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Imagine you pour yourself a full glass of milk. And you don’t want just a regular glass of milk, you want chocolate milk, so you get some syrup and dump it in. The syrup is in there, but until you stir it up, the milk is not going to taste or look like chocolate milk.

The same with the Holy Spirit and our life. Our life can be compared to a glass of milk. When we surrender our life to Christ and receive His forgiveness, He puts the Holy Spirit inside of us and He can never get out. The very minute we yield our life and trust Christ’s perfection to be credited to our account we are filled with the Holy Spirit. He is not something we earn or an emotional experience. He is a gift, the third person of the trinity given as our comforter and teacher.

But just as the chocolate was in the glass but you couldn’t see it, sometimes we don’t act the way we should either. In our fleshly nature, though filled with Holy Spirit, we don’t act the way God desires us to, we aren’t empowered by the Holy Spirit. It’s not until the chocolate is stirred up that we can actually tell the difference from the regular milk and the chocolate milk. The same with us. It’s not until we yield to letting the Holy Spirit live through us that others will be able to tell we are actually disciples and followers of Jesus.

When we do live yielded and dependent on the Lord, we manifest the fruit of His Spirit. The fruit that is only capable of being produced in our hearts by the Holy Spirit not by us trying really hard to produce it-love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

This fruit can act for us like a temperature gauge of our hearts. If we aren’t sure if we are living by the strength of the Holy Spirit or by our own effort of trying hard we can test our fruit. We can ask ourselves things like, “In the last 20 minutes have I been loving (choosing what’s in the best interest of another)? Have I been patient and kind? Have I been gentle and self-controlled?” If so, that is not evidence of how great we are, but evidence we are living yielded to the Holy Spirit since those are only qualities produced by God. If the answers to those questions are no, then it’s an indicator to yield and surrender control yet again to Christ and His work in our life.

Laura, the creator and host of Missional Women is married and has four kids, two of whom are adopted. Laura and her husband have been missionaries to college students for 11 years serving with Master Plan Ministries. Laura is the Staff Women's Development Coordinator and has discipled over 150 girls, led over 30 Bible studies and speaks to college and women's groups. Laura has authored 5 books, including an award winning 12 week Bible Study on First Samuel, Beholding Him, Becoming Missional, Reach; How to Use Your Social Media Influence for the Glory of God, and A Devotional Journey through Judges, a devotional to accompany the free online Bible study at TheBookofJudges.com. You can find her on facebook,twitter, pinterest, youtube, instagram and her author site.