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The last blog series on boundaries in relationships was such a success I am going to kick off a new series: the fruit of the spirit.

We all know the fruit of the spirit’s not a coconut. But do we know what they really are? If you’re like me, you can’t just rattle off the list. Instead, you have to sing them: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

I have known that I am supposed to have these characteristics but I never really knew how. When someone was persistently frustrating, I would repeat in my head, “patience…patience…patience.” It was almost as productive as screaming in anger, “SERENITY NOW!”

Last weekend I had the privilege to speak to a youth group on how to cultivate these fruits as well as how to use them to tell others about God.

So keep an eye on the blog as we begin a conversation I like to call: Our Spiritual Fruit Need Roots.

Read the next post in this series here: http://wp.me/p2xHae-92

After the play, I interviewed the two leading ladies. One of my questions was, “What message do you think the audience left with?”

They said, “We’ve actually talked about that a lot. We think they just laugh.”

Kevin and I, however, discussed the moral lessons during the ten minute drive back home.

The plot of the play, or at the nutshell version, goes like this. Groom wakes up on his wedding day lying next to a woman in bed who is not his wife – more so  he does not so much as remember her name. We later discover that she is his best man’s girlfriend. After an hour of lying to one another in order to prevent the bride from discovering that he slept with someone else and also to make certain the best man doesn’t discover it was with his girlfriend, the play unravels in the last sixty seconds. The bride marries the best man and the groom marries this other woman.

All’s well that ends well. Or is it?

I’ve been thinking about entertainment all week. I know that I don’t fill my head with Scripturally-based messages with every movie I watch or book I read. But I am able to point out the messages that contradict Scripture and am able to explain why I disagree with them.

As a Christian who majored in English, I will readily tell you that I have read books with characters searching for whatever spiritual truth they could grasp or even create. I have not agreed with every character, just like I don’t agree with every person in real life. But we need to be able to communicate.

Here are a few of my personal thoughts to keep in mind when confronting culture:

1. The journey matters. This play clearly taught that as long as everyone ended up with a partner at the end, all was forgiven. Suddenly, no one cared that they had been cheated on and lied to. Fidelity in words and actions matter. Luke 16:10 reminds us that whoever is faithful in small things will also be faithful in the large things. Often, we are too focused on the big things in life. We think, “if only God made us millionaires, we would give all the money to missionaries and charities!” Or, “if only God would let me be the teacher, I would read and pray harder than ever!” God is not promising to give us these “big things.” Instead, we need to practice faithfulness throughout our daily walk.

2. We can never shut off our brain. As much as I want to say that watching a television show where everyone is living however they please does not affect me, I am allowing those thoughts to creep in. I am allowing a sinful lifestyle to become the norm. And not just the norm, but a common place matter that is so trivial we can laugh at.

3. Be careful what you recommend. I love to completely lose myself in a well-crafted fiction book. This year, I have completely enjoyed two recently released books. And yet, I don’t recommend them to everybody. Before you open your mouth to say, “Oh yeah, you should see that movie” you should consider the person’s background and personality. Even if  a book is marketed toward young adults, and even if I thoroughly enjoyed it, I may not tell a high school girl that she should read it. Books force emotional reactions from the reader that not everyone understands. It makes me think of Paul in 1 Corinthians 8. He says that he will stop eating meat if it makes a brother stumble (see context). In the same way, if I know a person isn’t strong in their faith, I’m not going to recommend they read a book whose main character also doubts the authority of God. I don’t want the book, or my recommendation, to cause them to drift further from the truth.

Not everything has to be “Christian.” But our minds and hearts must always focus on Christ. We cannot allow the pleasures of this world to take heart in our minds.

“Kevin! I think something sad has happened but I’m too scared to look!”

I grabbed his backpack and keys from his hand and pulled him out of the front door and into our second bedroom.

“Oh dear. That’s not good.” Kevin confirmed my fear – only one of the four baby birds in our window planter was in its nest. And it was dead.

After several minutes of sadness and discussion of the oddity of their disappearance, Kevin half-heartedly suggested we look downstairs. I raced out the door to find our tiny, pink neighbors.

We almost gave up our search when Kevin looked once more in the weeds. He pulled back the tangled grass and was greeted by three fuzzy friends, beaks open, begging for food. We faced our first difficult decision – do we leave them on the ground or return them to the nest? With a cat lurking ten feet away, we chose the nest.

Armed with cardboard, drum sticks, and a plastic cup, we maneuvered their fragile bodies back to the nest (after removing their deceased sibling). And so the wait began.

“God, please bring mama bird back.” Though I felt like a small child, I earnestly asked God to provide for our baby birds.

But by 10:00 pm that night there was still no sign of mama or papa bird. And so came difficult decision number two for the night – to let them freeze in the 30 degree night or to bring them inside. Neither was an ideal option. I chose to put a lamp with them in the window planter. By 10:30, Kevin was in bed and the baby birds nestled together.

But at 11:00, I still lie awake, mind racing. All I could think about was how that lamp gets so hot I have burned my hand on it before. What if it sparked? I could live with myself if the baby birds died but not if I burned down our apartment building.

I turned off the lamp.

Matthew 6:26 reminds us that God feeds the birds of the air. But God let those baby birds die.

Here’s a hard lesson we must learn in ministry (shout out to Kevin for telling this to me): We can only do so much on our own. Those baby birds needed their mama and she failed them. The people we minister to need more than we can give – a reconciled relationship, a parent released from prison, the revelation of a Heavenly Father.

For those of you in ministry – don’t be discouraged by our baby bird adventure. Take courage that where your efforts run out, God’s never will. Work with His strength that never fails,  knowing that He will empower us to overcome the list of things we cannot provide. And know that He is at work, even when you don’t see the evidence.

Then they said, “Come let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.
-Genesis 11:4

When I die, I want my family to know who I was. I want to have left a deep impact on people. But why? Why would I care? I’ll be dead.

It’s as though my soul knows it’s immortal. It knows that it will live on – but I want to be the one who decides how. The danger lies in the word “me.”

“Why don’t they like me?” “What if they laugh at me?” “That cookie is for me.” All statements I have made in the last month.

What’s wrong with me? (There I go again.) I should stop caring about superficial, fleshly me and focus on eternal, all-powerful God and people’s relationship with Him.

What if they’ve never heard? What if I get to be the one to tell them?

God was so displeased in Genesis that he confused their languages to protect them. He says in verse six that if they all speak the same language, nothing will be impossible for them. Unfortunately, in this context, clear communication caused the people to turn away from God. They were not trying to build a tower to worship God, they were building a tower to become their own God.

Think how pleased God would be if we stopped building legacies of legos and instead built them on Christ the Solid Rock.

In the middle of a dreary, wintry spring day, I, along with three of my coworkers, had the opportunity to attend Union University’s Business Through the Eyes of Faith this past Wednesday afternoon. As our community businessmen and women gathered in the first salon in the Carl Grant Event Center, the atmosphere warmed. Hands were shaken and business friends reacquainted.

Dr. Dockery walked to the stage and congratulated the School of Business for growing ever nearer to full accreditation status. He then introduced the speaker, Wai Kwong Seck, Executive Vice President, Head of Global Markets and Global Services across Asia Pacific for State Street Global Marketing. Seck had received an invitation to speak as a result of Union University’s mutual partnership with the Christian community in Singapore. Seck, though born and raised in Singapore, now lives in Hong Kong with his wife to eliminate excess travel for his job.

Seck simply stated his purpose in speaking: to leave us contemplating two words, surrender and platform.

He reached the people through the story of his life. When he was sixteen years old, his life was so consumed by his studies that he had to take sleeping pills to rest at night. Exhausted, he met with a local pastor who prayed for him. But young Seck left unchanged. Days and nights continued as restlessly as they had. Finally, he prayed, “I don’t care if I collect garbage, I want to follow You, Jesus.” That night, Seck slept.

Seck then jumped to his life as a fifty-year-old man. Rummaging on a shelf, he came across the Bible he used as a twenty-year old student. He stopped and wondered what twenty-year old Wai Kwong would say to fifty-year old Wai Kwong. These were the three statements he created.

1. You have gotten further in life than I ever imagined.
2. You have made more money than I ever dreamed.
3. You are much further from God than you ever were.

Seck believes that only when you surrender your work and your “success” will you find victory.

In East Asia, hunters lay traps for monkeys. They place nuts in a jar. The monkeys’ hands are just small enough to fit in the top of the jar. But once they grab the nuts, they cannot get their hand back out of the jar. Rather than leave the nuts and move on, the monkeys cling to them. Eventually, the hunter presents himself and kills the monkeys. Seck warned Jackson’s businesspeople not to be like these monkeys, clinging to small nuts of success.

He realized that his job is a platform. When people ask him to speak, they are asking the Executive Vice President but they don’t get a position, they get a person. Wai Kwong intentionally weaves his faith in his discussions about his business practices.

Seck’s faith is so real to him that he cannot segregate any aspect of his life from it.

I wonder, what will twenty-year old you say to fifty-year old you?