Friday, November 4

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Galatians 5:22-25

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Jesus Christ have crucified the sinful nature its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.

Like many people, we have a clothes dryer in the laundry room in our home. I know very little about how that dryer works – except that it runs on gas and clothes are always both dry and hot whenever I take them out (which isn’t very often). A couple of years ago I also learned that our dryer has a vent through which all that hot air is channeled out of the dryer, through the ductwork of our house – and into the outside air. I learned this one day when my wife told me that our dryer wasn’t working right – the clothes weren’t getting dry. I wasn’t at all sure what to do other than call a repairman – but my wife suggested that I check the outside vent to see if it was clogged. So I went outside – and after locating the vent – I found it was almost completely plugged up with giant wads of lint.

Our dryer wasn’t working properly; wasn’t doing what a dryer is supposed to do – because the vent was clogged. But once I cleaned all the dirty lint wads from the vent – the dryer once again worked like a charm.

I think our dryer and the clogged vent works as an analogy for our hearts and lives. Jesus promised that when we put our faith in him as Lord and Savior, he comes to dwell in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit then, as the breath or wind of God, begins to work in our hearts and lives to produce things like love, joy, peace, patience and kindness. But if our hearts are cluttered with all kinds of “spiritual lint” – sin, anger, bitterness, selfishness – those things must first be cleaned out before the Spirit can produce fruit.

So what kinds of things, if any, are clogging the “vent” of your heart? What kinds of things may be restricting the power and work of the Spirit in your life? Ask the Holy Spirit to show you what needs to be cleaned out and then give him permission to do the cleaning!

Pastor Brian Coffey