When you have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit you are not fruitless but you might not be fruitful. The Scripture says the fruit of the Spirit. You don’t have to pray or ask for it, but you do have to choose to use it.
Take self control for example. Well what exactly is self control anyway? This awesome lady who teaches about the Charlotte Mason way to home educate, Sonya Shafer, gave a wonderful description of self control and compared it with self discipline:
Self control is when you don’t do what you want to do – cuss, kick, eat a dozen oreos.
Self discipline is when you do what you don’t want to do – get up early, pray longer, laundry.
I struggle greatly with aggrevation and impatience. These two un-virtues always lead to anger for me. And lots of yelling. Recently I thought about how I’ve asked for years for the fruits of Spirit to manifest in my life. Why weren’t they growing and I benefitting from them? I had to realize I kept asking for something already given to me instead of asking how to use them.
So now when I start to get upset about a situation or aggrevated I think: I can choose to eat of the fruit, self control. It is available to me.
It sounds simple but most of the profound things in life are. It is we who complicate things.
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