“But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”
And this brings us to the last of Jim VandeHei’s list of what I call “The Watchouts”. The final one are the “Wunderkinds”. These are the know-it-alls, the smartest people in the room by their own credentials, the braggards. They can be disruptive in that they try to control a room with what they think they know and their point of view. And, wow are they annoying. I often wonder how governments work at all as it seems like they are filled with many Wunderkinds. I love the quote, “You are either humble, or you are about to get humbled.” Wunderkinds live on the edge of being humbled and when they do get humbled it is typically not pretty. The good think about Wunderkinds is that we can spot them easily and actually see them coming. So, in our hiring and screening processes, we should be on the watchout for them and screen them out, not in.
It’s obvious that we don’t want to be a Wunderkind. We also don’t want to be a Wannabe, a Weasel, a Whisperer or a Whiner. What we want to be is the opposite of all of those. How can we do that? We let God in to fill us up so that what comes out of us reflects Him and the fruits of the spirit He wants us to be. That is why we vigilantly need to be on the watchout of ourselves first and worry about fixing or resolving others issues later. It is on us to invite God to work through us so that we don’t become one of “The Watchouts”.
Reference: Galatians 5:22-23 (New Living Translation)