Changing From the Inside Out

Patience is like good motor oil. It doesn't remove all the contaminants. It just puts them into suspension so they don't get into your works and seize them up. Patient people have, so to speak, a large crankcase. They can put a lot of irritants into suspension.  Cornelius Plantinga

Have you ever tried to change something in your life?  I’m not talking about changing your socks or your hairstyle.  I’m talking about character change.  How do you make permanent change to your character? 

If you are an impatient person you aren’t going to become a patient person overnight.  Gentleness and self-control aren’t just going to appear like a fast food burger.  For the fruit of the Spirit to live inside us we are going to have to change from the inside out.  We can pretend to have the fruit of the Spirit, but eventually our true character will come out. 

God is the one who produces the fruit of the Spirit living in and through you.  We have to want the fruit of the Spirit living in us to be able to obtain it.  It takes effort on our part. I think too many times we don’t want the work that has to be done to have the fruits of the Spirit.  It is so easy to get impatient with others when they aren’t doing it fast enough for us.

Recently I have been working on my patience.  Sometimes God allows things to happen in our lives to make us slow down and think.  Many of you know that I have a new car.  You also know from a previous devotional, that my new car is in the shop.  Yes, my new car has been in the shop for almost three weeks.  The mechanic at the dealership sent me photos last week of my car jacked up and the engine, transmission and all its parts laid out on the ground underneath it.  Now, I could handle this situation a lot of different ways.  I could become impatient, yell and scream at the mechanics working on it, and I could show up at the dealership and make a scene so that other people in the dealership might reconsider buying a car there. 

If I did any of these things, what kind of character would I be expressing?  If I acted like this I would knock out at least 6 of the fruits of the Spirit.  Peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self-control.  We need to remember that we don’t all of a sudden wake up one day and our life is filled with the fruit of the Spirit.  It takes time to be changed.  I didn’t get the way I am overnight, so why should I expect to be changed overnight. 

Prayer for the Day: Heavenly Father, I want to have the fruit of the Spirit living in me.  Remind me that it takes perseverance and time.  I will not be all the things You want me to be if I don’t have the patience to pursue You and to continually work on the bad character traits in me that have taken me a lifetime to create.  I want to change from the inside out.   

   

Scripture: The New Man

This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.

But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.  Ephesians 4:17-24