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We have all seen it, little babies, wide-eyed, soaking in the world around them like cute little sponges. From the moment our eyes can focus we are looking at our surroundings, taking them all in and trying to figure them all out. One of my favorite things to do with my babies once they got to this stage was to walk around holding them, just showing them stuff. The more they were interested in something, the bigger their eyes would get!

It is wonderful for children to learn. Unfortunately, around first or second grade children are no longer as enthusiastic about their education and it takes a lot more effort to get them to learn, at least in school. It is so important though, that as we grow we fill our minds with knowledge which hopefully turns into wisdom.

At a certain point in our lives, most of us have acquired a fair amount of knowledge, life experience and wisdom, this is when we need to start “wringing out the sponge.” We need to begin sharing with people who are not as far along in their journey as we are. This doesn’t mean that we all need to become actual teachers, but I believe teaching opportunities are everywhere, beginning in our own families. The obvious teaching in a family is from parent to child, but grandparents are invaluable as teachers as well. Children love to hear stories from their grandparents’ younger days and also stories from when their own parents were young. Uncles and aunts, older cousins, even older siblings can all have a part in sharing wisdom with younger relatives.

As we do begin to share with others, there are a couple things we need to be cautious of. One is whether the person actually wants to learn the information we are trying to teach. I heard a quote recently that says unasked for advice is just criticism! The other is that we do not want to be abrasive sponges. There is a huge difference in gently shepherding someone and harshly instructing.

Obviously, just because we are to a stage where we can start teaching, it doesn’t mean we stop learning. One of my goals personally, is to stay receptive to what God wants to show me, to stay nice and fluffy like a natural sponge and soak in His truth. I don’t want my mind to stay small like one of those little artificial sponges! So how about you? Are you ready to do a little “soaking” and “wringing?”

“Let the message about Christ, in all its richness, fill your lives. Teach and counsel each other with all the wisdom He gives. Sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to God with thankful hearts.” Colossians 3:16

Just recently I was talking with a friend, sharing some tough things I am going through personally. My friend commented, “Wow, God is making you really shiny!” I had to laugh, even though the process of becoming “shiny” is not so funny most of the time.

I have no idea why God has designed us to grow so much more when circumstances are difficult, but most people I talk to agree, we grow more in the winds and storms than in the sunshine. The process that my friend was referring to, what the Bible calls the refiners fire, can be downright painful. Zechariah 13:9 says, “I will refine them like silver and test them like gold, they will call on my name and I will answer them; I will say, ‘They are my people,’ and they will say, ‘The Lord is our God.'”

God does not take us through hard things for no reason. His goal is to make us more like His son, to take the things that don’t look like Him and refine them right out of us. To bring us to a place eventually where we can say, “The Lord is my God.” I don’t know about you, but I feel like I have a lot of refining left to go!

The Bible refers to those impurities in our lives as ‘dross.’ I looked up the word dross, and some synonyms for it are: refuse, trash, impurity, dregs, scum and waste. Yes, I definitely don’t want any of that lingering around in myself. However, sometimes that fire begins to feel so hot that I begin to think that maybe just a few trash bags in the corners of my person aren’t so bad! I have found though, that God is not okay with dark corners. He is perfectly holy and wants to bring us into the freedom of the perfect holiness of His Son.

That may sound a little strange to some of you, most of the world would not equate holiness with freedom, but there is an amazing sense of freedom when we are able to let the yucky parts of ourselves be healed. When we allow Jesus to come into every part of our lives and comfort us. When we can be super-honest with Him about our struggles. Holiness is not us just trying harder to be “good,” it is about Jesus Himself coming in and doing the work in our hearts.

So while I am still not to the stage where I can do the happy dance when I enter a season of difficult refining, I am getting to a place where I can see the results more quickly, such as more patience, or more peace, and I don’t kick and scream quite as much as I used to when facing a hard time!

“Remove the dross from the silver, and out comes material for the silversmith.” Proverbs 25:4

“In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith–of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire–may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.” I Peter 1:6-7

I honestly think this might be the most irritating sentence in the English language. I just love when I ask my children to do something and they answer, “I know.” Because the reality is that they must NOT know, because they very rarely complete the task in the way I have asked! I think my irritation with my children comes from them not taking the time to listen and slow down and really learn how to do a job. They want to take a short-cut by saying, “I know,” and finish the task as quickly as possible.

No offense to any of my piano students who might be reading this, but it is frustrating to hear it from you too. The whole reason I am there doing lessons is that you do not know it yet. And that is okay. There are very few of us on this planet who can do anything perfectly the first time.

I think all of us need to be very cautious in how we use this sentence. If I am listening to a friend pour her heart out about a difficult circumstance and I just answer, “I know,” I can make her feel completely unheard. The reality is that I don’t know exactly how she feels about what she is going through. Even if I have experienced something similar in my life, I am a different person with a different point of view and different feelings. It is crucially important when we are listening to others that we just listen!

Being a good listener is a wonderful gift we can give others. As much as it is important that my children fully listen to me, it is equally important that I listen to them. My children all have a huge need to be heard and love telling me, (in detail) about things they are interested in.

There are a lot of people in the world that need someone to talk to. In our rushed, busy lives it can be difficult to slow down and listen. However, maybe the next time we are listening to someone and we are tempted to nod and say, “I know,” maybe we should say a quick prayer for love and patience and instead say, “tell me more.”

“My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.” James 1:19

If you ever run into me in the grocery store, your first impression might be that I am a little crazy. I talk to my groceries. I think I began that habit due to the sensory overload of most stores. It’s my way of staying focused on what I need to buy and not becoming overwhelmed. And don’t worry, the groceries don’t talk back!

Unfortunately, the grocery store is not the only place that I talk to myself. I have a very bad habit of allowing negative thoughts to talk to me during the day. Maybe some of you can relate. The voice of fear, the voice of not good enough, the voice of anxiety and on and on.

The problem, surprisingly, is not so much that I talk to myself, but that I listen to myself. I begin to listen to the negative things I am saying and then I start to believe them. Last of all, I begin to act in a way that shows I believe the negativity.

There is more bad news about listening to negative thoughts. Fear can actually get bigger the more we focus on it. I know my mind can work in this spin cycle where a thought keeps coming around and it seems each time it does, it has grown in size.

So what is the solution to this problem? Oddly enough to fix this cycle of negativity, we need to talk to ourselves. However, this kind of talking needs to be deliberately thought through and based on truth. The best place to find truth about ourselves is in God’s love letter to us, the Bible.

When I start to spin out, that is when I know I need to grab my Bible and open it up. I usually head for the book of Psalms, sometimes reading it out loud to myself. I love how real and honest the writers of that book were. It doesn’t matter what I am facing, I usually find my feelings mirrored in the words of the psalmists. As I read, my fears and insecurities shrink away.

It takes a lot of work to catch negative thoughts. They have a way of sneaking in undetected. The more we deliberately think about the truth of who God says we are, the quicker we will be to catch them and shut them out. So the next time you find yourself talking to yourself, make sure it is the truth: God is your strength, He is for you, He loves you!

“Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.” Philippians 4:8

That is the hope, right? We all want the next year to be a good one, full of health, happiness, love and great things. We tell each other “Happy New Year,” almost with the determination of a blessing, hoping that if we say it with enough enthusiasm it will come true.

The reality, as we know if we have lived very long on this planet at all, is that this year will have ups and downs just like other years have. We can make goals and plans and resolutions, which are all good. However, we know that life can interrupt and change these as we go. The longer I live, the more I am trying to let go of carving my plans in granite. I would like to be able to be a little more relaxed when the unexpected happens and I have to change course. As a problem arises, sometimes like a big wave in front of me, I would like the ability to go with the flow. In fact, I could even say that my goal for this year is to learn how to surf!

The ocean has actually always scared me. Thinking about all the things under the surface that might want to eat me and thinking about floundering around in that vast expanse of water has always kept me on the shore. However, surfers overcome those fears by learning how to stay on top and move with the water.

Life can be the same way. I can allow my fears of what might be lurking just out of sight keep me floundering day to day, or I can trust in my mighty God to take care of it like He promises in the Bible that He will, and I can learn to ride the waves. One of the craziest things about surfers is the bigger the waves, the happier they are. Could you and I really get to a place in life where we laugh with joy as the problems get bigger because we KNOW that our God is going to overcome them? Could this be the year that we surf through life with confidence that with God all things are possible? Now that is the kind of new year I could heartily wish us all.

“With God all things are possible.” Matthew 19:26

I know, after yesterday, the last thing anyone wants to think about is food! However, I have been thinking about the fruit of the Spirit lately. I happened to be reading through the book of Galatians recently and I noticed for the first time that the word “fruit” is singular.

Up until now I had thought of the list in Galatians as just that, a list. Or maybe a staircase, first we are given love, then joy, then peace and so on. Moving step by step on our journey with Jesus. The problem with this thinking, as I discovered the other day, is that it can still lean into the works category of thinking, and it is also incorrect!

The significance of the word being “fruit” instead of “fruits” is that when we do accept Jesus into our lives we are given the seeds of all of this fruit right away, not one by one. In my incorrect thinking, I thought we acquired them step by step as we grew in our understanding of God, the Bible etc., all of which are works-based. In actuality the Holy Spirit does all the planting, watering and growing. We just need to be willing and not hinder His work in our lives and yield to His leading.

So back to the fruit salad. Fruit salad is one dish, but it is made up of several types of fruit, all different. When we eat it, sometimes there might be more banana in a bite or more grapes. I think the fruit of the Spirit is the same, it is one, but as we need a quality such as gentleness, that is what the Spirit will develop in us or have bubble to the surface.

So just as we are still full from our Thanksgiving feasts from yesterday, my prayer for us is that we will also be full of the Holy Spirit and that the fruit of the Spirit will continue to grow in our lives.