BLESSING BLOCKAGES

July 15, 2002

RIPE FRUIT
My sister read to me a passage from a book she had been reading about the Holy Spirit.
In essence the passage from the book asked the readers to assess whether they had ripe fruit of the Holy Spirit operating in their lives.
In summarizing the comments of the writer for my own use, I borrowed some of the comments of the writer and added a few.
In assessing the degrees of the fruit of the Spirit operating in our lives, we must check whether we have love, joy, mercy, faith, goodness, kindness, self-control, peace and patience emanating from us.
Do we have more kindness and faithfulness than the Mormons?
Do we have more peace than the Buddhists?
Do we have more joy than the atheists?
Do we have more love and acceptance of others than unbelievers?
Do we have more self control than the Muslims who pray multiple times a day?

Jesus told His followers that their righteousness must exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees so that they would enter the kingdom of heaven. We know that it is God's righteousness in the Holy Spirit who lives in us. He makes us righteous. However, is the fruit of the righteousness that emanates from us more abundant than the fruit of the followers of other religions or even of the unbelievers? If not, then the fruit of our flesh is what is causing us to block the blessings of God from flooding into our lives. The fruit of the flesh is described in the same passage in the Bible that the fruit of God's Spirit is described The fruit of the flesh is anger, division, strife, jealousy, envy, selfishness, enmity, dissension, licentiousness and also other obvious ones like drunkenness, carousing, etc.

Jesus didn't say that our righteousness should equal the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. He said it should exceed their righteousness.

The writer of that book put Truth in red letter words to me.
The fruit of other religions often exceed the fruit of righteousness of God's children. What is the cost to us? The cost to us is the blessings of God, who is pouring His blessings upon us every second of the day. If we aren't receiving them, we need to check the fruit of God's Spirit, His righteousness within us, and check to see if we are letting it flow from ourselves to others.

The only things that can block the blessings of God from coming into our lives are the fruit of the flesh which actually are the fruit of the devil. The devil doesn't want you to live the abundant life that Jesus promised.

There are spiritually starving people who are fruit gatherers who are eager to gather God's fruit from His children, eager to receive our love, joy, peace and kindness. The excess that we have is what we need to share because it exceeds the production of fruit of other religions.

Matthew. 5: 22; Galatians 5:19-23.