Chow-Chow -- No, It's Not a Dog

Chow-chow. Have you heard of it? No, it’s not a dog! We’ve been discussing tomatoes. How does a dog even apply? Chow-chow in the south is a tomato relish. Many will put this relish on their peas, or at least that’s how my daddy eats it. In doing a little research into chow-chow, I discovered in Pennsylvania they make a sweet tomato relish. It’s like chow-chow but sweeter. I might like that.

We are down to the last two fruit of the spirit, and they are sweet ones. They aren’t always easy to come by, but when mastered the sweetness of the Spirit comes through and draws people to Christ.

TOMATO 8 – Meekness

I define meekness as gentleness with humility and submissiveness. This fruit is void of ALL PRIDE. The first time I identified meekness in anyone was when I looked at the life of my grandmother. Growing up during the Depression, her father abandoned her mom, her younger sister and herself to start another life up north. My grandmother, her sister and mother lived in doorways, squatted in abandon apartments, ate in soup kitchens, and when her mother had a nervous breakdown and had to be hospitalized for the rest of her life, my grandmother and her sister were passed from one relative to another. If anyone had a right to be angry, bitter and depressed it was my grandmother, but she wasn’t. She was gentle, humble and submissive. She embodied meekness, and she did so while raising 3 hairy-legged, trouble-making boys with my grandfather. So you can see, why I love the word meekness. It doesn’t mean I am meek, but I had a great example.

So, why do Christians need meekness anyway? Galatians 6:1 says we can restore the wayward in meekness. James 1:21 says we receive the engrafted word in meekness – grafting is what you do when you add a branch to the vine. Grafting makes a branch that was once disconnected now connected to a life-giving source in the vine. Think of it as a way of restoration. 2 Timothy 2:25 In meekness instruct those who oppose – If you are bowed up in pride are people more receptive to you? NO. It’s a turn off, but if you go in meekness, people may be more receptive.

Meekness opens the door to commune with God and to draw others to God. There can be no pride when communing with the Spirit because pride is a sin. We have to put our ego and pride aside if we want intimacy with the Spirit and if we want to lead others to Christ.

TOMATO 9 – Temperance

What in the world is temperance? Sounds like an old-fashion, southern woman’s name, and actually if the southern woman is a steel magnolia they probably need more temperance than most. Temperance is self-control. Some southern women I know need temperance especially over their tongues.

2 Peter 1:5-8 But also for this reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and about, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

 There aren’t many verses which use this Greek word for self-control. Maybe because behaviors exhibited in self-control are addressed separately like dealing with anger and the words we spew. I’ve heard people say about their anger, That’s just the way I am or I’ve always been this way. Then what you are telling me is you are refusing to submit to the Holy Spirit. You are refusing to be meek. You are refusing to crucify your fleshly ego and pride. You are not filled with the Spirit because the Spirit-filled believer has the power of the Spirit to enable him to master his passions (versebyversecommentary.com).

Truthfully if you look at the complete list of the fruit of the Spirit, if you have love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith and meekness, there is absolutely no reason why you would lack self-control. If you love someone who is different than you, self-control is needed to know when to speak and what to speak. If you have joy, there’s a time and a place to shout for joy, and there’s a time not to shout for joy like funerals. If you have peace, means you aren’t in turmoil and reacting to every stimuli. If you are longsuffering, gentle, and good, it means your pride takes a backseat to serving and loving others the way Christ loves us. If you have faith and are meek, there would be no need to lose control because you know who is in control. So if you don’t have control over your anger, your impulsive actions or your mouth, then you probably don’t have the other fruit either.

The last part of the verse reads, against such there is no law. The last blog will address the law and the fruit. God revealed something very poignant to me on this. Hope you will come back for one more post.

I Passed Smooth Out. I Didn't Have the Endurance

2 Peter 1:5-8

5 For this very reason, make every effort to supplement (present) your faith (conviction of truth, belief, requires trust, cannot have salvation without faith) with goodness, goodness with knowledge (general understanding of Christian religion), 6 knowledge with self-control (master desires and passions), self-control with endurance (steadfastness, passionate patience), endurance with godliness (God-likeness, image bearer of Christ), 7 godliness with brotherly affection (phileo – cherish each other, found easily in commonality), and brotherly affection with love (agape – loves despite differences). 8 For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they will keep you from being useless or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The first step in walking the Christian life is making a profession of faith. Romans 10:9 says, “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” (HCSB) Once that confession is made, your relationship with God begins building, growing, maturing. Remember, in the prior blog, 2 Peter 1:3 tells us God provides us everything we need to live a godly life once we make that confession of faith. Now, it’s just a matter of maturing those areas in our lives, and there seems to be a progression that maturity takes. After all, your babies don’t start off eating steak with a knife and fork, do they?

So after the confession of faith comes goodness. Goodness is a virtue. But how does a Christian’s goodness differ from a non-Christian’s goodness? Because let’s face, there are a lot of good people in the world. There are a lot of good people in hell too, for that matter. A Christian’s goodness has a basis on and in faith in Christ. If Christ is working through you to do His will for the benefit of others and the kingdom, then it will be done. A Christian’s goodness is rooted in Christ who is the Author of goodness.

After goodness comes knowledge or spiritual understanding. This is learning what the Bible has to say, learning to read the Scripture, to meditate on Scripture, and to pray. There isn’t just one way to do any of these things. There are so many ways to learn and read the Bible, and just as many different ways to pray. The important thing is that you begin, that you try. Don’t you know your heavenly Father is thrilled to hear from you when you speak to him? He is!

With knowledge, one should be in a better position to learn self-control or discipline. This is mastering your desires. How do you manage the good things in your life? Knowledge is a key element to self-control because you need to be able to see what the Word of God says about your desires and cravings. There’s a lot of false doctrine that says if you name it and claim it, you’ll have it, but that’s just not Scriptural. Self-control requires you to read and study the Word in order to mature in this area.

And the flip side of the same coin of self-control is endurance. In the Bible translation called the Message the words “passionate patience” is used instead of “endurance.” I quite like that. How do you manage the hard things in life? If you cannot control your mind or body, how can you possibly endure? Doesn’t endurance require you to maintain self-control in order not to quit? When I was in high school, I ran track. I was a sprinter. I ran 100 and 200 yards. The relay team needed to compete and place in one more race in order to earn a trophy. The next race would require that I run 400 yards – 1 full lap. I had never trained to run a full lap. As a sprinter, as soon as I start running, I am full open speed. I don’t slow down until I cross the line and pass the baton. No one told me how to run a 400 yard leg, and I found out the hard way one does NOT sprint 400 yards. Well, I sprinted 400 yards, and I was sucking wind by the time I passed the baton and passed smooth out. You see, not only had I sprinted the whole way but my breathing was for a sprinter which was short pants. It was not a pretty sight. Endurance requires training. Endurance is something that is exercised in order to grow. Just like muscles that atrophy when they are not used, this list of qualities will atrophy. Continue working on your faith exercising the qualities and characteristics of Christ, and your walk and maturity as a Christian will grow.

After endurance or passionate patience, comes godliness or God-likeness. Can we be perfect? NO! But we are to be image-bearers of Christ. If you were to look at my parents, listen to my parent, and then watch and listen my sister and I, you would see that we favor both of them. We have our dad’s very warped sense of humor much to our mother’s chagrin. My sister is built like my mom and has her coloring. I’m built like the Timmons side of the family. We bear a resemblance to our parents. In verse 3 and 4, we discussed the divine power and divine nature in us which is the Holy Spirit. Our spiritual birth gave us a new nature to take on, a divine nature to emulate, to model. Will we succeed? Not always, but people should be able to see our lives, hear our speech, and know who our Father is.

And once we know who our Father is, and we become His image-bearer, then we mature to brotherly affection. This type of brotherly love is the kind of love when you can find something in common with a person. Truth is, commonalities can be found with everyone on the face of the planet because we all have the same Creator. The reason godliness must come before brother love is because some people are harder to love than others. There are mean people in the world. There are wounded people in the world, and if God burdens your heart to minister and to serve a particular person who is difficult to love, you will need godliness in your back pocket.

Progressing from brotherly type of love, we move to agape type of love. This is a love that loves no matter the differences. It’s the love that is found in Romans 5: 8,  But God proves His own (agape) love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us! It’s also found in 1 Corinthians 13 which is known as the “love” chapter. This chapter concludes with, “these three remain: faith, hope, and love.  But the greatest of these is love.”(agape)

So how are you progressing through this list? How would God say you are progressing?

Don’t be discouraged if you aren’t where you want to be. Be encouraged knowing “He who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” Philippians 1:6. We are all a work in progress.