Thursday, June 6, 2013

Fresh Fruit

Good Morning y'all.

I am writing this blog post while sitting on my front porch watching my little play and it is heavenly. Even though the grass is wet, he is still out there playing, playing, playing without a care in the world. Wouldn't that be a great state of mind to live in all.the.time? To be like children right??

That is what the word says...be like little children! Matthew 18:3 Then he said, "I tell you the truth, unless you turn from your sins and become like little children, you will never get into the Kingdom of Heaven."

But how do we turn from our sins? Isn't that the hard part? The big sins are pretty easy to turn from. You know the big ones...

No Stealing
No Murder
No Adultry
No Idols
No Meanness (to your momma & daddy)
No Wanting Your Neighbors Stuff
No Ugly Use of God's Name
No Hard Work On Sundays
God has to come first
No Lying on Your Neighbors

But what about the little ones? You know the little ones too...

Worry
Doubt
Fear
Lack
Disobedience

Those are the ones that really get me ya know? The one that gets me the most though is DISOBEDIENCE. I am not talking about blatant disobedience here either. I am talking about partial obedience.

It makes me think about a bowl of fresh fruit.


Our life is like that bowl of fruit. We are going along in our life happy and fresh and pretty. We are going to work, school, church and living a Godly life. We are doing the right things. God tells us to do something and we do it (or most of it) but then we turn around and we find this.



We find this rotten bowl of fruit. We aren't sure when or what caused the fruit to rot but it did. There are fruit flies all in the house to prove it. You know, those pesky little fruit flies. 9 times out of 10 we will find that it isn't so much SIN that caused the fruit to rot but more it is partial obedience to God. God tells us to do something and we do it but we don't do it completely.

I have a perfect example of this:
God told me years ago that I should have my daughter cut ties with someone in her life. This person was causing discord her beliefs. She was not a good influence. Her family was very intrusive on us. She was very persuasive in ways that teens shouldn't know about. I did have her cuts ties with this person BUT I still allowed her to be her friend on Facebook. I still allowed her to text her. The only "Obedient" part was that I would not allow sleep overs. Well, this partial disobedience not only caused discord in my family but also put my little girl in a situation that was very unhealthy.

What do we do when we find the bowl of rotten fruit? We throw it out right? We get rid of it because those pesky fruit flies are the pits. But have you ever had a piece of rotten fruit in your house? Even after the fruit has been thrown out those fruit flies hang out a bit.

When we figure out the cause of the fruit flies (the rotten fruit) we get rid of it.

Just like in my situation above, I figured out that in order to get rid of the rotten fruit I had to be 100% obedient to what God said. "Cut all ties with this person" That meant ALL TIES. That meant Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Twitter and any other contact out there. Which is what we did BUT guess what?

The fruit flies of that rotten fruit were still out there...

The feelings of lack, the fear, the unworthiness, the lack of trust. All of those things that this one little bit of rotten fruit created was there flying around.

It took a little bit for those fruit flies to die. It took a lot of prayer. It took some wisdom on both of our parts. It took a lot of love and today they are gone.

The children of Israel were no different. God told them over and over again to do things and they only did part of it. It caused a vicious cycle for them. They would be given a command: have a fresh bowl of fruit (have the army kill everyone in the city) but they would only be partially obedient: fruit is rotting (army kills only men: allow women and children to live) what happens? FRUIT FLIES (the women and children wreck havoc on beliefs of everyone because they shouldn't be in the camp).

What a mess!!

BE OBEDIENT. God's commands to us are for our good. 100% obedience is a must people.

Partial obedience get us nothing but rotten fruit and fruit flies...be obedient. Don't worry about the consequences that men may bring because of you being obedient to God. Being obedient to God can be scary sometimes but the outcome is always better than the momentary fear. Just do it. The rewards are phenomenal. Don't believe me? Believe God. Try it out. He will show you :)

As for me and my house...we want fresh fruit...we will be obedient to the Lord.