Welcome to the Lion Within Us, a podcast serving Christian men who are hungry to be the leaders God intends you to be. I’m your host, Chris Granger. Let’s jump in. Alright guys. It is your spiritual kickoff of the week and I’m excited to have you here and we’re digging into some scripture this week that it’s, it’s been on my heart.

I’m so glad we’re getting a chance to actually go through this and unpack it a little bit because guys, this is scripture that you need to have cemented in your hearts. Now we’re gonna be in the book of Galatians, okay? Chapter five, verse 22 and 23. But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control against such things.

There is no law. So guys, we’re gonna unpack this. I’m gonna give you some insight from, from some areas that I studied, trying to prepare for the spiritual kickoff that hopefully you’ll be able to simplify and apply to your. Now, first of all, we need to understand where is Galatians right? Again, this is one-on-one stuff.

One I do not wanna just gloss over it. So that is a New Testament, and this you have to go past your gospel. So you got Matthew, mark, Luke, and John. Then you have Acts and Romans. Then you have first and second Corinthians, and then you get to Galatians. Okay? Not very long letter at all. And Paul has given a great breakdown here of the relation of the flesh and the.

Okay. When you get to this part in chapter five, he’s talking about flesh and spirit. And he tells us to walk by the spirit. And if we do that, our flesh will not win out. Okay? And that’s important to remember. If you walk in with the spirit, the flesh won’t win. The spirit always wins. Okay? And he gets some explicit things that if we live by the flesh will manifest in our lives.

He really points that out. So he points to some key areas here, immorality, impunity. Sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, strife, jealousy, anger, disputes, envy, drunkenness, and more. Yes, that’s a big list, right? It’s a big list of things that could go wrong, and we need to be very aware of those, and all of those he said, will prohibit us from inheriting the kingdom of.

Now that’s big. We need to remember that each one of those areas will prohibit us from inheriting the kingdom of God. So what he then does is walks through the fruit that will be prevalent when we surrender to the spirit and walk in his ways. Now remember the spirit we’re talking about here, the Holy Spirit, right?

So walking right through. Let’s look at each and, and see what the opposite would be. Cuz sometimes it helps me as a guy if just to have both ends of the spectrum, right? The good, the bad, uh, the , the, the pretty ugly things like that. So let’s just look at it. So number one, love we out the gate, he calls us love.

That’s a easy one. Hate. Hate. So you have one inter spectrum glove. The other end of the spectrum being hate. Then joy. Immediately when I thought joy, I went to sadness. So found if, if, if, if your joy, you’re, you’re full of this dislike. And the opposite end of that is sad peace war. That makes sense, right?

You’re either at peace or you’re at war. Patience, agitation, okay? I’m either a patient person or I’m getting very agitated kindness to hostility, right? So just think about where you are. Kindness and hostility, goodness. Evil, faithfulness, disloyalty. So you have faithful, then you have disloyalty of type of approach.

Gentleness. That could just be hard. You know, I’m, I’m a gentle person. I’m very, very, I’m very giving versus I’m just, I’m hard, I’m not gonna move on this POS disposition. And then the last one is self-control can compared that to inst. Like, I have self-control. I have, I’m very stable in, in my actions versus I have no idea what’s gonna happen.

Right? And I think we all know people who are like that sometimes. I’ve even been like that myself. You know, where it’s just you, just you giving to the flesh. So I, now we’ve gone through those four th those nine rather, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control when we talked about the opposites, hatred, sadness, war, agitation, hostility, evil, dis loyalty.

Hardship, instability. Right. And we already talked about the things earlier that, that Paul is pointing out that if we walk into flesh, it’s gonna walk us down this path. Now I want you to do something, I want you to think about the last 48 hours. What ways have you shown the fruit of your spirit and your interaction with others?

This is a hard exercise too. I get it. But this is what spiritual kickoffs all about. They’re, they’re supposed to be moving you and, and challenging you. Okay. So this is, if this is convicting you, it’s okay. It convicts me too. When I think of it the last 48 hours, just looking at, for me personally, from what I’m recording to spiritual kickoff right now, I probably did not show the best patience to my children.

I had several instances where, where I was not showing patients and then I also was, was not the most. Sometimes I can be, when I get impatient or when I get stressed out, I can, I get very, very, very, uh, snip where I’ll snip and, and, and say things I shouldn’t. So there, you know, there are a couple areas that immediately come up in my, in my mind when I think through the fruit in the last four or eight hours.

Okay? So often the fruit of, of, of joy. Again, patience, gentleness, maybe these are things that you struggle. And, and those areas that are in my life that I, that I just, I just told you about, that I have to be in tune about and I need to understand that, you know what, if I’m going to get stronger in these areas, I need to recognize when I’m not walking in that, in, in that fruit.

But the key, the key to all of this is knowing the fruit. This is a non-negotiable verse. Guys, you have to know this. This is one you need, you need to memorize. You need to go in and highlight it in your Bible. Maybe you need to write down on a card. Whatever you need, do put it in a note in your phone, but this is one you just need to repeat over and over and over.

Craziest funny story on how I learned this song. A couple years ago, our vacation Bible school had this, had a song called The Free Spirit, and in that song it’s a very, it is a funny song, but it had a, it had a little dance. Routine with it. I even learned that. Right? And, and, and, but I’ll tell you what, for me and the kids that went through that v b s, there’s not a single one of them that does not know the fruit of spirit.

And, and again, it could be a silly song or whatever method you need, but get this one down because we need to remember a good tree cannot produce bad. And that bad tree also cannot produce good fruit. So we need to understand what God is telling us and what the Holy Spirit is telling us and the fruit of the spirit.

And we need to see that in our lives. And we all have times where we slip. We all are. But if we’re in submission to the Holy Spirit, then the fruit will be prev. P. In our walk and others should see it. Now. You guys hear me talk about it all the time. Mentorship and asking for advice and, and, and reaching out for a community.

Be careful when you do reach out. You need to see this fruit. Do you see love in a fellow brother? Do you see joy or is it fellow? Is that brother constantly pulling you down and sucking the life out the room and always having a conflict of things going? Is this a peaceful person? Well, they always have drama.

you know, drama attracts drama and just some it is, I’m telling you, it’s like madness just pulls you right together, pop, get away from it because we’re called to be at peace again, patience. This is the one for guys in particular, chief center right here speaking. This is what I have to work on. The hardest, sir.

Or do you find yourself being patient and, and again, when you. For the, for the fruit guy’s, not just going give you patience. What is he gonna give you? An opportunity to be patient. Now what are you gonna do with that opportunity? Are you going to exercise that fruit just like a muscle and, and then that grows?

Then as you exercise it more and more and more, you know what that muscle gets? Stronger. Stronger, stronger. Just think about how you go to the gym. You rip it, you rip that muscle, it tears down, builds back up. Next thing you know you’re building. You lifting. If you’re lifting for, for weight, that’s how you do it.

You slowly build up over time, you tear it, repair it, tear it, repair it, and it constantly gets getting stronger. Same thing with this fruit. How about kindness? When somebody looks at you and thinks about you, are they thinking of kind person or do they see, uh, I better not go here because if I go here, I know I’m gonna get my head bitten off, or goodness, do you care about others?

Right. Faithfulness versus. Are you a person? Are, are you a per a person that people can rely on or are you just disloyal? There’s, there’s, we all know those guys. You got your 3:00 AM buddies and then you got your 5:00 PM buddies and past 5:00 PM Don’t call these guys cause they’re not going to answer.

Or if they do, they’re gonna be too busy to help. And gentleness again, take this one back to your wife. Does she see the gentle side of you or are you constantly. The, the, the hard stick in the mud. You know, get treating her the, you know, the worst version of you versus the best gentleness. And finally, self-control.

And guys, for, for men, we need to exercise self-control. Every day, every day the, the people around us need to see, you know what? Yeah, we are powerful. We have a lot of. God gave us these bodies, all these different abilities, we can harness it, right? The, the warrior that can harness that strength and use it as God intends, that’s a lion.

So start thinking about your life. You start thinking about your question this week. What fruits are you producing? I. It can be very di difficult to answer yourself, but think about that question, what fruit are you producing? And then take it a little bit further. What do I need to change? Because you know what, maybe I’m not showing the, the fruit in these areas.

Or maybe you show the fruit at work pretty well. What about home? Or flip it? Maybe you show it at home, but when you get to work you’re a different person. Or you show fruit good at Sunday, but Monday through Saturday there’s a different fruit. Gotta. Every day. Every day we have to pick up our cross and follow him.

That’s it. Deny it, pick it up. Follow him. That’s what it’s all about. So guys, you know each week for spiritual kickoff, for you listeners who may not. Accepted Jesus as your savior. You’re here listening to the life within us for some reason. Maybe a buddy told you about it, told you about listening to this redneck from North Carolina.

Talk about Jesus and, and the some of the cool guests who we have. I’m glad that you’re here, but I don’t want you to leave here without having a relationship with Christ cuz today could be the day he could come back today and this is the only opportunity that, that you have to accept it. You know your number may come, come up today, right?

We we’re not promised. And if the number comes up today, where are you going? Are you gonna go to heaven or are you gonna be separated from him? And there’s only one way to heaven, and that’s through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. And the only way to do that, only way is you have to, to accept him, you have to first of all, walk through a few steps here, admit that you’re center.

I have sin in my life. And what is sin? Guys? Anything that separates us from God, do you need to believe that Jesus is, is, is Lord. He’s the son of God. That’s it. You know, he’s not just some, some awesome guy we read about in God’s word. Here he is the son of God. He came. It’s to redeem us. He is our redeemer.

He paid the ultimate pen penalty for our, for our sin. The, the penalty has been paid completely in full. There is nothing we can do to overcome it. You can’t just be a good guy and get into heaven. That’s not what it’s about. You have to surrender. And so the, the last part, confess him as Lord. So you admit that you’re a sinner and you believe that he is the son of God, and then you confess him as Lord, guess what?

The Holy spirit’s gonna come down. It’s going to dwell. It’s gonna give you a new. Welcome to the Brotherhood, and at that point you will have access to this, what we talked about today, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, generalness, self-control, all those areas. Plus you now have the Holy Spirit and you also have the lion with them.

Again, if you just accepted Christ Your Savior, do us a favor, send us an email support at the Lion within us. And here’s why. I want to, first of all, congratulate you, welcome you to the Brotherhood, and I also wanna send you some resources because you just entered the battlefield and I get it. You may be wondering, what are you talking about, battlefield.

I’m gonna share some resources with you that are gonna help you be prepared for the battle that you. Because you were in it the whole time. You just didn’t realize it. So now the blinders are off, you’re in. We want support to help you. Come alongside. Put a, put a arm around you, give you a hug. Welcome you to our community.

And, and get you prepared for the fight. So again, that’s support at the line within us. So guys, if you’re enjoying the spiritual kickoffs, share ’em out with others. Share ’em with guys in your Sunday school class. Share ’em with people at your church, with your men’s group, uh, at the gym, wherever it needs to happen.

Just share it. Give us a rating and review. We were looking the other day, our ratings and our reviews are, are, are just not where they should be based off of the downloads that we’re getting, guys. So if you’re listening to the show, take two minutes. Click five stars, write a two sentence rating, uh, review rather.

That would mean the world. Then go to the line within us. You need to do this today and join our com community cuz our community is growing and you’re not gonna be able to access all the cool things that we have going on with our courses, our events, uh, our, our resources. All that stuff is in within the.

So take action. Go to the line within us, join that community today. That is one thing you can do and you’ll be part of it. Then you’ll be hearing all the different id, uh, areas that we, we are able to serve others. And you know what, guys? You may make that connection within the community that you’ve been needing for a long, long.

We have mastermind groups going again, one-on-one coaching. There are all different ways to serve you. Maybe you want to jump in there and grab you a hat or a shirt or something like that. That’s fine too, whatever it is. But you’re not designed to be alone. Join the community and let’s work on that fruit together.

So guys, come on back on Wednesday. I got a fun conversation I’m gonna be having with a gentle. I’ll be unpacking a lot of this fruit, how it manifests in our lives, particularly how it manifests in our marriages. I know this is gonna serve you well. Look forward to having you back. Thank you for all the support.

Please keep listening, keep sharing, keep showing up, keep showing up, and jump in that community. Don’t wanna o cannot overemphasize that enough. Guys, that’s where I’m spending the time at. I’m there. You can con connect with me directly. We’ll have conversations, we’ll have zoom, uh, meetings and things like that to be able to actually engage and grow together.

So get after it. Have some fun this week. Go back, highlight this scripture again. Get get this scripture cemented and unleash the lion within.

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