Try and Err

So the "Fruits of the Spirit" experiment...

Not going so well. At our weekly check-up, Deanna and I decided to pull the brakes & venture in a different direction with our efforts, i.e. praying without ceasing.

COMMERCIAL BREAK:
I feel like Small World Wonder has become a more Jesusy blog than I had expected... Well, I guess I in fact have been becoming more Jesusy lately than forecasted. I'm not apologizing for that or anything, but I guess I worry about descending into the Christianeze that can be so unreadable, even when the best intentions are at heart. So, I guess, I'm soliciting constructive criticism if a Jesusy post is obnoxious or unbearable. It won't hurt my feelings, I promise, you can tell me. Kthanksbye.

Ok, so Deanna and I realized (how many blondes does it take to find the fruits of the spirit?) we were going about it all wrong. We were straining to be joyful... at peace... employ all kinds of self control... and we were failing miserably. Ha. Our weekly checkups ended up being full of blank-faced questions like, "Is this a joke? Are we just setting ourselves up to fail and then commiserate in our mutual pathetic-ness?" Not awesome.

The thing is, the fruit of the spirit are not really things to be sought after. They are a byproduct of the thing we are supposed to chase - which is the Holy Spirit. People don't get close to The Spirit by being super-joyful, people become joyful by abiding in the presence and love of The Spirit. Actually. At least this is the replacement hypothesis. Feel free to disagree.

Anyway, now, Brother Lawrence's vision of the spiritual life is helping us re-focus. He wrote The Practice of the Presence of God: The Best Rule of Holy Life, which totally transformed my understanding of Christian spirituality. This short book can actually be read online, I've found, at

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/lawrence/practice.toc.html

and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in living well. Even if you only get through a chapter. Every page is revolutionary and quite nourishing.

My conviction to focus on Abiding in God's presence was confirmed so thoroughly when I listened to a Time Keller podcast from CAC called... Abiding. Yeah. He brought me back to John 15 - a passage I studied to death Freshman year in college in a book by the guy who started the crazy Prayer of Jabaz phenomenon. It was called Secrets of the Vine, and reading it with a small group helped me understand how being a disciple of Jesus is a daily experience. So the Abiding podcast and the Secrets of the Vine book are based on the following passage in John:

The Vine and the Branches

"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes[a] so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

"I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples."

I'm hopeful this new focus (communicating with and validating the constant presence of the Holy Spirit) will be more fruitful than the fruit chasing itself. I mean, we started feeling like those mushroom hunters who go out in the wilderness, hoping this immensely valuable fungus will reveal it's hidden location, right? It's insane.

The source is what we should be hunting, not the fruit. So-let-it-be.