What's your spiritual Terroir?

I learned a new word last week, watching a video about wine, how it's made and how we get all those different kinds. It was hosted by John Cleese (which is why I watched it!) and was pretty good for somebody who knows almost nothing about wine. But the greatest part was learning about this word, terroir (I pronounce it tear-o-wah).

Terroir has to do with the ecosystem and geography around a vineyard. Things like: how much sun the vineyard gets and how hot it is. Is the vineyard on a slope so the water runs off or is it in a valley so it soaks in? What other vegetation surrounds the vineyard? Basically you think about everything that might have an impact on the final product, the grape, and that becomes part of it's terroir.

In the video there was a eucalyptus tree planted adjacent to a particular Chardonnay vineyard and the claim was that you could actually taste a hint of eucalyptus in the wine produced from that vineyard. Pretty amazing when you consider a persons spiritual terroir.

What kinds of things have an impact on your spiritual life? Are you getting plenty of God's Word? Are you filling up in church, bible studies, etc? Are you surrounding yourself with believers who hold you accountable and challenge you in your walk? Or, are you surrounded by people and things that would have a negative impact on your fruit? Bad language, dirty television shows, what are you reading? Watching? Listening to? All of these have an affect on your spiritual terroir.

Everything soaks in. Everything eventually has either a positive or negative affect on the kind of fruit we produce as believers and people.

What is soaking in to your spiritual life? Why not take a Spiritual Terroir inventory right now and list the things going on in your life and how they may be affecting your walk. Then work to remove the harmful and reinforce the beneficial. Here's to having great Spiritual Terroir!