It happens at least once a day at the coffee shop, when a student tells me I have something they don’t. They tell me I am kind, gentle, patient and seem to have peace. I have heard this so often and in sincerity it has caused me to think about it. The interesting thing is it usually happens with first time visitors, not with those who have spent a lot of time with me. It is something they clearly sense at first contact and is so noticeable they feel compelled to bring it to my attention.
At first I felt a bit shy about it and thanked them, but as time went on and the practice continued I began to see a connection with a diagram I draw to represent man in Biblical terms with a body, soul, and spirit. The body provides the soul with connection to the world and the spirit, when it is alive, provides the soul with a connection with God and heaven. When the Spirit of God comes into man’s spirit and gives it life, its fruit begins to be absorbed by the soul and then the body. This is when I began to realize what they were seeing. It was not my qualities they were experiencing, but evidence of God radiating through me, touching them.
The fruit of the Spirit is love and is manifested by joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. The students who were telling me I had something they didn’t were realizing they didn’t have these characteristics that manifest the fruit of the Spirit. They didn’t know where these characteristics were from and assumed they were my natural qualities, or something you could learn with proper thinking and living.
Now when they tell me what I am like and why they enjoy being with me, it provides me an opportunity to draw my little diagram, shown below, and explain that when the Spirit of God comes to live in my spirit, he brings with him the fruit called love and its characteristics begin to settle down into the soul and then are radiated out through the body. I tell them that what they experience with me is the presence of God living in me. I become his witness in a way they have never been able to consider before and it makes a very deep impression. That is when they realize that most other people from the West who work at the coffee shop are also believers and then my witness is enforced by theirs and that becomes a witness they can’t easily explain away.
It is such a cool experience to have so many unbelievers clearly identify something in a believer they don’t have and then to be able to clearly show them why. It is the kind of witness that is difficult for them to push aside.
At first I felt a bit shy about it and thanked them, but as time went on and the practice continued I began to see a connection with a diagram I draw to represent man in Biblical terms with a body, soul, and spirit. The body provides the soul with connection to the world and the spirit, when it is alive, provides the soul with a connection with God and heaven. When the Spirit of God comes into man’s spirit and gives it life, its fruit begins to be absorbed by the soul and then the body. This is when I began to realize what they were seeing. It was not my qualities they were experiencing, but evidence of God radiating through me, touching them.
The fruit of the Spirit is love and is manifested by joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. The students who were telling me I had something they didn’t were realizing they didn’t have these characteristics that manifest the fruit of the Spirit. They didn’t know where these characteristics were from and assumed they were my natural qualities, or something you could learn with proper thinking and living.
Now when they tell me what I am like and why they enjoy being with me, it provides me an opportunity to draw my little diagram, shown below, and explain that when the Spirit of God comes to live in my spirit, he brings with him the fruit called love and its characteristics begin to settle down into the soul and then are radiated out through the body. I tell them that what they experience with me is the presence of God living in me. I become his witness in a way they have never been able to consider before and it makes a very deep impression. That is when they realize that most other people from the West who work at the coffee shop are also believers and then my witness is enforced by theirs and that becomes a witness they can’t easily explain away.
It is such a cool experience to have so many unbelievers clearly identify something in a believer they don’t have and then to be able to clearly show them why. It is the kind of witness that is difficult for them to push aside.
