Oct 22

Galatians 5:22-23
22 But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!

Here's something you can try at home, with sweet results! Fill a glass halfway with water and stir as much sugar into it as you can get, or about four tablespoons. Stir it until the sugar dissolves in the water. (This may take awhile.) Once you've dissolved as much of the sugar into the water as you can, get a piece of string and tie it to a spoon. Lay the spoon across the top of the glass with the string hanging down almost to the bottom of the glass (but not touching the bottom) in the middle of the sugar water. Cover the spoon and glass with a napkin or paper towel and set it out of the way, where it won't accidentally get knocked over and cause your parents to ground you from ever reading this book again! Leave the string in the water for nine days. You'll see the sugar crystals that were dissolved in the water begin to attach themselves to the string, gradually forming what appear to be rocks of sugar. You will then be able to remove the rock candy from the glass and eat it. (Be prepared for your parents to claim that when they were kids, rock candy was the only candy they could afford.) Now, what's the point? Just this: The glass involved in that little experiment doesn't produce the rock candy, does it? The ingredients inside the glass actually create those beautiful, tasty crystals. The glass was filled with sugar water; that's what produced the rock candy on the string. You and I are kind of like that glass. We can't produce beautiful things out of our life. We can't be consistently pure and loving and patient and kind. We may try; most Christians do. But no matter how hard we try, the best we can produce is pretty bad. But as Christians, we're filled with the Holy Spirit. As we learn to spend time with him and trust him every moment of our life, some of the qualities of the Holy Spirit will be produced in our life. Without him, we can only produce things like impurity, hatred, and jealousy (Galatians 5:19-21); but when we are filled with the Spirit, we will-like the string of rock candy in the glass of sugar water-take on the characteristics of the Holy Spirit. Sweet, eh?

REFLECT: If you never put the string in the sugar water, but only placed it near the glass, do you think rock candy would ever form on the string? Why or why not? How is that similar to you and your relationship with the Holy Spirit?

PRAY: For the next nine days, watch your rock candy forming in the glass of water. Pray briefly each time you check it (and especially as you eat it) that the Holy Spirit will produce his sweet fruit in your life.

Sorry not coming up with anything.'

The verses were kind of short for me to grab exactly what it's talking about in our lives.

i remember i did that "rock candy" experiment in grade 4...some people got hyper off of it...kinda scared me...
okay so the rock candy experiment is a good example of ourselves and the Holy Spirit. we are the glass as the story said and God is the string that allows beautiful things to be formed from the glass and the string that collects the sugar from the water to a nice tasty treat. the water is i guess the world itself and the sugar represents the good things we get out of the world with the help of God. we all try to be pure, kind, patient, etc, but it can't be done without the Holy Spirit residing in us and God guiding us.
the first verse of todays devotion reminded me of the song we did on sunday, he is faithful. God is faithful and he will bear sweet fruits that we will be able to taste God is faithful to us and he will continue to be with us whether we know it or not!
okieeee thats all i got for today! baii~

Hmmm...I can't really find any relevance between the story and our life...

Galatians 5:22-23
22 "But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,"
23 "gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!"
If we have the Holy Spirit with us, we are able to become all the things that God wanted us to be. Or in other words, we are able to have "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and faithfulness".
We probably will never have all of those traits at the same time but at least we're trying!
Not my best devo :/ sorry!

Jake...Have you tried reading the reflection?
If you can't find anything from the verses, well that's what the reflection is there for
And quite frankly, the message is CLEAR.

"The glass involved in that little experiment doesn't produce the rock candy, does it? The ingredients inside the glass actually create those beautiful, tasty crystals. The glass was filled with sugar water; that's what produced the rock candy on the string"

The reflection is making a analogy between the crystals, and the good fruits.
The glass containers represent OUR lives. Now the glass, OUR lives don't produce good deeds themselves.
It's the sugar, which I guess could be referred to the spirit, that produce the rock candy, which could be referred to as our fruits.
We alone are absolutely incapable of producing such things. It's by the grace of God that are able to do so
It's always been up to us to allow God into our lives. We push him away with so many things to focus on... such as school friends, and whatnot
Make room for God, let him plant seeds in us, and produce fruit.

That's cool, my sister just did that very same expirament about a week ago.....not with string though, it was with a chopstick.

While reading this, I thought of the fruit of life as the sugar that formed the crystals. You can't carry out an expirament with the wrong ingredients or missing one ingredient.
Like in faith, we need those ingredients in our lives. It's so easy to have our lives become unclean but it's not that easy becoming clean again. But god constantly cleanses our lives as we add more of these essential ingredients to our faith. And at the end of everything, if you've done right, the outcome is sweet (not literally, well I guess it works both ways)

must sleep......

What i got from this was that we cannot produce anything good by ourselves. We are the glass in this example, and if we have "just us, the glass" what will we produce? dust? While on the other hand God blesses us and provides us our needs and helps us produce something good just like the sugar candy. How can just glass create sugar candy? it cant. We need the assistance of water and sugar. The glass is there to help produce the final product. That is what we do. We help create the final product, We mus assit God whenever we can and in any way we can. We were all created differently for a reason

what's up guys, sorry for the late night devotion to something that's already late. ugh.
Anyways, things have been better lately, just gotta stay ahead in school

I kinda chuckled at the fact where it said, "We can't produce beautiful things out of our life."
EXCEPT BABIES.
Anyways, back on topic. It IS true, for a fact that we are hopeless, we're just that water full of sugar, which reminds me of sin.
There wouldn't be a chance that rock candy would form from the string.
Although the water awaits the string, Jesus has been given as a sacrifice for us already.
But I feel as if the "string" is already there. He's only waiting for us, no?
The characteristics of the "water" must be alike as the string.
I just thought of resonance, having the same frequency with the string and the water but water doesn't have frequency.. awks.