Trying to peel off a sticker from my apple this morning, I got to thinking how much I dislike stickers on my fruit!  Then the Lord spoke to me of how often things in my life can be just like those stickers!

Maybe it’s a habit I am trying to break, and maybe it is one that is relentless and just doesn’t want to be broken.  It can be like one of those stubborn stickers that insists on leaving a piece of itself behind on my fruit, which was the case this morning!

Then there are things in my life that seem easier to give up.  God showed me I should let these go and with His help I am able to do it easily.  They are like the stickers that peel off right away and I get to eat the whole fruit without spoiling the section where the sticker was.

While following Jesus is such an awesome experience, and I have such fun serving Him, there are certainly worldly things that He has asked me to give up, such as gossip, complaining, criticizing, grumbling, murmuring.  For sure, I don’t always do everything right.  Oftentimes I slip back into something God has told me to lay down and stop doing, but He is faithful to forgive me when I ask Him, and the Holy Spirit is gentle to remind me that I am doing something He told me not to do and help me stop doing it.

So when I think about the stickers on my fruit, I think about things in my life I’ve been able to peel away and continue on unaffected.  But then I think about things in my life that are a constant struggle to give up and realize they are more like the sticker I was trying to remove this morning, one that insisted on staying on my piece of fruit!  I had to bite off and throw away that spot on the fruit so that I didn’t eat that part of the sticker.  Sometimes God has to remove things in our life that can be painful in order to perfect what remains.  He wants to make us perfect just like Him, and I am certainly still a work in progress.

Thank you Lord that you remove all the stickers in my life, especially the ones that don’t want to let go of my fruit!!

“For the fruit (the effect, the product) of the Light or the Spirit [consists] in every form of kindly goodness, uprightness of heart, and trueness of life.”~Ephesians 5:9