3 Tips for Developing Godly Character

Hello, my name is Chrystal Evans Hurst, and if you're just now finding me on YouTube or Facebook, here's the deal. My job is to help you live your life well. And so what I try to do every time I come on live or share any other kind of content is to give you actionable, practical steps so you can do just that. Today I'm going to be talking about tips for developing godly character, because if you value your spiritual life, then you have to understand this. You have to be intentional about developing your spiritual life. And I want to give you some practical ways that you can do just that. Listen, if you're like me, every now and again, you get stuck on social media. Maybe it's Instagram is your jam, or maybe it's Facebook, or maybe it's Twitter. Uh, I thought Twitter was going away, but then I just heard that the Zennials, Gen Z, they're like full throttle on there. I don't know. I still don't have a TikTok. Snapchat sees me, Snapchat. Snapchat? Did I just say Snapchat? That's because Erica Campbell says Snapchat and it throws me off. Snapchaps, that's what she says. Anyway, the point is, is you probably have someplace on social media that you can get sucked into if you're not careful. Well, I have to be honest and tell you recently I got sucked into a whole vortex on YouTube. Did I get sucked into technology? Yes, always sucked in on technology. Did I get sucked into some motivational chats or TED Talks? I did too. But you want to know what I really got sucked into just as recently as this week? Like, for real? Canning, homesteading, growing your own vegetables, making your own bread, preserving your foods, saving money, making your own homemade cleaners. Y'all, I went down the crunchy rabbit hole, all the way down the crunchy rabbit hole. And one of the videos that I got stuck watching was how somebody was bringing their food to fruition from seed. It's a whole thing. It's a whole nother video that I have to do on another day about all the ways in which y'all would never know how crunchy either I am or have been in the past. Did somebody say cloth diapers? Was that me? It was totally me. Anyway, the point is seed to fruition. And I've never grown anything from seed. I've always bought the plant, like a starter plant, you know, and I've just put it out and just, it's already gotten going. And all I have to do is plant it, put a little water on it, make sure the soil is right and continue the growth that's already started. But I was a little intrigued by starting from seed because when you start something from seed, there's a great deal of care to get the life that's inside the seed to spring forth. Forth, but there is intentionality. It doesn't just happen. Right now I have so many weeds growing in my yard, and the reality is, after Snowmageddon, as soon as all the winter storm stuff ended in Texas, it was 70 degrees the next day like that, because Texas does what Texas does. And because the weather changed, all the weeds are sprouting up everywhere without my care. The bad stuff grows in my life whether I want it to or not, but the good stuff, the stuff that actually brings nutrition to me, that brings wholeness and health. That's the stuff I have to tend to, especially if I want to grow something from seed. Somebody knows where I'm going. Your spiritual life is like a seed. And while there are lots of things that will grow up in your life— bad habits, ill intentions, plans that you weren't thoughtful about in your life— and you can easily end up somewhere you did not intend to be, your spiritual life is not like that. You have to tend to your spiritual life with a great level of intentionality. Your spiritual life is given to you in seed form, and salvation is one thing, sanctification is a whole nother thing. You have to participate in that. The seed is available to you. It, it is good for a long period of time. You know how long seeds can stay in those little packets before you plant them? They're good. But they don't sprout, they don't grow unless they're planted well and nurtured appropriately. Taking care of your spiritual life, developing your spiritual life, developing your godly character is the same way. You don't just say, okay, I believe in God, I believe in Jesus, and then the next day you're good to go. All of those things that are a part of your nature, all of the things that are a part of your flesh, they are still around like weeds, ready to sprout up and grow and take over. So if you don't pull the weeds intentionally and nurture the seed of exactly what you want to grow, you'll look around and wonder why there's nothing nutritious or fruitful happening in your life. And the reality is— I say that a lot— the reality is, the reality is, the truth is that you may not have been actively participating in your spiritual growth. So I want to give you some practical ways that you can do just that. The first thing that I want to tell you about, because y'all know I'm a preacher's kid, so I think in terms of alliteration, so today you're going to have 3 Ps. Peace, because peace for the win. Um, the first area that I want you to think about, and I want you to dwell on with me for just a minute, are the people in your life. Now, when I wrote She's Still There, I had this whole chapter in here called People, Places, and Things, and I want to read to you a little bit from that chapter. There are 3 kinds of people that you need in your life, okay? 3 kinds of people. They are pacers, partners, and promoters. Pacers are people in long-distance races who have volunteered to run for the duration of the race. The entire time they are running, they hold up a sign that displays their pace to let other runners know exactly how fast they were going. And I was talking in this chapter about me running a marathon and the people that were involved. Pacers are the people that set the pace for me, okay? Um, They are someone who runs in front of you, guiding you and helping you avoid unnecessary pitfalls because of their experience, their maturity, or their knowledge. They know how to run the race before because they've done it before. Okay, another person that you need in your life is a partner. There's somebody who's in the trenches with you, working to accomplish a goal you both share. So it's somebody in your small group, it's somebody that maybe is in your neighborhood, somebody that goes to your church, it's someone that you are reading a book with. That is a partner. A pacer is somebody who's ahead of you, right? They're in the race with you, but they're ahead of you. So this is a mentor, this is a counselor, this is a pastor, this is somebody who has some years on you or some experience on you. Then the last one is promoter, okay? They encourage you and provide support. They have not been where you've been, they're not, they're not currently where you are. However, they are able to cheer you on. They're just a cheerleader, they're encouragers, right? They're the people who are going to pray for you, They're the people who are gonna be there for you, bring you food when you need it, show up at the hospital if that's what you need, volunteer to watch your kids. They're gonna say, "Good job." That's what a lot of you are doing right now. Those of you who are watching me live, you're saying, as I'm talking, "This is great, good job." And it's encouraging to me. So in your life, you need people. You need people in your life who are going to hold you accountable, who are gonna support you, who are gonna show you the way, who are gonna offer good counsel, who are gonna cheer you on, because you are not designed to live this life in isolation, this life period, and especially this Christian life. You need community. One of the reasons why there is the Sister Circle group on Facebook, one of the reasons why I talk all the time about the principle of the Sister Circle is because you need one. Now it doesn't matter if y'all study the Bible together, that would be nice. But if you are involved in the PTA at your kids' school and those ladies are believers, be intentional and say, hey, what's going on? Can we go to lunch? Can I know what's going on in your life? Y'all wanna lose weight together, go walking together, pray together. That is your sister circle because that's the season of life that you're in. Those are your partners in life. Or maybe you specifically are gonna go to a woman that you know has been married for 30 years and you've been married for 5 minutes. And you're like, I need you to be my pacer. I need you to show me how this is done. Can I reach out to you once a month and just have questions to ask you? Can I come and is there some way that I can serve alongside of you or serve with you? Is there some way that I can be in your space so that I can learn from you? That is another form of community. Or it's a pastor where you say, hey, listen, I've got this challenge in my life and I need to get some godly counsel. Those are pacers. And then you've got promoters. You need to have people in your life who are just willing to cheer you on. They believe in what you're doing. And you may have to pray about that, because I know that very often sometimes we are like, I wish I had people who love Jesus in my life that were cheering me on, and I don't have anybody. Make that a matter of prayer. Like, seriously, I'm not trying to over-spiritualize that. Ask God to bring people in your life who are ahead of you, who can run with you, and who are just along the way to cheer you on. I feel like for you, if you've got nobody else in your life, that's why I was going live so often in 2020, is that one of my jobs in that year was to be a promoter. And to say every day for a minute and then every week going longer, hey, listen, let me encourage you. Let me give you something to laugh about. Let me give you something to think about. I want to cheer you on and remind you that you can do it. So if you needed to hear somebody say that today, you can do it. You can grow spiritually. You can get to know God better. You can be better than you were last year. You can have fruit from your life. You can be the person that another person looks to later in your life. You can recover from sin. You can stop being rebellious. You can, you can. And I believe that if you hear somebody say that enough, and maybe promotion is books that you will read like this, you know, or books that other people have written that will encourage you. They are mentoring you from the pages of a book. So you're going to have to be intentional about putting people in your life and uprooting the people. Did I say uprooting? I did. Uprooting the people in your life who are not feeding into you, or you've got to balance that out some kind of way. And it may not just happen if you're not in a Bible-believing church. Get thee into a Bible-believing church, eh? ASAP. And if you know that where you need to be— maybe you're in a church with your husband, you can't leave, or you feel called to support a certain ministry— y'all, we are living in 2021, which means that anytime you need more Bible than your church gives, you listen to the podcast, you watch the TV show, or you watch the, uh, you watch the services livestream. Because there's no excuse in this day and age for not being a person who is hearing from God from the pulpit, from a pastor, but also hearing from God yourself. A part of you being in a community of faith also involves you getting involved. Like if you're sitting there and saying, "I don't know anybody, nobody's for me, I don't have anybody who's encouraging me, you know, I don't have connection or community." Okay, well then I want to ask you— why did I sound like mini mini mini mini mini mini mini? It was like a Muppet. Anyway, I want to challenge you to get involved. Show up. Stop waiting for somebody to invite you. Show up. Show up and join the small group. You host the Bible study. You initiate the prayer. You start an exercise group. You complete a prayer journey. You get a YouVersion Bible study going and invite friends to join you virtually. Stop waiting on somebody to invite you to community. You create the community that you need. That's, that's one of the things I've said over and over again when people say, I just don't know, I just don't know how to have godly influence in my life. Okay, you need godly influence in your life? Look around you, see who would be a godly influence, and invite them into your world, right? Invite them. Just be the martyr. And then mentoring. I know that this is a tough thing because a lot of women who should be mentoring don't feel like they're qualified to be a mentor. And then there are a lot of us girls who are just like, "I just need somebody to show me. I just need somebody to tell me how to do it." Well, I want you to know that, um, there are people who are willing to share their lives with you, but you may have to seek them out. They may not be actively looking for you, and it's okay if you're actively looking for them. But I want to define mentoring. Mentoring does not mean, at least it doesn't mean for me, taking you to coffee every week, because ain't nobody got time for that. What mentoring looks like in my life is women who are in my life who call me because we have an engagement already. We serve together in our church. We work together in ministry. There are interns who are working and serving you. There are women who come to my home and I'm like, you can come over while I fold clothes. You can help me fold clothes while we talk. You want to help me prepare for dinner? I remember that I had a small group in my house One time was 6 weeks. Every now and then I do these pop-up Bible studies. I just feel like doing a Bible study. So I just say, 6 weeks, y'all, not committing long-term. But then I would ask 2 or 3 women who I knew wanted more time with me and say, will you help me? Will you come alongside? And as we're together preparing and getting ready, that's natural time to be mentored. Women who want to homeschool their kids. My sister-in-law was like, I need to know how you homeschool. Bring your kids over. So while I'm doing school with my kids, I'm mentoring her, she's watching me. Think about how Jesus mentored the disciples. Yes, he taught them, but a lot of what he taught them was them watching him along the way. They were just living life together. So that's the question that you need to ask. Who can you live life with that's ahead of you? That's a mentor. That's with you? That's a partner. And who is on the sidelines of your life just because they're in your circles who can cheer you on? And look for who you can cheer on too. People. It's such a big part of how you grow godly character, having people with godly character around you and people who desire the same around you too. So I want you to make sure that you are exercising discernment in the people, places, and things that are around you, but always start with people. All right, so here's the next area of your life that you want to focus on if you want to develop godly character and develop your spiritual life. They are spiritual practices. Now, if you Google spiritual practices, you'll come up with a whole lot of ideas for what that could be. It involves everything from solitude to witnessing to evangelism to time with God to— I mean, there's just a lot of things. Journaling. There's a whole long list of spiritual practices, things that you can do to connect with God. But I want to talk about two very specific ones in my mind They're the most important ones because without these, you cannot grow. Now, there's a lot of things that you can do to a seed or a plant that you have put and planted in your backyard, right? You can fertilize it. You can add compost to it. And those are all things that help the soil to work and work well. But if you don't have water, there ain't going to be no— there's not going to be no harvest. If you don't have sun, it won't grow. And if you don't have water, the 3 things that you need to grow the seed, there are some things that are helpful and there are some things that are non-negotiable. So the things that I want to talk to you about today are non-negotiables. If you don't do these things, you will not grow. The first thing is that you need to study the Bible. Now I know that that can be intimidating for some people, but listen, it doesn't have to be. Get a version of the Bible that you can read. And you have to know the difference between a translation and a paraphrase. And I want to invite you to read a translation because a paraphrase, it's more about somebody's thoughts about what the Bible says and not word for word or phrase for phrase what the Bible says. So the Message Bible is a paraphrase. I enjoy reading it, but it is a paraphrase. New Living Translation, also a paraphrase. I enjoy reading that too, but Word-for-word or phrase-for-phrase translations would be NASB or King James. That's word-for-word, you know, in a, in a language that we don't speak today. It's not current, but it is word-for-word based on the time in which it was written. NASB is another word-for-word translation. Uh, ESV is another word, word, word-for-word translation. When you get into NIV, it's phrase-for-phrase, it's thought-for-thought, idea-for-idea, so that the words are in an order that makes sense to how we speak, right? If you tried to— if you've ever learned a foreign language, you know that the order of the words isn't necessarily the order of the words that we use. Now we can go thought for thought because we know what they're saying. So that's what NIV means, and so that's a translation that's reasonable too. The point is, read. Don't get stuck up, hung up on, am I getting this exactly right? The Amplified Version, CEB, CEV, All these different things. The Passion Translation, that's a paraphrase. The bottom line is read it, read it, read, and then study, which means going deeper and looking up the meanings of words. There are so many different resources online to help you learn God's word. So one of my favorite resources to always share is Bible Study Fellowship. You can do it in person, they're all over the world, or online. You can find a group and be in a group with people from all over the world. But that is the equivalent in my mind of going to seminary without going to seminary, because there is such great teaching with such great resources and with such great accountability for reading and understanding the Word of God without the support systems. Um, so BSF is a great Bible study and you can get involved with that anywhere in the world. Another thing that I want to share with you that might be helpful to you is I put a blog post together on my website called 20 Ways to read through the Bible. The— I took a picture of my Bible, my chronological Bible, One Year Chronological Bible. It's the New Living Translation, and I've been trying to read through that and doing that year after year and missing some parts and coming back and missing, um, and catching other parts. I actually just bought my boys, uh, all three of them, their own chronological Bible, and we'll be reading through the New Testament. And y'all, the New Testament starts on September the 24th. It's March the 22nd. It doesn't matter. We're going to start with the New Testament and we're going to read through it chronologically together. So what I want you to do is to take away this idea that you have to read through and read through perfectly or read it perfectly. Just the fact that you are putting God's word in your heart means you are adding nutrients to the soil. You're getting the basics that you need, the water, the sun, the nutrients of the soil. God's word changes you. It sanctifies. It moves you from being less— it moves you from being more like you to being more like God, because you can't ingest the Word and not change. So read it, just read it. Don't feel like you have to understand all the nuances and all the Greek words. And then yes, study it. There are lots of resources on this blog post, 20 Ways to Read Through the Bible, and so you can check that out at chrystalhurst.com/20-ways. That's 20-ways, and that will be super helpful to you I give a lot of ideas for just how to read the Bible. And then y'all, you know, there's the YouVersion app. The YouVersion app is awesome and it's on your phone. So you never have to be without the Bible. And there's plenty of reading plans on there as well. So read the Bible, study the Bible. Um, so many different resources, blueletterbible.org, uh, biblegateway.com. I already mentioned YouVersion. There's no excuse when you have a phone in your hand not to read the Bible, um, at all. So read the Bible. You can go to church, you can listen to the sermon, you can listen to a podcast, you can listen to the radio. That's all great. Read your Bible for yourself. Do you know how many people have been misled because they believed what somebody said from a pulpit? And God is like, there was no need for that. You could have read your Bible for yourself. Read it. Yeah, read it. So the other thing that I wanna challenge you to do is memorize it. I also got stuck on YouTube watching this lady talk who has memorized the whole New Testament. The whole New Testament, as in Matthew to Revelation. That is totally amazing. I mean, it is freaking amazing that she's been able to do that. But I thought, what kind of discipline do you have to have in order to memorize the New Testament? Now I memorize scriptures with the kids. We sit at the table. Right now we're working on Psalm 91. They finished it. We're going to go over and over and over again to seal it in their, in their minds. We've done Psalm 1. We've done the book of James. I've done the book of James with all of my children. That's like a prerequisite to graduation. And I know people say, I can't memorize. No, you can. You just have to find the way that works for you. Get on YouTube and say, "How to memorize scripture." But I will give you a few tips for what works really well for me. First of all, saying it over and over again. There's something that happens in your psyche when you use your senses. So yes, listen to it. You can listen to the scripture, record yourself saying the scripture that you're trying to memorize, and then say it along with yourself. So it's coming in your ears, through your eyes as you read it, and through your mouth as you speak it out loud, right? So your eyes, your ears, your mouth. I don't know if you can smell God's word or taste God's word, like literally, but eyes, ears, and mouth will work. And you say it over and over again and you build. So the way we do it as a family is we say the first verse, uh, maybe the first 2 verses, we say it every day 3 times. Then by the end of the week, we should have that memorized. And then we keep going. Now you can do this and learn a verse a day. I've seen my kids when they are motivated, because I'm like, there is no electronics until you get this chapter done. All of a sudden, the kids who could not memorize it all of a sudden can get it in there. It's amazing what you do when you set, um, goals for yourself, and then when there's accountability. So maybe you try to memorize scripture with a group of friends, or maybe you even set goals for yourself and say, when I'm able to say this whole chapter, I will then do X. I don't know, pick whatever motivates and works for you. Um, but we just say it and we just do it a little bit every time, and then as we grow, so So let's say we get to Psalm 91 and we're working on verses 8 and 9. We'll say verses 8 and 9 3 times because those are the ones we're learning that week. And then at the end, we go back to verse 1 and say, say verses 1 through 9. So we're constantly reviewing as we go. I really, really believe that when you hear it, when you see it, and when you speak it, it's helpful. Then you can realize what words you're not— you're struggling over, because there's usually a phrase or a word that you may be struggling to remember. And so then I take the piece of paper that we printed our scripture out from, and I just go to Bible Gateway, look it up and print it out. And then we highlight it. We highlight the words or circle the words that we have trouble with, because now you're giving yourself a visual picture of that word that was circled in blue. That's the word I always forget. So it helps you to remember it because now you have a visual landmark, landmark-er, of the thing that you've been struggling with. So scripture memory is important, but I would be amiss if I did not also give you an app, because I just gave this app to my kids. This is the Bible Memory Scripture app. And again, there are a lot of apps, but this is the one that we enjoy using, or that I've enjoyed using. It basically sets you up. You say, "I want to memorize this scripture and I want to do it at this speed," and it feeds it to you every day with notifications so that you remember to go in and practice until you've got it. So that's another suggestion, something practical that will help you. So you do need to know that, yes, there are people in your life, but then there are spiritual practices of which studying the Word of God and memorizing scripture are two of those. The other spiritual discipline that I wanted to tell you about, because remember water, soil, and sun. So we have study, Bible memory, and the third one is prayer. Y'all, wrote a whole book on prayer. Accidentally. Do you want to know how I wrote that book on prayer? Because I was committed to working on my prayer life. And so one year I got on Instagram and I wrote these prayers every day for 28 days. And I was trying to encourage myself and other people to pray. Prayer is simply communication with God. That's all it is. Prayer is the bridge between panic and peace. When you find panic and anxiety rising up in your heart about something, when you start that, when you say, okay, God, I can't do anything about it, or I'm not sure what to do, or I'm not sure how to do it. Let me pray about it. That allows God to enter your circumstances. It allows you to, it makes room for you to see his perspective on the issues that you face. So prayer not only is a way for God to be interjected into your situation, it's an opportunity for your mindset to be invited into what he has going on. There are things in this world that are spiritual. That's why there's so much stuff that's New Age. That's why there's so much stuff that's, demonic or cultic, because we are spiritual creatures. When you pray though, what prayer does is allows you to connect with God. It allows you to connect with Jesus Christ and his will for your life in this season, so that you can connect with the right spiritual wavelength and know what the right thing is to do, or the right thing is to think in your current scenario. It is amazing to think that the God of the universe has left the mechanism of prayer so that you can have conversations with him and so that he can talk to you. The Bible tells us in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 to pray without ceasing. What does that mean? That means there's nothing wrong with you praying in the morning when you first get up, and there's nothing wrong with you getting on your knees in the evening and praying before you go to bed. But if you have a really good relationship with somebody, like a guy that you're dating, or you're totally in love with your husband, or you just got married and you're still honeymooning, You text that person all day long. You're just like, "What are you doing?" You know, "I'm about to eat lunch. What are you doing? What do you want to eat when you get home from work?" It's this ongoing chit-chat with a person that's in your life. Well, God is everywhere and he's everywhere all the time, which means that I can say, as I talk to you, "Help me, Lord, remember this point," and that's prayer. So it can be very deep and it can be very methodical and you can pray, praise, repentance, asking for what you need, and yielding and surrendering to God. There are all these formulas for prayer, you know, and Matthew 6 gives us a formula for prayer, but it doesn't have to be in that order at one time. Prayer is simply being honest with God, and it opens you up to have him be truthful and honest with you. So you pray, you read your Bible, You memorize scripture. You do the work as Psalm 119 tells us to hide the word of God in your heart so that you won't sin against him, because that keeps fellowship open. Then you memorize the word so that even if you don't have the word with you, that you're remembering what his word says. And then you pray so that with, with or without the word, you're in constant communication with God. So these are 3 spiritual disciplines that you need to have active in your life. Now there are a bunch of other ones, But if you don't have these 3 basics, then you're not going to go very far in your development spiritually. Okay, so we talked about the people in your life. We've talked about spiritual practices, spiritual disciplines. Now I want to talk to you about power. Okay, when you think about the seed, everything that the seed needs to develop into a full-grown plant, a full-grown tree, whatever, it has in the seed. There is power resident in the seed to bust out of the shell of the seed when it's been properly nurtured. When you believe in Jesus, you have the seed of salvation, but that seed is not full grown. You are not necessarily immediately gonna bear fruit. You have to nurture that. And that's where we go back to people in your life and spiritual practices. But you need to understand that what she has, what that lady has, what that man has, what the pastor has, what that saint has, what that holla roller has, and you say, well, that's not me. You don't know my background. You don't know where I've been. You don't know what I've been through. You don't know what the challenges are mentally from me or emotionally from me. Listen, you have a seed of power in your life. Let me quote some scriptures to you so that you understand that I'm not just making this up. Acts 1:8 says, "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you," comes in you. And when you get saved, you receive the Holy Spirit. Let me give you another one. 1 Corinthians 3:16, it says, "Do you not know that your body is the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?" Okay, so let's get this straight. Power comes when the Spirit arrives, and the Spirit of God lives in you. You have power. All the stuff that you need to spiritually explode in your life is resident if you will properly nurture the spiritual life that you've already been given. Okay, let me give you another scripture. Zechariah 4:6, it says, then he said to me, this is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel, saying, not by might 'Not by power, but by my spirit,' says the Lord of hosts. Now, when it talks about power in that verse, it's talking about your manual power, your physical power, your fleshly power. And some of us already know that there are things that we've intended to do in our life, and it's not until we got in tune and in sync with what God was doing in our life, then all of a sudden the doors opened, the husband came, the career path became straightforward, because we were in alignment. And when you are operating in alignment with the Holy Spirit that resides within you, then you don't have to extend yourself and kill yourself. You don't have to muscle your way through every situation in life. You are able to allow the Spirit of God and the power that resides within you to make a way. It is a wonderful thing to know that you don't have to hold up your whole life in your own strength. You wanna develop godly character? That means allowing God to muscle in your life. And not you to be trying to do everything on your own. One more scripture, Ezekiel 36:27 says, "I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes." Now, did you catch that? He's saying that if my spirit is in you, then you have what you need for me to propel you forward. See, some of us are struggling spiritually because we're trying to do it all on our own. We're trying to figure out how to be good. How to change our behavior, how to muscle our way mentally into making changes in our life. But you have to understand that there are changes that you want to see in your life that will only come when God wills and to work in you, Philippians tells us. Ezekiel 36:27 says he will cause you to walk forward because of the spirit that resides in you. Romans 8:26 says that by the spirit we are helped in our weaknesses. Some of the weaknesses that you have and the reason why you think, "Well, I'm not that godly and I'll never be that godly," is because you're trying to do it on your own. The Spirit of God, when you nurture the seed of God in you with spiritual practices and prayer and people and study of the Word of God, when you decide to nurture the soil of your spiritual life, then you will find that your weaknesses are not the definition of how strong you are in God. Power, you have it. I need you to walk like you believe that and stop stressing yourself out trying to make everything change in your life. And just know that when you submit to the development of your spiritual life with spiritual practices, prayer, that the power of God gets activated in your life. Listen, there's supposed to be fruit in your life. Galatians 5 tells us that there fruit. And y'all, we both know— you and I both know, we all know— when we're not exhibiting that fruit. The fruit of the Spirit is joy, peace, kindness, patience, goodness, self-control. I probably missed a couple, but the point is, these are things that are not going to consistently come out of you in your flesh, the way you were designed, the way you were born on this earth. Adam and Eve's genealogy running all the way through the thousands of years to land in your soul. In order for you to be the person where you're like, "Wow, that wasn't me. That was God in me." That means you have to acknowledge that there is power in seed form in your life that you have the job to cultivate. If I go to the store right now and get a seed from Walmart or from the nursery around the corner, or get it mail order, I can hold that seed in my hand all day long. I can get people around me to talk about it. That'll be good. I can, I can, you know, move forward in my life and say, all right, I'm going to develop some spiritual practices in here. But if I don't acknowledge that the power that I actually need is not the power in me, it's the power that comes from the God in me, then that seed just won't grow. So you have everything you need. You have everything you need by nurturing it, participating with it, and acknowledging God's power by yielding to his power in you. See, here's what happened. You have something that you want to say. You wanna say it to your coworker, to your husband or your kids. And then the Holy Spirit says to you, "Don't say that right now." In that moment, you can yield to the power of the Holy Spirit and agree that I shouldn't say that right now. And the power will grow. Or you can work against that power by doing what you feel like doing. And the Holy Spirit is a gentleman. He is not going to bully his way into your heart or your mind. He's gonna say, "Hey man, remember that scripture that you read last week? That scripture, you needed that today." It's when you yield to the power that you get to see the power of God grow in you and move forward full throttle in your life. So you have it, acknowledge it, and yield to it. And you will find that a lot of things in your life that you're trying to do in your own power, that you don't have to actually work so hard to do. You. So after all that I'm saying, where should you start? I've given you some ideas, hopefully some practical things that will keep you going on your journey. But if you have no other idea for what to do, do what I'm doing right now. Pick up the Bible and read through the Gospels. Read through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They're called the Synoptics because they're 4 angles of the same story. And so reading those 4, you not only get to see, uh, different angles of what God was doing when he was in human flesh on this earth in human form, but you will see what Jesus did. And one of the best ways to develop godly character is to say, what would Jesus do? How did Jesus do it? What did Jesus say? How did he live and move? How did he respond? How did he operate? What was his personality like? How did he engage with the people that he loved? Just read and say, what did Jesus do? And then get yourself a little composition notebook or a little notepad or a spiral notebook. And as you notice what you see about the life of Jesus, then write down what that teaches you about the life of Jesus in you. And what I can guarantee you is that when you put in the effort to surround yourself with people, to develop spiritual practices like Bible study and prayer, that when you memorize scripture, and also when, as you put in the right nutrients into the soil of your heart, and the power of the Holy Spirit rises up in you, that you don't fight it, that you yield to it, that you say yes and amen, that that power will continue to grow in you, and then you will be the person that you have always admired. You look at another person and say, how did they become so close to God? How did they learn the scriptures like that? How did they get that marriage made in heaven? How did they have the fruit of their children? How did they combine their work ethic with their godly character? How do they have such strong, strong fruit in their life? That person will be you. The fruit just needs to be nurtured, and then as it grows, you keep the area clean. You pull out the weeds of all the things that are around it that would seek to steal its growth. The power in your life will be developed, it will be nurtured, and it will grow when you engage in the practices, surround yourself with people, and acknowledge the power of God in your life. It doesn't happen quickly. It's not going to happen in 5 seconds, and neither do the seeds that grow in my yard grow quickly either. However, they will grow. You watch, you wait, you nurture, and you allow what's already embedded in the the seed to spring forth. Can you develop godly character? You can. Do you need to do the work? You do. Do you need to be committed? Absolutely. But can it happen? Yes. And will it happen in you? I believe it will. Hope this has been helpful to you, and if it has, I want to ask that if you're on Facebook that you would follow me so that you get notifications when I go live and share this. Same thing for YouTube, make sure that you have have. Like this video, subscribe to the channel, and then share this if it's been helpful to you. I'm excited about what God is going to do in your life, and I'm excited to see you every week. And I will see you next time.