Is This Really Possible?

"It's God's intention that our lives should be a seamless manifestation of the fruit of the Spirit: "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control" (Gal. 5:22-23). God has made abundant provision for His indwelling our lives in the here and now. Appropriate attention to the care of our souls through His empowerment will yield this rich spiritual fruit ..." (Dallas Willard, The Great Omission, p. 125)

Is Willard serious? Can we really get to a place in our lives were we experience God's love and "walk in the way of love" (Eph 5:1, NASB) as Paul exhorts us? Is it really possible to experience joy from deep within that isn't shaken by our circumstances? Not a pretense of joy, but a true sense of well-being and hope in the Lord always. Yes, I guess it is possible: Jesus taught us to abide in God's love, like a branch remains with the vine, "so that His joy may be in us and that our joy may be complete." It must be possible to live in complete joy.

"Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love." (Eph. 5:1 NIV)

"Living a life of love," "experiencing complete joy" -- not exactly the first characteristics that spring to mind as people outside of the church seek to describe us. Not exactly the first characteristics that spring to my mind either. Why is that? Why aren't we known by our love, joy, peace, patience...?

Maybe we're not paying enough attention to our interior life. For the fruit of the Spirit to naturally overflow in our lives, we must attend to matters of the heart: experiencing His Love and receiving His Grace. Spiritual exercises like Practicing the Presence of God and letting the Word of Christ richly dwell in us and spending time in solitude being with the Lord and experiencing His Divine Love are a few of the specific, practical exercises we can build into our lives that will help us abide in His love.

At The Springs, we take long periods of time to experience His Love and Grace in these kinds of specific ways. The retreat is not a vacation. It's not time for us to get away from it all. The retreat is for the specific purpose of being with the Lord. As we take the time to be with Him, and make these practices part of our daily life, we are able to stay connected with the Lord like branch is connected with the vine. Through living as Christ taught us we open ourselves to receiving His Grace so that we will exude in increasing measure the character of the Spirit of God and experience His life changing us from the inside out. At least that's the goal that the Lord Jesus has set before us. I think it would be good for us to take His charge to "walk by the Spirit" seriously.

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The Secret to the Spiritual Life

"The good tree," Jesus said, "bears good fruit." (Matthew 7:17)

Take care of the tree and it'll naturally produce good fruit. It makes no sense to start working on the fruit -- trying to make the apples sweeter, bigger, juicier. Take care of the tree, and you'll have good fruit.

Tend to my tree, and I'll produce good fruit.

Tend to my heart and I'll live a life of love, joy, peace, patience, generosity, self-control (Gal. 5:22-23). Is Jesus saying that if I tend to my heart, I'll be generous? If I tend to my heart, I'll experience self-control? Is that right?

I know that no amount of trying to be loving will make me loving. I can act as if I love you for a while, but that's not real love. Love has to come from within and flow out into my life. I can't be mad at you, and pretend "I'm fine, I'm happy, no problem" and call that love or joy or peace. It's not. It's pretending.

Good tree -- good fruit. Jesus is looking for us to be real. Authentic. Good fruit. No pretending.

How can we accomplish this? Jesus confirmed that all of the instruction in the Scriptures can be captured in the command, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Why is that? Because, if we tend to our hearts' devotion, we'll produce good fruit. The Springs retreat is all about learning how to tend to our hearts.

How do we live the spiritual life? How do we increasingly have our thoughts, attitudes, desires transformed so that we are authentically good? Love the Lord your God...

Don't work on fixing the fruit. Tend to the tree. Good tree--good fruit. Tend to your heart.

And the second commandment, "Love your neighbor as yourself."
First, tend to your heart -- Love the Lord your God. Then, in real, authentic ways, let the love of God overflow and in tangible ways...love others.

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