Pam Padgett, member of the body of Christ
Galatians 5:16-25 This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and
ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. 17 For the flesh
lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the
flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that
ye cannot do the things that ye would. 18 But if ye be led
of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.
19 Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which
are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,
20 Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath,
strife, seditions, heresies, 21 Envyings, murders, drunkenness,
revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I
have also told you in time past, that they which do such things
shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,
longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, 23 Meekness,
temperance: against such there is no law.
24 And they that are
Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.
25 If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.
Several years ago when reading this passage of scripture my attention
was drawn to "strife" being a work of the flesh. As I considered this
in my life I saw that one way I have entered into strife was in struggling
with others to get what I
wanted or felt "should" be done. I prayed about this, asking God to help me keep my
flesh from rising up in strife, and also thought on this quite a bit.
About this time I was having the master bathroom remodeled at my
house. One day electricians were here to run a new circuit needed for the
work. At the time, I thought I might put a small sound system in the
master bedroom area and asked the lead electrician if he could run
an additional new circuit in case I did this. He seemed irritated and
said he couldn't do this and went on to give reasons he couldn't do
it. As he told these reasons it became obvious to me that he
planned to run a metal pipe around the outside of the house to
enclose the new circuit. I asked if there was some other way to run
the new circuit, thinking the metal pipe would look ugly. He
verbally struck out at me.
My flesh was ready to rise up and argue with him, struggling to get
what I wanted. After all, I was the customer, and he "should" try to do as I requested, I thought. But before I said anything a thought came from the
Holy Spirit reminding me to not enter into strife.
Being
reminded of this and not wanting to enter into strife, I was able to
turn and walk away without arguing.
The electricians went on with their work, and I turned to God and
prayed, committing the situation to HIM to work out however HE
wanted, and thanked HIM for keeping me from entering into strife in
this matter. I was so grateful to have been helped to not enter
into strife ... this was far more important to me than how the
electrical work was done.
A short time later one of the men came and told me that they had
encountered a nest of wasps in the area where they needed to work
and asked if I had bug spray they could use to kill the wasps. I
was genuinely sorry they had come across this danger and immediately
looked, but had no bug spray. I told them I would get some bug
spray at the store right away. (By being kept from entering into
strife earlier, I think my heart was in good condition where the electricians were concerned, and I really cared
about their welfare and wanted to help them not be stung by wasps.)
When I returned home from the store 10-15 minutes later, the lead electrician was smiling and seemed very happy. He said that while
they were waiting on me, they had looked in the attic area and saw a
small opening that allowed them to run the new circuit through the
attic. This was much easier for them than running the metal pipe
around the house. And he said now it was no more work to run the second
circuit, so he did that as well.
This was a complete change from when I spoke with this electrician
earlier, and I thanked God for this.
But most importantly, I was grateful to God for being kept from entering into strife.
==
An interesting thing happened about 12 years later, in 2018, when another construction project was being done to add a handicap-accessible shower to a bathroom. A new electrical circuit was unexpectedly needed. Because of new building codes, this was going to be expensive to pull from the main electrical panel and would add more time to the project.
But I was reminded by the Holy Spirit of the second electrical circuit that had been run to the attic. It had never been used and was still in the attic. There was an easy way to get this circuit to the handicap-accessible bathroom without dealing with the main electrical panel, saving expense and time.
💥💥💥💥💥
