‘A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers. ‘
Luke 6:43-45 NIV

Say you see a tree with apples in it, what kind of tree is it?

An apple tree, obviously.

But how do you know that?

By it’s fruit. Well, it’s the same with us! People will know us by our fruits and so depending on the fruit we display, people will know who we are.

So, before you read this, I recommend watching this video. You totally don’t have to, I’ll explain it, but in all honesty, his words are better than mine.

Alrighty. If you didn’t watch the video, here’s the transcript of what he says:
“If you have an orange juice, squeezed it, and apple juice came out, you’d think that was weird.

So why is it that when Christians get squeezed, hate comes out instead of love? Or fear comes out instead of boldness? We gotta do something about this. I mean, us as Christians, we can have liquid love that is coming off of us that’s just contagious, it’s just sticking to people!

People might even look at you because you have the spirit of God inside of you and you might not even say anything about the Gospel to them. They might just be like, “What’s different you? I can tell something’s different. I can see something in your eyes, it’s like light in your eyes.” And then you share the Gospel with them.

We’re partnering with the spirit of freedom here.”

He’s got a great point! We are not supposed to leak out hate, yet that’s what we are accustomed to and even want to do sometimes. So how do we prevent this?

Well, the verse in the beginning of this post says this:
‘For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.‘

What are our hearts full of? Anything and everything from fear, lust, hate, sadness, confusion, pride, discomfort, longing, and lot of other things. Those feelings leak out through us and the words we say.

But how do these things get in our heart?

Well, a variety of ways!

1. Music
2. Movies and tv
3. Books
4. People
5. Social Media
6. Culture and standards

For me, I’ve learned that my language is becoming not so nice. If I get really angry scared or upset in general, I don’t withhold my mind from saying some profane words. I don’t say them aloud, but that doesn’t change much! The words are still in my head and it’s become a bad habit.

Most of that comes from music, even though I listen to clean versions of songs if they have profanity. Other times it comes from movies or books. Sometimes it comes from people. None of my friends use profane language (at least not in front of people) so it’s not from them, but when I was in my drivers ed class I definitely picked it up from them and I was only with them for about a month!

This is part of the reason why I’m choosing to take a break from secular music for a month. I’m trying to see if that will improve my mood and the things I think and say.

So. Back to the point of this post. The things we put into our brain don’t just poof! and disappear. It takes work to remove them or stop those bad habits.

Letting love take over is hard, but here are some ways to let it:

1. Read about God’s love for you. After feeling someone else’s love for you, it’s easier to feel love for someone else.
2. Compliment someone once a day! Then the next week, make it two compliments a day, and keep going until it comes naturally! It really helps you see the goodness in others.
3. Take a break from non-wholesome or non-loving things. Music, people, books, movies, social media, all the works. If you need to, just choose one! Maybe slowly eliminate one and then two and so on for a little bit.

How can you train your mind to let love drip off of you? Comment your ideas!

Thanks for reading,
~Willow