by-products

So about a year ago I decided to start a diet, it was a diet I had done before to lose weight. Each time I have dieted it has been for a different reason, this time it was for clothes. At Tara's school someone saw that I wear jeans a lot and gave her some very nice, name brand(rare for us) jeans for me. When I heard what size they were I just knew they would fit me, wrong! Tara got them home and I almost pulled a leg muscle and tore my shoulders out trying to get them pulled up and zipped. I decided right then to diet, to lose enough weight for those jeans to fit. It wasn't just one pair it was about 5 pairs of brand new jeans. So I began to diet, I started out strong and lost more and more weight. Then, finally the inches started to drop off and after about 3 months I could squeeze into them. Now, today they fit just fine, so well that a few pairs of them are about worn out. I lost all that weight to get into nice clothes, but as the journey went on I started to feel good about myself, I started to have more stamina and more drive. My product was to fit in jeans, but the by-products almost outweighed the product because I felt better, I had more energy and I was able to do a lot more with our softball girls as well as my own daughters. More energy meant more to do with the girls in the afternoons and evenings and I love it.
Yesterday, we talked about the product of a Spirit filled life, it was peace. But there are in-numerable by-products. They are all listed in Galatians 5:22.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
So you start your journey with God hoping to gain a personal relationship with Him. You along the way hope to find His peace in your life so that you can deal with the things of this world. Then, you start to discover other things in your life, other by-products that you had not even taken into account. Things like love, joy , patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. These are all things that I can honestly say have been developed in my life as my walk with God has strengthened.
So you see the peace that comes from knowing Christ and knowing you have a reservation in Heaven is only the beginning of the blessings of knowing HIm and growing closer to Him. As your walk grows, so will the list of by-products out of that relationship. Just like that diet, I had one particular motive but got blessed by several others.
Thanks for reading and have a great day!