"... Yet the gifts of the 'fruit of the spirit' [love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control] (Gal 5:22) do not automatically become evident in our lives. It we are not discerning enough to recognize their availability to us, to desire them and to nourish them in our thoughts, they will never become embedded in our nature or behavior. Every further step of spiritual growth in God's grace must be proceeded by our lack of a godly attribute and then by a prayerful determination to obtain it.
However very few Christians are willing to endure the suffering through which complete gentleness is obtained. . . It will mean experiencing genuine brokenness and a crushing of self which will be used to afflict the heart and conquer the mind. . . Today many people are attempting to use their mental capacities and logical thinking to obtain sanctification, yet this is nothing but religious fabrication.
They believe that if they just mentally put themselves on the altar and believe that the altar provides the gift of sanctification, they can then logically conclude that they are fully sanctified. They then go happily on their way expressing their flippant theological babble about the 'deep' things of God.
Yet the heartstrings of their old nature have not been broken, and their unyielding character, which they inherited from Adam has not been ground to powder. . . Having no scars from their death on Calvary, they will exhibit nothing of the soft, sweet, gentle, restful, victorious, overflowing, and triumphant life that flows like a spring morning from an empty tomb."
- So then if this process requires a recognition of our need for an attribute, inevitably we will be placed in a circumstance that allows us to realize how ugly we truly can be. When in retrospect we wish that we had not behaved in a certain way, it is then be our duty to allow the the Spirit of God to work within us bringing death to the old and a rising of the new. Invariably we are given the opportunity, via a similar and often more intense circumstance, to choose to yield to the guiding hand of the heavenly Father. Yielding to the grace that God supplies is entirely different than striving to attain holiness of character.
"If a man be overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; looking to yourself, lest you also be tempted." (Gal 6:1)
"That He would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, that you may be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inward man" (Eph 4:3)
"And the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and my your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete. . ." (1 Thes 5:23)
"not by works done in righteousness, which we did ourselves, but according to his mercy he saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit" (Titus 3:5)
Yielding to the truth will always produce freedom, for it is the truth that sets us free.
