Root or Fruit

How would you discribe your walk with God?

 Is it out of obedience? Do you do everything you possibly can to make the right decisions each and every day? Do you pray before each meal? For the unsaved? For loved ones?
OR
Is your walk with the Lord a surrendering each day? Knowing that no matter what you try to do, you will fail. If it weren't for the Lords mercy and grace, there's no way you can go forward. Without your faith in Christ, you would fall flat on your face, bleeding on the sidewalk, and no one would care.

Faith is the Root, Obedience is the Fruit. 

Faith is where it starts. Obedience is useless without faith.
With obedience to God's word and the Spirits leading, we are exercising our Faith. With our faith, we trust that God will deliver the promises he has promised, we take the step forward in Obedience. Knowing full well that we can not deliver.

 Hebrews 11:6
But without faith it is impossible to please him:
for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

Notice, the Bible does not say....But without obedience...... NO!   Without Faith, obedience can not please God.

When we exercise our faith through our obedience, our faith grows.

Read here

It's like taking a pumpkin seed. Plant it in the soil. Water the soil every day.

Placing the seed in the soil takes faith. You trust the seed is there because that's where you put it.
You ask Christ to be your Savior, that is Faith.
Watering it everyday takes obedience.
Reading Gods word, believing you are saved. Believing you are now a child of God through Faith and not works.
We see our obedience in watering the seed daily produce fruit.
Taking obedient steps forward in trusting God increases our faith and produces the fruit of further obedience.

On the other hand;
If you watered the soil every day without planting a pumpkin seed first you produce weeds.
Weeds can't nourish you, strengthen you. They will only make you sick and choke you.
 Much like obedience (works) without faith.

These eyes

These eyes see things in a way that is magnified. Bumps on a basketball. Dirt in between the cracks of the hardwood floor. Reflections in a mirror. A fallen leaf with itsy bitsy holes. A dried piece of oatmeal on the hand.
    All these are fascinating new discoveries. Textures, depths, colors. New, through the eyes of a child. A baby.
   Why is it we love to watch a child discover new things? Lights are brighter and whites are whiter through the eyes of a child. And yet, we're amazed every time with their curiosity. Why?

   We have been desensitized. We take for granted the things around us. The smells, the sights, the sounds. All have become old, used, rote. 
God did not mean for it to be that way. We did this. Being busy chasing after the next best thing. The next promotion. The new improved this or that. Discontentment? Maybe. Seperation from the basics, having made everything a bit more complicated than the last? Definitely!

Lamentations 5:17
For this our heart is faint; for these things our eyes are dim.

When did your eyes start to wander for things of this world? The big neon lights, the dollar signs?

It's in the quietness of a childs mind and the anticipation of the childs eyes that we can learn to be still and patient. God is 'wowwing' us every day and we don't see it!

Return to the young child you once were. Bask in His love. The rainbow. The Dove. The Cross.

Lord, I pray my eyes will not be dim to your word, your love, your son. May the Spirit move me to be attentive to the everyday blessing you bestow upon me. My Lord and savior. My husband, children, house. The trees in the backyard that provide shade and life. 
Reveal to me the cracks and crevaces that lie deep in my soul that your son sees, that I need to clean. Much like the dirt on the floor that I don't see but my son does.
I pray for a teachable spirit, a desire to follow you and not the luxuries this world has to offer.