PRUNING AND CULTIVATING THE FRUIT OF COMPASSION
Have you ignored the presence of the Holy Spirit at times in your life only to be convinced or convicted of God’s alternative direction? Yet at other times you have done your own thing and gone down a path that will dishonor your way of living and loving? And, although you believe it is a path your inner self is calling you to, in God’s revelations of the spiritual aspect of your heart you feel the gentle but intense prodding of grieving. You feel uneasy in your spirit but you do not heed the Lord’s prompting and you proceed to follow your own decisions in life. In James 1 we are told in: verse 2 and 3, that when we experience trials and tests of faith , it will brings forth steadfastness with a full effect toward being perfect and complete. In verse 6 we read, ‘But let him ask in faith with no doubting, for he who doubts are like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. So, with God’s loving pruning in our lives we hope to recognise the faith feelings when they rise in our emotions to alert us to following in the right footsteps of ‘No Go my God! Not this way, help me.’ If I could describe the feeling I likened it to making a batch of scones and realizing you forgot the baking powder so the scones won’t rise so you abandon them and make another start. Or, clinging to a relationship that is making you suffer until you bring God’s wisdom, and honoring compassion into focus and you recognize it will have to be re-worked or lost and so discarded .
Feelings and faith may have to be re-baked a few times and relationships re-examined before you lose the experiences of humiliation and become a perfect scone – maker but the Lord has his own CHEF tools and He is all we need.
Blessings in your faith with feeling, be free!
Be Blessed
Lorraine