Peace

I have a peace lily in my office… it is real.

I’ve had it since my brother in law – Dean Varner – past away a few years ago.

It’s a great plant.

However, from time to time, when the leaves develop brown and yellow spots, I prune it… cut it…. to get rid of them.

This past monday was one of those pruning moments. There were yellow and brown spots on about a dozen of the leaves… so they were pruned. In the end only 17 healthy leaves were left. Happy and growing into the next phase of life.

This morning I started thinking about conviction. Not the type you have when you hold tightly to a belief. Instead… I was meditating on the convicting ministry of the Holy Spirit, the type that comes when we do something wrong. The type that says, that’s a brown spot in your life, it is sin and must be confessed and turned from….

it needs to be pruned.

Then I asked myself this question…

Phillip, When was the last time you felt the conviction of the Holy Spirit?

Not caught doing something and then felt conviction…. no.

When was the last time you did something wrong and the Spirit said to your soul… “Phillip that was wrong.” A conviction that was just between us…. in the privacy of my heart.

When was the last time that happened?

I can think back to some things I have done wrong this week…

Yes…sins.

The question is did the Holy Spirit convict me that those things were wrong?

If not… then that tells me I have done those things so many times that I have “quenched the Spirit”… I have ignored him pointing out… “hey thats a yellow spot, it should not be apart of your life” and now I am no longer in tune with Him… when it comes to those things.

My prayer today is… if there are any areas where I have quenched Him, He would show me and do some “unquenching” so He is free to work in my life again. .

I need to feel conviction when I sin….

for without it, the yellow and brown spots grow in my life and my life becomes very unhealthy…

just like a plant.

He is the vine… we are the branches…

prune me Lord…

prune me.