time for a little (big) self-assessment

Video: The Almost - Awful Direction


 This past week or so the Holy Spirit has been convicting me pretty hard.  I have changed slowly and not in the best of ways.  A couple of weeks before my birthday I started to take inventory of what fruit I was producing. Pulling back the branches and taking time to do some self-assessment. By now, I should be an excellent assessor. After all I've been taught how to garden and produce beautiful, clean, tasty fruit all my life.

But the fruit of the [Holy] Spirit [the work which His presence within accomplishes] is love, joy (gladness), peace, patience (an even temper, forbearance), kindness, goodness (benevolence), faithfulness, gentleness (meekness, humility), self-control (self-restraint, continence)
Galatians 5:22 & 23 (amplified bible)


Instead when I pulled back the branches, I found:  rot, bugs infestation, and small bitter tasting fruit. All the good seeds I had guarded and carefully sewn over my life were overgrown with weeds from the lack of attention.  The nutrient care that only I could give had been missing  My watering can was encrusted with cobwebs and various other debris.  The past year or so my crops have been producing the opposite from the above verses. I have allowed people, situations and selfishness waltz its way in. The gate, my gate, had been left wide open fashioned with a beautiful "Welcome" sign.  Shamefully I am able to relate to one too many of the following:

It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on. This isn't the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God's kingdom. 
Galatians 5:19-21 (MSG)

The problem with free will is just that: it is free.  As Romans 7 says, "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do." For the longest time I have been trying to put my finger on what's been going on.  Why can't I get my thinking process strait or make an honest try at change.  Somewhere deep down inside I knew what was right it was just trying to weave through the maze I had constructed.  Throwing up my flair for help and having someone find me and lead the way. If we ignore the voice of the Holy Spirit long enough we start to not hear him at all.


Grimacing, I know what I MUST do.  There are specific changes I must start to take action upon NOW.  By the grace of God I will endure my "gray" areas and do them no more.  This is going to be a huge challenge and I know I will be tested.  My family and close friends may not understand the drastic measures I am about to enforce upon myself.  It's time to clean house, people!!!