggest problems in my life was judging.
In my younger years, I could easily judge, and it wasn’t until we went into the Cumberland County Jail that I found out how wrong my judgments were. These men were wonderful. Many had not experienced a younger life as blessed as I had lived. It took the jail to open my eyes to all the blessings I had experienced in my youth, and experience now.
It was in the jail that God taught me about Them, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Go figure!
Work consciously to build a relationship with God by growing and living in the “Spirit World.” Don’t concern yourself with how God is teaching you, just enjoy a God of Outrageous Love, and then you won’t be concerned “with what defiles.”
We say Outrageous and when you think about who you really are, the person who drove the nails into the hands and feet of Jesus, that God would want anything to do with us?
Yes, I would call that Outrageous!
“The nine” We pray you will grow in the Love, Joy, and Peace of the Holy Spirit by growing in Patience, Kindness, Generosity, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self-Control.
Sidebar:
Four people asked me in their comments to continue the sidebar. Marie, Sunday, Nina, and JME all said, “Don’t stop the sidebar.”
So we won’t!
We mentioned OUTRAGEOUS LOVE, very briefly over the past two weeks. I grew up being told God’s Love is Unconditional.
Let’s define terms:
Unconditional: Vocabulary.com
It’s absolute and not subject to any special terms or conditions:
Outrageous: Vocabulary.com
Something outrageous is extreme, over the top, beyond reason. It’s hard to believe.
When talking about the Love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we are really talking about Outrageous Love.
Consider, wouldn’t you call the birth of the Son of God to common parents, being born in a manger, Jesus living as a nobody for thirty years, being crucified and then forgiving all, you and I, for crucifying Him, and His most Outrageous act was DYING on the Cross.
Did you know that Muslims do not believe Jesus died on the Cross?
Over two billion people claim Prophets don’t die, and Jesus being the Son of God certainly wouldn’t die.
I was shocked when I learned this, and this is why Outrageous Love is the only fitting term in my mind to explain the Love of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit has for us.
Wow!!!
What a wonderful God we have been Blessed to form a relationship with!
