The Apple Tree...

As you know I have been reading the book Igniting Faith in 40 days by Steve Backlund.

A lot of the book is about challenging mindsets that we develop over the course of our life. Thoughts that might make moving ahead in a particular area more difficult that it might otherwise been.

Backlund uses the illustration of the apple tree.

As a young sapling, an apple tree is still an apple tree. Regardless of the fact that it has not yet produced a single apple, we call it an apple tree.

There are so many times in my life that I am afraid to call myself something. I would never call myself patient, but the bible tells me that patience is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. I would struggle to say I possess goodness, yet as a Spirit filled Christian I am told that one of the characteristics of the Spirit is goodness.

If I am in-dwelt by the Spirit of God, then surely all the qualities that are incarnate in that Spirit are also in me?

So like the apple tree I can claim the names- those characteristics that I might not yet be in the physical, I already possess through the Holy Spirit.