Have you ever found yourself asking if God is truly working in your life? Have you ever wondered if the Spirit is really influencing your thoughts or your actions?

I have. There was a point in my life where I found myself in prayer asking God for wisdom and for spiritual discernment. I asked God to help me grow spiritually. As I studied the Scripture, I tried to “make every effort” to add to my faith the traits outlined in 2 Peter 1: goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love.

One evening, as I was reading Scripture, I found myself in Galatians 5:22 where the “fruits” of the Spirit are recorded. I would be proud to say that I had them memorized; yes, indeed, I have been able to recite them for years. But, that day, I was struck by something profound. As I looked at those “fruits” that my mind had committed to memory – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control – I realized that I was sorely lacking in many of them.

Joy? Not so stellar. Peace? Occasionally. Patience? Nope. Kindness? If absolutely necessary. Goodness? Yes, I think so. Gentleness? Ouch. Faithfulness? Again, I think so. Self-control? Seriously? Why did self-control have to be in this list?

Is the Spirit working in your life? It shouldn’t be a difficult question to answer. You can readily tell by the evidence of “fruit.” As trees grow and mature, so does the fruit produced by the tree. At that moment I looked at my life and realized that I was not allowing the Spirit to manifest His works in my life. I needed to make significant strides in patience and kindness and gentleness. And definitely in self-control.

So, I made that my priority. It is always a huge victory for me, and a source of thanksgiving, when I recognize that the Spirit produces behavior in these areas that I could never produce on my own. Those are the times that I am completely assured that He is influencing my thoughts and actions.

And when I fail, sometimes miserably so, I thank God for the pruning and pray that the Spirit will call me to be more faithful.

John’s lesson this past Sunday referenced David’s appeal to God to “create in me a clean heart.”

Sometimes we forget just how badly we need God to do that. In his book Heart of Darkness, one of my favorites, Joseph Conrad uses a steamboat voyage into the heart of darkest Africa as a metaphorical vehicle for transporting readers into a region no less dark and savage: the human heart.

The idea is that if you look deep inside yourself — beyond the make-up and stage props, past the civilizing effects of law and social convention, right through to the real you, your innermost self, what you discover will frighten you. It’s a jungle in there. Sinful desires that could swallow a man whole prowl there freely.

A common conceit we Christians, and most everyone else for that matter, indulge in is that because we keep the law, work hard and provide for our families we must be generally good people. But Conrad’s nightmarish images are sobering. They remind us what we’re really capable of — what we must look like to God and what he finds after he takes up residence in our hearts when we put on Christ.

Scripture tells us our heart becomes the sanctuary of the Spirit. It also tells us that some major changes are in order, if we let the Spirit work.

About those sinful desires that could swallow you whole: The cage of law and social convention we erect and maintain to keep them at bay does permit civilization to continue functioning. But external restraining devices like laws and social norms lack real transformative power. For that kind of change to happen, someone has to descend into those deep-down scary places and drive out the dark things personally.

Hence David’s appeal to “create in me a clean heart.” The Man After God’s Own Heart had to face a bitter fact: After all the triumphs God had granted him, after all the time he’d spent in His presence, he was still, in his weaker moments, capable of unimagineable evil. And he was powerless, by himself, to change that fact.

That’s the way it works. We can follow the motions and rituals to perfection, but real change must occur on the inside and it must come from another Source.

Joseph Conrad didn’t believe in that Source. But his insights into life without it were prophetic; his book essentially forecasts the coming 20^th Century, a time when humankind’s capacity for evil would prove not only fathomless but capable of endless reinvention.

Three brothers met and prayed. They are brothers not by birth, but by rebirth. They prayed for each other, for their families and their work. They prayed for direction, for protection and help. And they prayed that in all things, God would be seen in them and through them, for they are His.

Little can have as great a meaning or effect as this. It is a demonstration of what God intends for us in one another – His body. Spirit talking with spirit; talking through the Spirit to the One who sees and hears everything.

Jesus is never more clearly seen than when we attend to the spirits of men through the Holy Spirit of God given us. We must work. We must earn and provide, and this is of God. But the need of our souls is our greatest need, and it is the greatest need of everyone you see today, and tomorrow, and the very moment you walk away from this screen.

An encouraging word, a gentle smile, a pat on the pack, a hug around the neck, or a simple prayer for, or with, another; these are what make your day worthwhile, because these speak to the spirit. And, they reveal the Christ.

“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians. 4:18)

Before I launch into this, one disclaimer:

If you have one of those Ichthys fish on your car, I don’t have a problem in the world with it. There’s not anything inherently wrong with sticking a shiny Ichthys emblem on your bumper. It’s a symbol and conveys something about what you believe, similar in that sense to wearing a cross around your neck. You may fail to live up to your symbols, just don’t bow down to them. Our fellowship is using a symbol of its own, an open door, to send a message about what we believe, who we are and what sets us apart. But Christians, we’d all agree, should be known primarily for their words and actions, not by an insignia.

And that’s just where the fish gives me pause.

While there are more fish emblems and other assorted Christian symbols out there than ever, it doesn’t translate to a rise in Christian influence. Whatever the symbol means, it doesn’t appear to mean we’re changing anything. Starting humbly, from a few fishes and loaves, Christianity converted the Roman Empire from the ground up. Now our civilization is busy converting back.

That’s the irony of the fish. Centuries before some marketing savant foresaw a fast buck in it, it served as an identifying mark for first-century believers, allowing them to find each other when dangerous times demanded secrecy. As such, the symbol was a harbinger of a coming revolution.

With its modern reemergence, however, if there’s a revolution afoot, we’re on the wrong end of it. Christianity is rapidly losing its influence in the West. If it sends us back to our roots, though, the decline may not be an altogether bad thing.

The Spirit-driven early Christians won the west for Christ through words and deeds, one pagan heart at a time. The difference today, I believe, is while our emblems are everywhere, we don’t back them up with the words and deeds. We can pepper the world with symbols, but it’s no substitute for salt — for the purifying, redemptive influence only the Spirit-led sons and daughters of the King can bring.

At Open Door, with our focus on that first-century spirit, I think we have a clear grasp of this and are demonstrating our faith by keeping words and actions central. Let’s pray we continue.