UNDERSTANDING the FLOWCHART of FLESH and SPIRIT FRUITS
The fruits of the spirit are attitudes (beliefs and habits) showing that the supernatural life of our loving God is flowing through you. By contrast, fruits of the flesh are attitudes that reflect a naturally self-centered life or choice, pulling you away from God. These are all measured by the free, anonymous, online CAS (Character Assessment Scale) on the website below, giving instant feedback to whatever email you give us.
Find yourself in the flesh-colored middle row of the flowchart. These Core Issues show nine Basic Needs we all have. These nine assets or experiences come in two different forms: those carrying real, lasting, supernatural, but mostly invisible Life that God inspires in us, and the counterfeit, temporary, natural, and mostly visible imitations that we create ourselves for our own benefit. The red and green try to take life from each other, but the white and black show Satan giving us a taste eternal death, and God giving us a taste of eternal Life.
Look inside yourself for wellsprings – beliefs and habits that inspire you supernaturally to cooperate to create what fills you up with this. Focus on one issue you feel good about, one where you feel you have plenty of that asset to give others without expecting anything in return. When God refreshes you with Fruits of the Spirit, you feel overflowing fulness, when the more you give that asset away, the easier it is to keep on giving.
And look within yourself for whirlpools – beliefs and habits that naturally compete to consume what feels like limited supplies of this resource. Pick one issue where you struggle, where you feel you lack that asset in your life. Recall situations where you often feel drained of your life, feeling like you don’t have enough of that asset. When your lifeebbs out from a draining emptiness, Fruits of the Flesh infect you with the feeling that the more you give or get what you want, the more it somehow leaks out, leaving you always needing more.
Now look around you at the relationships, groups, and causes that are most important to you. To know which of these People, Associations, and Dreams (PADs) are inspiring you, look for wellsprings coming from PADs that are inspired, believing that the spirit of Jesus Christ lives within them, and works through them. They seem to have plenty of these assets to share freely with you and others. Somehow, you seem to be helping each other to become wellsprings, as you seem increasingly able to share more of these assets with others.
And look for whirlpools around you, in the PADs that seem to be draining that asset out of you and others. They compete with others to consume what they see as limited resources. Note the whirlpools that expect you to give them more and more of your life as time passes, while somehow putting less and less back into you. Your CAS feedback links you to a PAD evaluation tool to appraise your PADs. And for each of the nine issues, you get two pages each of Devotional Guides, Psychological Insights, and Parenting Tips.
From the Bible and common sense, people and groups are living the good life if they show and inspire more caring, freedom, gratitude, cooperation, strength, and growth. Whirlpools drain those out, and leave you with more apathy, bondage, complaint, division, weakness, and decay. By these standards, genuine, healthy experiences of your nine Core Needs are described in the beliefs and habits printed in green above you, to show go – there’s fresh growth here. By contrast, draining sinful beliefs and habits are printed in red below you, to show stop – there’s dangerous inflammation here. These contrasting fruits of the flesh and spirit were all taught by Jesus and Paul 2000 years ago, and 1000 years earlier by the wise King Solomon. Along with Moses, they all taught that if we walked in the spirit by these guidelines, things would naturally go well for us and our families.
Now 40 years of solid scientific research has proven clearly that sin and righteousness both grow and move just like the Bible and the flowchart teach. Life and death flow invisibly, vertically and horizontally, as the arrows indicate. Within columns, everything green avoids or fights the red, and vice versa. Everything in rows above and below is contagious: growing anything green grows other greens, and all the reds fertilize the other reds. To discern people walking in the spirit vs. the flesh, Jesus said “You will know them by their fruits.” So starting afresh today, will you learn to discern? Will you start forsaking more red, and start seeking more green?
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a 501(c)3 nonprofit described at mynewlife.com/the-well. You can take the CAS at mynewlife.com/cas.
It gives 27 scores right away for everything described in the chart, along with verbal and graphic
feedback, and links to our website’s downloadable tools for personal healing and growth.
This material can be copied and shared as is by its Creative Commons Copyright 2023 BY-NC-SA 4.0
KEY CONCEPTS FOR THE GOOD LIFE
DEFINING HEALTHY Our modern concept of quick symptom relief doesn’t get to the root of sickness. Instead, our free, anonymous online test defines what’s healthy as whatever does the most good and the least harm for you and others, now and in the long run. Seeing healthy this way is quite practical, reminding us that health and sickness are both contagious, as we take in what we put out, and vice-versa.
HALLMARKS FOR SPIRITUAL FRUIT All of them inspire 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 trained heart and mind. WELL gives you resources for that training.
BASIC HUMAN NEEDS For3000 years, health experts have taught we need nine experiences
for thriving, self-confidence, and self-esteem: · HEALTH (… 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 forgive) · SEXUALITY (… to save/use genital contact for loyal pair bonding) · WEALTH (… to earn, save, give) and · TRUTH (learning how … to know what’s real).
PADs These basic needs get met by connecting with People, Associations, and Dreams (PADs).
We can think of them as sources of life, but better to see them as resources, channels and carriers of life. WELL shows you to discern how healthy your PADs are for you, before you take or give too much with them.
WELLSPRINGS & WHIRLPOOLS PADs showing spiritual fruit often cooperate to create intangible attitudes of overflowing fullnessin people. Such PADs are for us external WELLSPRINGS, and as we pay attention to them, they gradually become internalized, into healthy mindsets and lifestyles for us. 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 disengage from whirlpools, pull back the attention you pay them.
PAYING ATTENTION Whatever you pay attention to will grow, both inside you and out. So will whatever we call others’ attention to. To disconnect from a draining PAD, take back the attention you give it, and give your attentions elsewhere, to livelier PADs. We can give five levels of attention to our PADs:
Level 1 = Attention ~ deliberately focusing ourselves 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 be together regularly
Level 5 = Adoration ~ idolizing a PAD, believing that it’s most always healthy and holy.
This model 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