| | Caffeinated Life - Episode 3
You may not even know the difference!
As much of a coffee connoisseur as I like to think that I am, you can put a cup of decaf and a cup of coffee in front of me, and I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the two just by drinking them.  How can you tell then? You have to wait and see the results. You have to see if there is any effect. You may be living a decaffeinated Christian life. You may be living a life without power and without influence, but you may not even realize it. So how can we tell? What do we have to do to find out? You can tell by your fruit. What is it that is coming out of your life? Are you rubbing off on others, or are they rubbing off on you? Do you have the caffeination effect on the lives you come in contact with?
Is the fruit of the Spirit evident in your life? Melissa (my beautiful wife) from time to time decides to take a risk and send me to the grocery store. Usually this is a final option type of situation, but occasionally she will let me go. She doesn’t let me go on a regular basis for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I always come back with things we don’t need. I think guys do this a lot. Although we may think we’re more practical in other areas, when it comes to food, I at least tend to be pretty impulsive. It’s not uncommon for me to hear as Melissa is looking over my purchases, “But Honey, we don’t need rocky road ice cream and caramel topping, and we certainly don’t need four bags of jalapeno potato chips.” Incidentally, I very rarely tend to “overbuy” in the area of healthy foods. But the other reason she doesn’t like me to go is that I don’t have the best judgment. Take fruit for example. Selecting the right fruit is not one of my strong suits. She could send be to the store to get a couple of oranges. Of course, in my mind, the biggest oranges must be the best oranges, so I’ll pick up two big ‘ole oranges. These things make grapefruits insecure. Then when I get them home, we cut into them, and there is no juice, no “meat” to the fruit. It’s all white junk with none of the good stuff. But from the outside, they looked fantastic!
And here is my point. A lot of Christians can look good on the outside. They can do the right things, and act the right way, and say the right words. Jesus looked at the Pharisees and saw this kind of God-follower. In fact, he referred to them as "whitewashed tombs," looking good on the outside, but only death is within. So how do you really know if the good stuff is inside? Not until what’s inside is forced to come out. With fruit, this is when they get squeezed. In similar fashion, when we get squeezed, the real “us” starts to come out. When the pressure is on, when life gets hard, when our spouse or parents get on our nerves, when our parents are acting irrational, when our boss turns up the heat, when tragedy comes into our lives. It’s when things get hard and we get squeezed that we find out what we’re really made of.
Galatians 5:22-23
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”
Is that what comes out of your life? You want to know how to tell if you are living a Caffeinated Christian life, filled with power, and ready to make a difference for Jesus? Examine your behavior when life throws you a curve. Is your life filled with fruit, or are you dry inside?
Philippians 1:11
“May you always be filled with the fruit of your salvation – those good things that are produced in your life by Jesus Christ – for this will bring much glory and praise to God.”
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| | Posted 3/31/2006 12:11 PM - 19 comments
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