UNDERSTANDING the FLOWCHART of FLESH and SPIRIT  FRUITS

Find yourself  in the flesh-colored middle row of the flowchart.  These Core Issues show Nine Basic Needs we all have.  Every person is made to long for these nine basic assets, as does every marriage and family, and every group or organization.  These nine assets or experiences come in two different forms:  those carrying the real, lasting, supernatural, but mostly invisible LIFE that God inspires in us, and the counterfeit, perishable, natural, and mostly visible imitation life that we create ourselves for our own benefit. The red (stop, inflamed) and green (go, growing) try to draw their own life from each other, but the light and darkness at top and bottom show God giving us a taste of eternal LIFE, and Satan giving us a taste of eternal death.

Note which one or two of the nine core issues are your strongest, where you feel overflowing fulness. These issues often work like wellsprings, fountains of life, wells of well-being.  You seem to always have plenty of this experience to give without expecting anything in return.  You and the People, Associations, and Dreams (PADs) that meet this need for you show fruits of the spirit - fruitful beliefs and habits that cooperate with you and others to create and cultivate more and more of this asset or experience to share without expecting anything in return.  Here you trust that the more you give or receive that asset, the easier it is to keep on giving.  This is the Kingdom of God, working within and around you to create fountains of blessing for you and others.

By contrast, note which one or two issues work like whirlpools, where your life ebbs out from a draining emptiness.Here you feel that the more you give or get what you want, the more it somehow leaks out, leaving you still needing more.  Look at your most important PADs, and notice how you can’t get enough of this life asset from them, and they can’t get enough of it from you.  They compete with you and others to consume and control the limited amounts of these human-made resources and experiences.  Fruits of the flesh are exhausting beliefs and habits that reflect a naturally self-centered life, pulling you away from God and people who easily share this experience.  This is the kingdom of self, working to drain the life out of you and others.

We can help you make better choices for each one of the nine issues.  You can take the free, anonymous, online test, the CASm, to give you scores and better descriptions for these issues and their 18 fruits.  You can download from this website our free 50-page Handbook of Transformation Tools.  This includes for each of the nine issues Devotional Guides with 20+ Bible passages explained, Life Lessons from psychology, and Parenting Tips.  When you learn to distinguish the two different kinds of life in yourself, you are taking the log out of your own eye so you can see yourself, other people, and God’s will more realistically.  

KEY CONCEPTS FOR 

LETTTING MORE OF GOD’S LIFE

FLOW INTO AND OUT OF YOURS

SIN MAKES YOU SICK, AND HOLY MAKES YOU HEALTHY   Whenever the Bible gives you a major new commandment or directive about what God wants you to do, you are often reassured that this is to make things go well, both for you and for others, both for now and for the future, both on earth and in heaven (New Testament).  So the CASm defines what’s holy and healthy as  whatever makes us both feel and do the most good and the least harm, both for ourselves and for others, both for now and in the long run.  

HALLMARKS FOR FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT AND FLESH   The Spirit inspires cooperation, strength, growth, caring, freedom, and gratitude.  Fruits of the flesh bring just the opposite:  division, weakness, decay, apathy, bondage, and complaint.  These hallmarks of life and death are important but invisible:  they can only be fully seen by the eyes of a transformed (trained and inspired) heart and mind. (Romans 12: 1-2).  

NINE LIFE ASSETS   The Bible teaches there are two very different kinds of life, the eternal LIFE 

God gives you, and the perishing imitation life you make for yourself.  There are both spiritual, supernatural and wordly, natural forms of :   · HEALTH (learning how…  to exercise, diet, and medicate)  · PEACE (… to feel safe and secure)  ·LOVE (… to care and share)  · HONOR  (… to feel self-worth) · PURPOSE (… to find meaning, hope)  · GRACE (… to accept and forgive people)  ·  LOVEMAKING  (… to create a loving bond for a couple or family)  · WEALTH (… to earn, save, give)  and   · TRUTH (… to know what’s real and lasting).

FRUIT TREE APPRAISALS   Jesus teaches in Matthew 7 not to judge people, but rather to judge the

impact of relating with them, to “know them by their fruits.”   It is wise to judge the impact of the People, Associations, andDreams (PADs) in your life, to regard them like Jesus did as fruit trees.  Our Fruit Tree Appraisal exercise gives questions about how a PAD deals with things like time, money, power, words, lifestyles, and loyalties, to help you anticipate what fruits you will show from your interactions with that PAD. 

WELLSPRINGS & WHIRLPOOLS    PADs showing spiritual fruit cooperate to create attitudes of overflowing fullness in you.  Such PADs are for you external WELLSPRINGS.  As you pay attention to them, these fountains of Life become internalized, into good, Godly mindsets and lifestyles.  Give from these internal wellsprings and you find the more you give of yourself, the more you are able to give.  By contrast unhealthy PADs often compete to consume finite, tangible resources, at the expense of others who end up with less.  Mindsets and lifestyles of draining emptiness work like WHIRLPOOLS to exhaust inner strength from you and others.  To pull out of these life drains, you’ll need to pull back the attention you pay them.

PAYING AND DRAWING ATTENTION     How do these fruits get into you, how can you get them out, and how do you feed them to others?  Whatever you pay attention to will grow, both inside you and out.  So will whatever you call others’ attention to.  To disconnect from a draining PAD, you’ll need to change your beliefs and habits to transform the attention you give it, and give more positive attentions to healthier PADs.  The word attend comes from two Latin words that mean “hold onto”.  Whether in live or online interactions, when your eyes, ears, and mind pay attention to something, whenever you “attend” any meeting, whenever you say, write, or post something to attract the attention of others, even when you are criticizing it, you are holding onto it, and you’re letting it hold onto you.  You can give five levels of positive attention to give and receive fruit from your PADs:

Level 1  =  Attention ~ deliberately focusing yourself to notice a PAD

Level 2  =  Acceptance ~ deciding it’s relatively harmless, and worth exploring further 

Level 3  =  Affection ~ becoming charmed by paying attention mostly to the positive

Level 4  =  Allegiance  ~ joining, subscribing, committing to attend and be together regularly

Level 5  =  Adoration  ~ idolizing a PAD, believing that it is virtually always healthy and inspired.

You absorb fruits of the flesh when you give them positive attention, or when you give negative attention to fruits of the spirit.  You can give negative attention also in five levels:   Disregarding, Disliking, Disapproving, Disengaging, and Demonizing.  Finally, don’t think you can just change your patterns of paying attention by willpower alone.  You’ll need to tell others what you’re doing, tell them why, and ask for their help and their prayers.

This material is licensed by Creative Commons Copyright, 2021.  BY-NC-SA 4.0.            It can freely be copied and shared as is with this notation, but not sold.  Published by Wellness Education for Living and Loving, Inc.    www.mynewlife.com