Fruit of the Spirit!

Good Tuesday morning to all my crafty friends!  I so wanted to post yesterday, but as I went out of town Friday, I had a lot to catch up on yesterday!  I had a glorious weekend in Tryon, North Carolina where I spent time in God's presence with some beautiful women of God!  Today, I want to share a little snippet of that with you.  I say "snippet," because it was such a powerful time in His presence that it would take more space than I have here to express it!

I went up to Tryon for a Wellness/Ministry Conference and it was well needed for my physical body and spiritual body!  While there, we visited an apple orchard and were able to pick our own apples. As I had never done that, it was a beautiful experience as well as a profound one that brought the whole weekend to a glorious completeness! 

Today, I will share a journal spread I had done a few months back, but never shared because I just didn't feel it was the right time, plus secretly, I wasn't sure how I felt about it visually.  But now I know it was all just a part of God's timing for "this moment!"  The Holy Spirit is so awesome how He works in us!

I will try to remember all I did with this page, but I am most certain that I started with applying gesso to my pages and then I used my yummy Silks acrylic glazes in Sky Blue and Pretty Peridot for the backdrop.  I applied with a brush and used a little water to thin it out just a bit.  I then went back in with gesso and move it around with a baby wipe to make a "cloud feel." I have an awesome background stamp from Lost Coast Designs that I used in the background hoping it would look like background trees, but who knows what it looks like now? LOL! Afterwards I defined the edges with Distress Ink in Broken China and Peeled Paint.

I have a great tree stencil from Crafter's Workshop that I used and just kind of repositioned to how I wanted to see it with Silks Nutmeg.  Just quickly used my Faber Castell gelatos and Big Brush Pens to mimic foliage and then I had some digital apples I cut out and a sentiment that I found in a magazine that I adhered with some Liquitex Matte Medium.  I used my favorite Tim Holtz Worn Text Stamp Set with StazOn for the sentiments and outlined with my white gel pen.

My thoughts on this page were most definitely regarding the character of Christ!  As we have received Christ, we are to walk in His character and ways.  The fruit of those ways, according to God's Word in Galatians 5 are love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  Those who belong to Christ are to "put off" fleshly ways and walk and live according to the Spirit.

The conference this weekend covered just those things, hence the trip to the apple orchard!  What fruit are you bearing? The fruit you could be bearing are a conscious expression or result of your subconscious root system.  Conscious fruit would be things like sadness, fear, anger, disappointment, negative behavior which would all be an expression or a result of the subconscious roots of negative values, negative attitudes and negative beliefs.  Your fruit can't look like spiritual fruit as long as your root system is not grounded in Christ!  If the fruit you manifest is contaminated you need to go to the root source!  It is there that you can begin to identify what is springing forth the fruit, take it before the Father and let Him begin to heal you from the inside out!

At the beginning of Galatians 5 God tells us "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." (v. 1)  Christ set us free on the cross.  It is done!  If we are being held a slave to negative fruit, we are not free! Through Jesus' amazing grace, ALL things are possible!  We can put off that old man and become the new man that Jesus died for and live in freedom and walk in His character and ways!

What does your fruit look like?  I pray a blessing of grace over you today that you would seek the Father and His Spiritual Fruit that you would walk in amazing and glorious freedom!

Blessings