A six week series where we try to answer questions like these:

• – What is God trying to do in my life?
• – Why is that so hard sometimes?
• – What is Christian character and do we cultivate it?

Video Message	Resources
Week 1: Of Flesh, Spirit, and Fruit	Monday Memo notes For This Week 1. Maybe most importantly, pay attention this week to how God’s Spirit, right in the midst of your everyday life, is trying to steer you toward and build in you the “fruit” in Galatians 5.22-23. Stay on watch for these signs, and then find ways to lean into what God is doing or how God is shaping you.  2. Helpful scripture reading this week:  – Galatians 5.16-23 is one of Paul’s most practical passages about how God’s Spirit shows up in and influences our lives. Another is Romans 8.1-30 – There are other “virtue” or “character” lists in the New Testament, for example 2nd Peter 1.5-7, 1 Timothy  6.11 (about church leaders), and 2 Corinthians 6.3-10 (about Paul himself) – Jesus used a similar metaphor to Gal. 5.16-23 in His Sermon on the Mount, namely, good trees produce good fruit, whereas if we’re yielding bad fruit, we may be a bad tree: Matthew 7.15-19 NRSVUE – “Fruit” is a common Old Testament metaphor for the outcome or results of a faithful, enduring, virtuous life, here are two examples: Psalm 1.1-3 NRSVUE and Jeremiah 17.7-8 NRSVUE 3. Sprinkle these devotionals through your week:  – Bear Fruit – d365 Daily Devotionals – Help Fruit Grow – d365 Daily Devotionals – “You can’t carry two watermelons with one hand.” –  Proverb – United Church of Christ – Enmities – United Church of Christ
Love	See Love Big series
Joy	See Choose Joy series
Week 2: Peace	Monday Memo notes A Week for Peace 1. Pray at least once of a day the famous prayer of St. Francis of Assisi about being an instrument of peace:  “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace: where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.” 2. Focus this week on one of the practical habits for cultivating inner peace:  – Per Dr. Linden Nelson, spend the week trying to exercise greater self-compassion and self-acceptance and/or trying to bring all the various parts of life together as one whole governed by one set of values.  – Or work on your habit of releasing to God all the things that worry, overwhelm, or overload you during the day.  – Or focus this week on coming back to the present moment when your mind pulls you back into the past or into the future or outside of yourself into things you can’t control. Mindfulness practices are a big help with this – 7 Christian Mindfulness Exercises to See God in Daily Life 3. Ask God this week to identify one place in your life – a relationship, a setting, etc. – where God wants you to work on outward peace. And get specific about how you can seek to bring peace to it – by acknowledging and resolving a conflict, by being mindful of your words, etc.
Week 3: Patience and Faithfulness	Monday Memo notes A Week of Patience and Faithfulness – Pray the full Serenity Prayer (in the sermon notes above) daily this week. – Keep a log of what tries your patience this week. Grow in your self-awareness of what tempts you to be impatient.  – As described in the sermon notes above, find deliberate steps that you can take to slow your life down overall. It’s hard to be patient in a hurried life.  – Journal or pray a little this week about how you can approach your life more like a farmer or prophet.  – Every day this week, remember to entrust your whole life to God in prayer. You can do this with a physical gesture: as you pray, lift your cupped hands to God, as if you are giving God your life and removing it from your care and control primarily.  – Try for one day to trust God without reservation. And every time you start to worry, repeat a short prayer telling God that you’re choosing complete trust instead of anxiety or taking back control.  – Do a trustworthiness audit of your life: journal about every facet of life – home life, friendships, work, church life, creation, money, your health, your hobbies, and so on (you can make your own life) – and see if you’re proving to be faithful and dependable everywhere, or if an area or two might need some attention.
Week 4: Kindness	Monday Memo notes
Goodness	This will be its own series in the future.
Week 5:	Monday Memo notes
Week 6:	Monday Memo notes