What we do, we become.

So, here we go again…another Friday night on the couch for me, battling a cold and quickly going stir crazy. But praise God for the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and minds, and the direction we are led in. After a couple of hours of watching mindless TV – the first time this week – I’d had enough and started reading “The Fruitful Life,” by Jerry Bridges.

Like most of Bridges’ book, this one is straightforward and hits the nail on the head page after page. As a new believer – especially – I am really enjoying the practical application that he explains so simply in each chapter. While the focus of the book is the fruits of the Spirit, it goes much deeper than the passage in Galatians 5 that we’ve heard so many times we’ve taken it for granted.

In reading through chapter one for a second time, I was stopped cold after reading through a few paragraphs on training ourselves to be Godly. What Bridges’ discusses – and what my feeble mind had never conceived of before – was our subconscious ability to train ourselves in the opposite direction. As it says in II Peter 2:14, “Having eyes full of adultery and that cannot cease from sin, enticing unstable souls. They have a heart TRAINED in covetous practices, and are accursed children.” They referring to the false teachers Peter describes here. They were so deceived, and their hearts were so wicked, that there character was growing in the opposite of Godliness.

Bridges’ observation of this verse is profound – “Every day we are training ourselves in one direction or the other by the thoughts we think, the words we say, the actions we take, and the deeds we do...Everyday that we are not practicing godliness, we are being conformed to the world of ungodliness around us.”

This made me stop in my tracks, and think to myself – everything. What I do every minute of the day – when I have five free minutes, when I’m stuck at home sick and have an entire Friday evening, when I’m cut off on the freeway, when an opportunity is presented to minister to a brother or sister in need – the choices I make in every decision every second of the day are shaping my character.

Romans 12:11

“Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been TRAINED by it.”