Our Duality

Sandwiched between your heart and mind is our emotional realm: our soul. Of which (these three) reside between our spirit and our body.

Being made in the Image of the Lord, we are spiritual beings, relating to Them from and through the Spirit.

Yet, we exist in this world in our body, relating to it from and through our five senses.

Herein lies our conflict: we relate to God the Father from the Spirit-out; and relate to the world from the body-in. Culminating (meeting) in our soul (our emotional realm), wrecking havoc in it, our heart, and our mind.

Our internal turmoil is always at play, never finding absolute rest. Chemical imbalance, physical sickness, anxiety, depression, and the like plague our existence because of this never-ending conflict between our God-design and our earth-nature.

We need help.

And we have it. Whether doctors, medication, meditation, psychology, therapy, and more. Revealing and relieving much of what is going on inside us.

All stemming from that conflict that is the world training our being from the outside-in, when the Lord is guiding us from the inside-out.

This world we get trained in is unfair, unjust, unequal, unrelenting, and decaying (having been, and is, corrupted by Adam). This in turn, through both nature and nurture, change our original Design-Intent (instilled by the Lord).

We were not designed to experience or endure hardship. Yet from in the womb, we are bombarded with things not of the Lord: rejection, abandonment, loss, neglect, hate, fear, brokenness, trauma, and abuse (mental, physical, emotional, sexual). Occurring at anytime in a person's life (young or old).

And so, being exposed to any, all, or more of these without proper tools and guidance, we can develop undesired changes in our makeup.

How do we then know if what has been handed down from this world is at all in conflict with our Original Design?

The Lord and His Word.

We can, through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, reinforce His reality, overcoming and changing our trained reality. We are always malleable!

But the onus is on me (you personally) to want to change; knowing you and me CAN change.

So seek out the Lord and His guidance to be able to make the change happen without rejecting the how or the timing.

For the healing is greater than how you got healed.

And let it be okay if the healing takes your whole life. There is a reason we get brand new bodies.

For until then, we must endure this duality we live in... that of this earth and that of the Lord.

----

I Am the Vine, and you are the branches... to bear much fruit.

We all bear fruit. Sometimes of Christ (the Fruit of the Spirit). And sometimes the "fruit" of what we sowed (whether of life or death).

Even Paul struggled with this duality... doing the things he didn't want to; and not doing the things he did want to do (Romans 7).

He longed for doing only of the Lord, but saw his former ways surface and hinder him. Both his own fruit and the Fruit of the Spirit manifested from him.

What do you see?

When we look at others (or our own self), what fruit do we see. No... rather, more specifically: what fruit do we focus on?

I can, you can, get so focused on what the wrong fruit is in a person, we fail to see the Fruit of the Spirit in them or in ourselves.

Yes, the Lord reveals (Philippians 3:14) what is amiss in us... to show the difference between His fruit and the fruit that doesn't belong.

Adam ate the wrong fruit and those seeds were planted in each one of us. We get so used to that fruit living here, we neglect the fruit that Gives us Life!

Know that you have this duality of fruits in your life. Discern the Spirit that you may eat and manifest His fruit more. But also giving Grace to yourself and to others when we bear the wrong kind of fruit.

In the Garden that is our communal existence in this earth, we may not all bear the same fruits. But just because yours is different from theirs, does not make yours better/worse nor theirs better/worse. It just is.

We get the opportunity to and ability to bear His fruit more. And that can meanie chop down, burn, and destroy the trees that do not belong in us anymore.

Be ye renewed in the spirit of your mind! And you are changed from Glory to Glory.

Romans 12:2

And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

2 Corinthians 3:17-18

Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. Moreover, we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

2 Corinthians 4:16-18

For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.

Ephesians 4:22-24,29-32

That ye put off concerning the former manner of life (the old man), which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.

Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.

Philippians 3:15

Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you.

Colossians 3:9b-10

Disarm the old man with his deeds; indeed, clothe yourself with the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him.

We bear the two trees of Life and Death in us. We have mixed fruit. But know which fruit comes from which tree. Discern. For when we can acknowledge and see clearly where the fruit came from, we can give credence to that tree to water it (the tree of Life) or destroy it (the tree of this world).

Matthew 7:17-20

Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

Luke 6:43-45

For a good tree brings not forth corrupt fruit; neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. For every tree is known by his own fruit. For of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.

John 15:1-8

I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that bears not fruit he lifts up: and every branch that beareth fruit, he cleans it, that it may bring forth more fruit. Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that remains in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. If a man remains not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples.