His Ways... Day 3... Harold Sechrest

Today's devotion is from one of our elders... Harold Sechrest... on Galatians 5:22-26.

"22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. 25Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. 26Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other."

Harold does a great job of sharing that these verses seem to sum up all of the many words of the Bible.

We are currently asking our middle and high school students to memorize these words. They are currently studying through the book of Galatians and these words for Paul are the bottom line for this book. In a couple of weeks, we'll see how many of them have them memorized.

But the funny thing about fruit... it takes time to grow. You don't just plop a seed in the ground on Wednesday (today) and go out tomorrow and expect to see an apple (or orange or banana or whatever fruit you want... the type of fruit is unimportant in this case... just the illustration). It takes time for the plant to grow to maturity and then begin to produce fruit that you can see and eat. And too many times in our "instant... now/now/now" society, I think we we get frustrated when the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, etc) isn't available in high speed, wireless and available through the drive-thru with my Skinny Vanilla Latte from Starbucks.

Rather, it is slow. It's in God's timing. And many times, God's timing isn't Jim's timing. So I have to wait. But that can be tough. But like my dad said... and I'm sure many of your dads and moms said... "Good things come to those who wait." And the Fruit of the Spirit are an example of that.

Jim