I believe the Lord is pretty serious when it comes to producing the fruit of the Spirit! Our lives are to reflect who Jesus is if we claim to have Jesus living in our hearts. I am sure not saying that this is an easy task because I have to say that this whole week since beginning this talk, I have really been challenged in this area of living this out! And I think if we are all honest with ourselves and each other this is difficult, PERIOD, but that doesn't change the fact that we are called to do it! Being a christian is not a walk in the park and whoever said it was told a big fat lie!! I'm just trying to be as real as possible! Don't get me wrong people, I wouldn't trade this life for NOTHING, because I can't wait for the day when I see Jesus face to face, BECAUSE IT WILL BE WORTH IT ALL!!! But He never said that the road would be easy. If anything, He said the opposite, He said there would be persecution and opposition we would face. I believe it is how we handle it that makes the difference in this dark world. See that is why we are called to be a light in this dark world. Sometimes when we are ready to chuck our fruit at somebody instead of lovingly handing it to someone, HAHA, I hope you get my humor in that, what I mean is, we may feel the need to jack slap someone instead of loving them, but God is calling us to love because that is what is gonna reach that person and change their life for His glory! This is why, how we react and live our lives DOES MATTER!!!!
Matthew 3:8-10, Prove by the way you live that you have repented of your sins and turned to God. Don't just say to each other, We're safe, for we are descendants of Abraham. That means nothing, for I tell you, God can create children of Abraham from these very stones. Even now the ax of God's judgement is poised, ready to sever the roots of the trees, Yes, every tree that does not produce good fruit will be chopped down and thrown into the fire. Matthew 7:15-20, “Beware of false prophets who come disguised as harmless sheep but are really vicious wolves. You can identify them by their fruit, that is, by the way they act. Can you pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? A good tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree can’t produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can’t produce good fruit. So every tree that does not produce good fruit is chopped down and thrown into the fire. Yes, just as you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions. These are pretty powerful scriptures and speak loudly!! I think our Love walk is a very important part of our fruit production as well!! We need to keep our love in check. 1 Corinthians 13, speaks of Love being patient and kind and not being jealous or boastful or proud and not demanding its own way and many other things! So we definitely need to keep our love in check and I think if we can keep an eye on this, it will help in keeping the other fruits in check! We are surely not going to be perfect in this, I am challenged daily in this, but I know that the Lord is calling me to step it up and to grow in Him and to mature as a godly woman. That is what growing is and being a christian is all about. We have to daily take up the cross and put away our flesh and our desires and selfishness and live like Jesus! That's what dying to self is about! Let's do this thing together and keep encouraging one another and LIVE OUT LOUD FOR JESUS so we can see souls brought into the KINGDOM!! Krista
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Ephesians 3: 18-19
And may you have the power to understand as all God's people should, how wide, how long, how high and how deep His love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be MADE COMPLETE with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. We find our real value in Jesus!! We all seek to be loved and cared for and want that true Valentine in our lives!! Let the Lord be your ultimate Valentine! I believe Jesus wants to be the Love of our Life!! I have to tell you that Jesus truly is the LOVE of my Life and I have found myself complete in Him, and by doing that, I have fallen so in love with my husband all over again!! You may read this and laugh at it, but it is true. I can remember the first years of our marriage was rough for me and my husband because I was trying to find my value in that. If we would fight, then all the sudden I would feel unloved and relate it to how others even felt about me. I dealt with low self-esteem and guilt all the time and that played a big part in how I even valued myself. I believe I carried a lot of baggage into my marriage from my childhood though from my parents divorce. That played a huge part in how I valued myself as well. So, not realizing who Jesus seen me as caused me to feel unloved and then it would just cause problems even when there really wasn't a problem. I just was searching for that love and acceptance all the time. And I believe we all want to be accepted and loved and we find ourselves seeking out relationships or seeking other things like drugs and alcohol to help cope with what we may be dealing with. My prayer is you don't turn to those things to try to find your value or acceptance!! Jesus said you were worth it and paid a high price for you and for me. We have to realize who Jesus says that we are and truly how much He does love us. It took me sometime to really realize this, and getting in my Word and daily seeking the face of God! But I found out the more I searched for Him, the more I found Him and the more I found Him the more I loved Him and the more I wanted to be in His presence. The more I was in His presence, the more He was teaching me about who I was in Him and how He loved me. He really is jealous for me, but not just for me, He is for you also! Realize you are COMPLETE in JESUS and HE wants to love on you. Me and my husband have the best relationship now and I love being married to him and our 3 children and our life God has given us together. Have we got our struggles? OH YEAH!!! Do I want to kill him sometimes? OH YEAH!! LOL!! Thank the Lord for His mercies that are new every morning! Haha! I am a very blessed woman and don't ever want to take it for granted. Know who you are and count your blessings today!! Krista Forgiveness- This is a very powerful thing that can either control us or set us free. I heard a statement one time, I believe from Jeanne Mayo that said, "Unforgiveness is like drinking a poison and expecting someone else to die from it"!! That was a very powerful statement to me and spoke volumes to me. I know we all have a story and you may be saying, Krista you have no idea what I have been through and you would be absolutely right, I don't know your story and I don't know what you have been through or who the people are in your life who have hurt you in some way, but what I do know is my story and a Savior who took my story and made it something amazing and is still in the process of writing it!! The amazing thing is, is that the same Savior wants to do the same for you. Jesus talks about forgiveness quite a lot in the Word. He even showed us by example how to forgive when it seemed most impossible! Romans 5:8 says, But God showed His great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.
That's amazing to me. I know that Jesus is the constant in my life, and I have to continually run to Him to help me in this area of my life. His Word says in Matthew 6:14, "If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins." These are Jesus words here speaking, written in RED. That is powerful right there. The thing of it is, is that when we choose not to forgive, it is eating away at us and causing more harm. The Lord wants us free, completely free. Forgiveness brings that freedom, it doesn't make what that person did to you right or okay, but what it does do is begin to free you of all the bitterness and hurt so you can begin to truly heal! Choose to forgive today! Sometimes this is a process, we have to choose daily to hand this over to the Lord so He can help us in these situations! I would love to hear from you how maybe you have overcome in this situation yourself or maybe how you are still overcoming in this area. I know for me, I have overcome in areas and am still overcoming. Let's walk this out with Jesus together! Krista |
Krista Lesher"Hangin' with Krista" Archives
August 2018
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