The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Galatians 5:22-23
The fourth step in guarding your heart is to identify and pursue the opposite of your sins. For every red light on the dashboard of your soul, showing impulses that lead you away from the Lord, there is a green light that will be its opposite.
Green lights are impulses in your soul that reflect what the Bible calls the “fruit of the Spirit” in your life. You can make a list straight from Galatians 5:22-23. This is not an exhaustive list. You could add others. Forgiveness would be one example. Courage would be another.
Those of you who are parents to young children know that the best way to move a child away from something harmful is to get the child’s attention focused on something better. The little fingers wander toward the electric socket, so you distract the child’s attention to something else.
Using this picture, A. W. Pink says: “The best security for the soul against the allurements of Satan is to have it engaged with a lovelier and more satisfying Object. A heart which is filled and engaged with good is best protected against evil.”
Identify the green lights that correspond to your red lights and commit to pursuing them. Pray to the Lord, “Lord, by Your grace and through Your power, I renounce this impatience. I want nothing more to do with it. Lord, help me now to grow in the patience that I seek. Guard my heart from this enemy within and use the circumstances that have provoked this impulse to sin in my heart to become the occasion of new growth in likeness to Jesus, for Your glory.”
That’s how Christian growth happens. The very circumstances that provided the red light are the very things that produce new growth.
Think about the sin(s) you identified yesterday. Can you identify the opposite of them from the fruit of the Spirit?
