"A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart." — Luke 6:45a

“Am I storing up good things? Are good things coming out of me?”

These are the questions we’ve been asking ourselves this month. Our verse is calling us to honest self-reflection. It’s asking us to diagnose our own hearts—to consider what our actions and our words reveal about what’s truly going on in us. 

But so often, we are self-deceived.

We learned in our first devotional this month that our verse comes in a rapid-fire group of stark and unsettling images that Jesus uses to warn us against self-deception. He asks us to consider if we’re truly following him or just saying that we do. He tells us that we can be as deluded as blind people leading others into pits, as self-deceived as people attempting surgery with boards in our eyes, as useless as trees bearing thorns instead of fruit, and as shaky as houses with no foundations. These warnings from Jesus may be jarring, but they’re for our good! And the reverse is also true—we can have eyes that see, and lives that bear fruit, and houses that stand firm. We need only to apply Jesus’s words. 

So that’s what we are going to do. Right now. 

I’ve made a short, reflective exercise for you. Download it, print it out, and fill it out. I’m asking you to take all that you’ve heard and read this month and really consider what it means for your everyday life. My hope for you is this: that you would bear good fruit by abiding in Christ!