Reflecting Fruit of the Spirit

I am away on travel this week.  I’m staying in a hotel in LA.  The hotel is pretty nice – really nice decorations – room is quiet – really good breakfast bar. But they have a lot of rules.  When I checked in, they gave me a list of house rules. I got here in the middle of the night my time so I didn’t read them.

Yesterday morning, I went down to grab some breakfast and bring it to my room so I could finish my morning routine and was told “I’m sorry, you are not allowed to take food to your room.” I left and didn’t say anything. When I went back down to get breakfast, I was sitting at the table and my phone rang. I picked it Fruitup. The same lady came over to my table and said “I’m sorry, no cell phones allowed.” I was debating about whether I should say something like “If you let me eat in my room, I wouldn’t be using my cell phone here.”  But I didn’t. Then I started discussing this with God. I wanted to comment on their over indulgence in rules and lack of understanding of what the customer needs. And I thought “Would you be reflecting Jesus if you said it?” Before you say it depends on how you say it, I can assure you, I would not be. So then I talked to God about how if we are thinking it in our hearts – even if we don’t say it out loud – the Bible says it’s still wrong.  So why not say it? I’m in the same position either way, right? Ahhhh, and this is where we get to our own logic and reasoning – which is so completely different than God’s logic and reasoning. We can justify almost anything but what it comes down to is our relationship and others’ relationship with Jesus. Could I have justified turning my thoughts into comments?  Probably. Would it have helped the situation? Probably not. We just finished a sermon series at our church called “UnChristian”.  It was about all the things we do in the name of Christianity that are really not Christian at all. It makes people not want to be Christians and not want to know Jesus. If I said what I wanted, would this lady want to be a Christian or know Jesus?  I doubt it. Then this Bible text popped into my head:

But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Galatians 5:22-23

Obviously, I was missing quite a few servings of this fruit in my breakfast. I decided I needed to go back to the Holy Spirit bar and get more servings of God’s fruit before I opened my mouth.