A new year: Opening the valve
A fresh beginning. Isn't that a great feeling?
Knowing you can simply start again. Letting go of the previous day, even if it was a horrible, no-good, very bad kind of day?
What about when a new year approaches. Do you see it as a chance to try again? To set goals and strive for them?
I love the holiday season, the rush, the excitement. And to be honest by the time New Year's comes around I'm tired. Thinking of how to start the new year off tends to just push me over the edge. But I do try to come up with some goals for the year.
This year, thanks to a great study I've been doing with a mom's study group (more on that in another post), I'm feeling the need to really "tap" into the power of the Holy Spirit. Honestly, I know I don't have the super-mom powers that some moms brag about on social media.
Nope, I'm just a regular girl who happens to be a mama. And as such I need a lot of help - I mean A TON of it!
Specifically I need help daily in self-control and patience, that I can keep my voice calm as my littles drive me completely insane (off and on, they are adorable in between, you know?). The thought of having supernatural patience, self-control plus gentleness, peace, and joy to boot makes me want to take action. I mean those are qualities that might just come across as a super-mama (a mama who has humbled herself to the One True Super Power).
Now, we know that as soon as you enter into a true relationship with Jesus, the Spirit is given to us. A true gift (something we did nothing to deserve and yet have been given).
Peter replied, “Each of you must repent of your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Acts 2:38 NLT
But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things! Galatians 5:22-23 NLT
Well recently it was explained to me that all people have primary and secondary feelings. Think about about when you get hurt, the first feeling is pain. Right you turn the corner to quick while carrying laundry and step on an action figure left out. First feeling: OUCH! And then, maybe a nano-second later you are angry at the child who left said action figure out. making anger a secondary feeling.
How about if we look at this concept with characteristics. I'm looking for joy so that I can have more patience and self-control. These are secondary characteristics, so I have to form a primary characteristic in order to truly feel those secondary characteristics. So what is that primary characteristic?
Take a look over at the story of the healing of the lepers, and see if you can guess at the primary characteristic - here's a link. I'll wait.
So what did you guess? What characteristic truly healed the one leper? The faithful Samaritan who came back to show thankfulness to his Healer. His primary characteristic was gratitude. And that secondary characteristic that is so memorable in the story - JOY! And what is joy? It is a fruit of the Spirit - evidence that his faith truly has changed him.
To me it follows that the fruit I'm looking to feel flow over me and my family in 2014 are secondary characteristics for people, and I have to cultivate gratitude as a primary characteristic to feel patience and self-control flow over me the same way joy flowed from the healed Samaritan.
Here are three things I know that gratitude does:
- It reveals all that is good from God
- It protects from what is bad.
- It gives power to do what seems impossible.
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