Inner Workings!

Inner Workings!

with all humility [forsaking self-righteousness], and gentleness [maintaining self-control], with patience, bearing with one another in [unselfish] love.

Ephesians 4:2 AMP

How does God expect me to walk? If I owe my allegiance to Him, he must have the final say in my pursuits and priorities. Now, this is the unusual part: all of the attributes mentioned above are first and foremost internal, before they can be seen on the external. The world has taught us hypocrisy and pretence, where we keep up appearances because we do not want to be labelled. So we strive to keep up, maintaining the external while the internal is deficit. Unfortunately, it is only a matter of time; internal deficit will always be made manifest.

Humility, gentleness, patience and love are the attributes mentioned in today's extract. Do you also know that these are listed as the fruit of the Holy Spirit? It keeps getting clearer that today's extract is not for people who have not submitted to the Holy Spirit. How do you bear the fruit from seed that you have not yet surrendered to the ground? Once the seed has left the hand and gone into the soil, with nutrients provided, the seed will bear fruit. My life cannot produce these 'fruit' unless and until my life is dead to all that is flesh and alive to all that is God. When my life is sown into the ground of God's life, fruiting is inevitable.

And when the God-connection is secure, impact on humanity is non-negotiable. We want to impact man, yet we do not surrender to God. We want to hold on to what we have, forgetting that all that we have cannot achieve the mighty things God has in store. Only by total surrender can God's life flow in and through me. Then the world will know that of a truth, I live by different standards and answer to a different master.

So, how do I work and walk? How are you walking and working? If God were to demand an account today, what would yours look like? Would God be satisfied with the fruit of my life at the moment? Is there anything I need to start doing differently? Only by the help of the Holy Spirit would I make it to the end of the assignment I have been given; not by my own strength. His time of favour is here.