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Choose Wise

por Jessica Crowley

Superación personal Cristianismo

Temporada 2

Faith the Fruit

Let's talk about growing faith. How do we encourage faith to flourish in our lives? I give practical tools that I use myself. Read the Bible. Turn off the noise. Don't speak negativity. Speak life. Be faithful. Sing, Keep a notebook. Read the notebook. Focus on someone else. Praise the Lord.

The Fruit of Goodness

The fruit of goodness is very flexible. It evades a legalistic definition. Why do we like rules? So, we can get around them. If we know what is allowed or what is not allowed it gives us the knowledge of how to achieve our goal legally. But when we have such a flexible rule like if you know it is good to do, do it. Well, that takes away all our evasive techniques.

Patience AKA Longsuffering

There is that joke among Christians don’t pray for patience because bad things are going to happen to you. This is a rooted in truth. A joke is one thing, but some elder Christians actually advice against praying for patience. This is bad advice. We shouldn’t avoid doing hard things because we want to avoid pain.

Practical tips for Peace

Romans 12 and 13 give practival tips for bearing peace. We are going to exlore those today.

Joy

Come with me as we explore Joy, the second fruit of the Spirit.

Fruit of Love

Love is the sugar that can be found in the rest of the fruit of the Spirit. It is the thing that makes the other fruit sweet. The reason we love fruit more then vegetables are because they are sweeter.

Practical Tools for Contentment

Today, I want to give you some practical strategies to be in a place of contentment. We know we should be content. We know discontent is a spiritual place we don’t want to be in. We know it isn’t an emotional place we want to live in. So how do we stay content? Practical strategies for contentment Praise and thanksgiving What you consume What you talk about Giving generously

Generous Contentment

We have increased goods and blessings for the purpose of blessing which produces thanksgiving to God! Think about a fellow believers response when you supply a need. You bring them groceries, repair their car, mow their grass and they say Praise God! Motivation matters. Paul says giving out of bounty and abundance verses taking because you want what someone has is what matters. The NLT says willing gift not grudging. If you are not content you will never have enough left to give. If you are not at a place of sufficiency you will never have enough to spare. However, if you are looking around at your bounty you can always find something to give.

Foundation of Contentment for Goal Setting

Contentment allows us to pursue the right goals, God’s goals, our own goals, not our neighbor’s goals. Contentment allows us to make long term choices, instead of short sighted choices. Contentment allows us to choose wisely. It is the foundation that helps us do hard things to accomplish important goals. One of the enemies of contentment is coveting.

Allocating Our Resources from a Place of Contentment

Jesus is always trying to get us to live for eternity. He wants us to live with God in mind. We are always getting sidetracked trying to make heaven right here. I think that is particularly true for us as Americans. We have this thing called the American Dream. We spend our lives building our ideal here and forget our true destination is heaven. And so, we are working to make more money, or spend more time or build more of this or that because we are looking to build that perfect life. Live for the weekend, live for retirement. It is a misallocation of time and resources. This man’s time and resources was focused on being comfortable and getting to a point where he could relax. But God wanted him to use is time and resources for the kingdom of God. This man would have made his decisions differently if he knew he was going to die that night. He would have done something else than build a barn and plan for retirement. Our decisions are based on a false premise. I will be content if… I will be happy when… God calls this foolish. He says this is the wrong goal.

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