Month: July 2024

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  Against such things there is no law.” Galatians 5:22-23 NIV

What do you think of when you hear the word gentleness? Sometimes gentleness is compared to meekness or weakness, but I would argue that gentleness is very different. I believe that gentleness actually takes strength to show. Meekness is defined as submissive and weakness is defined as lacking strength. However, gentleness is defined as being tender or having softness.

It is easy in this day and age, in our society, to become harsh with someone who is not fulfilling our needs. For example, if someone isn’t moving their car quick enough for us to park, we yell at them, or make motions at them. We all have pushed our way through a situation or two reacting in a harsh manner.

Developing gentleness is truly a gift from God.

Our actions and words carry weight with others and affect the people around us. When we are harsh in either one of those areas, we can hurt others, tear down self-esteems, and drive people away from God. Being able to be gentle with others whether it is physically or verbally, has a greater chance of having a positive outcome than being harsh. Having the ability to restrain yourself from acting in a harsh manner and then being willing to show that gentle side of yourself takes strength. Strength in knowing who you are in Christ and that He is in control of the situation, if we let Him.

An example of gentleness can be a person who is typically known for being rough and tough, going into a hospital and sitting beside their parent, lovingly holding their hand as they battle disease. It is the ability to remove yourself from the center of the situation and place the other person there, right in the center. Being able to place their needs above your own because you know that they matter more to you at that moment than your own needs or desires.

Christ showed this gentleness as He held children while He was talking to large crowds about their sins and how they could change their lives. Jesus also showed us great gentleness when He took the beatings that the guards gave Him, carried the cross to His place of death and then let them nail Him to the cross so that we could be given the chance at forgiveness. Jesus could have struck down everyone of the guards the moment they lifted your rods to hit Him, but He didn’t. Instead He forgave them for doing what they were doing. Jesus then gave us a chance at eternal life in heaven because He placed our needs before His own. He placed the need to save our lives above keeping His life on earth.

Are you known as a gentle person? If you are not, God can grow that area of the Fruit of the Spirit inside you, you need only to let Him. He will not push His way into your life, however, please remember that He only wants what is best for you. I pray that today you would talk to God about gentleness and how with His help this characteristic can be developed more in your life. I know that I am going to be talking with Him today about how it can be developed more in my life. Have a wonderful day.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  Against such things there is no law.” Galatians 5:22-23 NIV

As we discuss faithfulness, loyalty comes to mind. For example, a person who is faithful to their spouse is also being loyal. They are not devoting their time, their feelings, or their resources to any one else. They are consistently mindful of their commitment to that other person. They are not faithful only some times or when they feel like it, it is all the time. Being faithful to God is the same idea, we are to be devoting our time Him, connecting with Him, being in prayer with him and reading His word so we are able to get to know Him better.

When we talk about our feelings in being faithful to God, we are talking about continuing to serve Him even when we don’t get what we want, whether that is a situation not ending the way we wanted it to or we don’t a material object that we wanted. We need to stay connected even when we don’t feel like it, even when praying feels hard and we are tempted to try something different. These are the moments when being faithful to God is important. Remembering our commitment to God can help us stay focused on Him and not the gratification that our flesh is desiring at that moment.

In regards to our resources, we should be willing to share what God has given us with others so that the kingdom of God is able to expand. I am not talking just monetary resources but also time. Spending time helping others come to know Jesus in your church or community is giving of your resources as well.

Being faithful to God can be hard and we all face the temptation to walk away from Him. We are tempted daily because we want to fit in with the crowd of people who are important to us. However, walking away from God when we don’t get our way or when the temptation we are facing seems easier than remaining close to God is the opposite of faithful and let’s remember that God has been nothing but faithful to us.

Heavenly Father, Thank You for always being faithful to us even when we are not faithful to You. Temptations are strong to walk away from You and fit in with the crowd around us, so please help us to want to cling to You and not take the easy way out. Please be with anyone who is facing those temptations to not be faithful to You today. Be with us as we go through our day, hopefully showing others what being faithful to You looks like. In Jesus’s name. Amen

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  Against such things there is no law.” Galatians 5:22-23 NIV

Goodness is the next area of the Fruit of the Spirit contained in these verses. When we are discussing goodness as a characteristic that someone is able to possess, I think of someone who is morally upright. A person who does what is right not only when others are looking but when they are alone. Someone who is genuinely able to empathize with others, who puts others’ needs before their own.

As one of the areas of the Fruit of the Spirit, goodness has parts of the other areas embedded in it. As a person develops love, joy and kindness, they are able to develop goodness as well because they all have similar components to them. They each consist of having concern for others more than one’s self, giving of oneself to help others and showing the love of Jesus.

The main way to develop and grow in any of the parts of the Fruit of the Spirit is to maintain a connection with God. That connection is through prayer, reading His word, studying His word, and surrounding yourself with other Christians. There are other ways as well such as listening to music, to sermons or podcasts that are devoted to God.

Most people consider themselves to be ‘good’ people, and I believe they are, but being ‘good’ and consistently demonstrating ‘goodness’ is different. ‘Goodness’ is a characteristic or a trait that a person possesses, where as being ‘good’ is an action that a person does. We can all perform actions for a while, but possessing a trait is showing that characteristic consistently over time.

Heavenly Father, I come before You now and ask that You pull anyone who is struggling with this area of the Fruit of the Spirit in closer to You, so they can feel Your love. I pray that they would seek Your guidance daily. Thank You for always being near us and being willing to help us. I pray all of this in Your Son’s most precious name, Jesus. Amen

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  Against such things there is no law.” Galatians 5:22-23 NIV

I always thought that being kind and being nice were the same thing. Over the years I have come to realize that there is a difference. Being nice can be defined as being pleasant and polite, using words to make others feel good. People who are nice are usually agreeable and do not want to cause any problems. Where being kind can be defined as a quality of being friendly, willing to be honest with others in love.

Being nice can be thought of as being self motivated in that a person who is being nice sometimes expects something in return for the act of being nice, typically praise. Expressing kindness can be thought of as being selfless in that the person who is being kind expects nothing in return for the act of being kind.

For example, a nice person will tell you that the outfit you have on is flattering even if it isn’t because they don’t want to hurt your feelings or make you upset. Whereas a kind person will tell you the truth about the outfit, in a loving way, so that you do not go out in public in an outfit that is not flattering on you.

As children of God, we are often called upon to be kind to others, in the most loving way we know how, but unfortunately, we are not always kind, instead there are times when we are nice. We are nice sometimes because we don’t want to hurt the other person’s feelings, however, we are not truly helping them to address an issue or grow in a certain area when we are not being truthful with them.

In demonstrating growth in our spiritual life and development of this area of the Fruit of the Spirit, we begin to be able to distinguish the difference between niceness and kindness so that we are able to truly help others, not just make them feel good. Being nice is easier than being kind, you don’t have address anything or figure out how to tell the person something in love that may hurt their feelings.

We are also called to be kind to our enemies. As humans we can hold grudges and the thought of being nice, let alone kind to our enemies, can be hard for us. God has instructed us to do that very thing though, we are told to love our enemies and be kind to everyone, not just nice. After all, God has been kind to us, helping us to correct our sin and He did it through love by sending His Son as a way for us to be able to be forgiven and to live in eternity with Him.

As we move through our day, I pray that we choose to be kind to others even when we don’t feel like being kind. We are children of the Most High God and we are sometimes the only example of Jesus that another person may experience. Knowing that helps us to remember if we want to bring others to Jesus, then we have to demonstrate what being a follower of Christ looks like in all that we do. Have a wonderful day and be kind to everyone.

Today’s blog is a little different than my usual blog. Today I have an announcement that I would like to make and it may come as a surprise to some people. I have talked at great length over the years about hearing God’s promptings, submitting to His will and following through in obedience to what God wants me to do.

Well, today I am able to share with everyone a prompting I received from God about a year ago. As I have shared before, I like to study the Bible by taking a verse or passage of scripture and exploring it, writing down what I find about it. I do this very thing when I am writing a sermon.

At the time of the prompting that I felt, I had written approximately 30 sermons. So the idea of me writing wasn’t new to me. If you know anything about my blog, you know that I like to write but you would also know that I only began writing this blog about 2 1/2 months ago. What I am talking about, the prompting, did not take me 10 months to figure out how to follow.

During the summer last year, I felt led to write more than just sermons, so after praying about it and truly listening to what I feel God was saying to me, I decided to follow the prompting. I am very excited to be able to announce that as of yesterday my very first book is available for sale on Amazon.

I felt led to write a book on Ephesians 6:10-18, the armor of God. So I began writing a little at first and then more and more I would find myself making notes about something I wanted to include in one of the chapters. It took about 8 months to complete and when it was done, my husband, a dear friend of mine and my pastor at the time, all encouraged me to look into publishing it. After some more prayer and research, I found the publishing company that I believe I was meant to find.

So my first book “Wearing God’s Armor, What does that look like?” is now available for sale on Amazon by coping and pasting the link below into your browser.

https://a.co/d/dTfV5yb

I want to thank everyone who has supported me in the journey of writing my first book as well as continuing to write this blog. I am very blessed that God has placed the people in my life that He has and I am very thankful. So copy and paste the link into your browser, take a look at my first book and have a great day.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  Against such things there is no law.” Galatians 5:22-23 NIV

Forbearance, otherwise known as patience, comes next as an area where we can demonstrate the growth of the Fruit of the Spirit. Patience has always been a rough area for me. Patience was never really modeled for me as a child and it wasn’t until my adult years that I had someone in my life who was actually a patient person. God placed that person in my life and I have watched them and learned from them about how to be patient.

Patience is similar to peace in that in order to develop patience you have to endure difficult times, times that do not go as planned, because if everything goes as exactly as you want, there is no need for patience. We can all think of times when the cashier at the store was not very fast or the person driving in front of us on a single lane road was driving under the speed limit. These are mild cases of when someone’s patience can be tested.

Another area is as a parent and it can easily be said that your patience is tested on a daily basis. Your child isn’t doing what is asked of them or they are doing it but at the speed of a turtle. Your child is acting silly during a time when you need them to be serious and they won’t stop being silly. These are just some examples of how a person’s patience can be tested.

However, as a child of God, when I am being impatient, I try to remember all the times I have tried God’s patience. All the times that I have not followed His will, or I have followed it but not completely. I think about the times that it has taken me two or three times as long to learn a lesson as it should have taken. Thankfully God has not given up on me, cast me aside or walked away from me. He has remained right beside me, being patient with me as I learn how to respond to Him, how to understand what He wants me to do.

Now I understand that none of us are close to being like God and being able to demonstrate the level of patience that God demonstrates, but as followers of Christ we are called to try to be like Jesus. We are to imitate Christ by following the examples He left by how He lived His life. We learn about His life by reading God’s word, and we learn what God wants us to do by communicating with Him through prayer daily. As we develop patience or forbearance, the calmer we become and the calmer we become, the more we can work on developing more patience. It is a wonderful cycle of growth.

I pray that as we all work on developing patience or forbearance, that we are kind to ourselves and those around us who are also working on developing patience. God is kind to us and works with us to develop this area of the Fruit of the Spirit and we should imitate that behavior with each other.

Heavenly Father, please be with each one of us as we allow You to work in our lives to grow this area of our walk. Thank You for always being patient with us and not giving up on us like we may have done with others in our own lives. Help us to understand that as we work to develop this area that we will have to face situations that will be difficult for us to show patience during. And even though we will desire to move through those situations quickly, please be with us, and continue to guide us in the right direction. I pray all of this in Your Son’s most precious name, Amen.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  Against such things there is no law.” Galatians 5:22-23 NIV

Peace is the next part of the Fruit of the Spirit in these verses. Peace is defined as tranquility or freedom from disturbance. Having peace is having the ability to remain calm no matter when is occurring around you. Being peaceful or having peace starts with a mind set and can occur by doing certain things, such as appreciating nature, taking care of yourself, getting enough sleep, and living in the present moment. These are all secular ways to find peace and develop the habit of being peaceful.

There is an even better way to grow in the ability to be at peace though, and that is to be connected to God. The mindset of peace can be contagious and God is filled with peace, therefore being close to Him allows us to learn what being at peace feels like and how to practice it. For example, Jesus was at peace in the boat during the storm as it is recorded in Matthew because in His mind, He knew Who was in control.

Remembering that God is in control and surrendering to Him so that He can lead us into His will is a wonderful way to be at peace. As we develop a peaceful mindset, we see other areas of the Fruit of the Spirit present themselves, such as joy and love. It is impossible to be angry, the opposite of showing love, and peaceful at the same time.

Being at peace can be difficult because as humans we want some sense of control over what is going on around us. We want control over our future because the unknown is scary. However, when we accept that God is in control and that God only wants what is best for us, then being able to release our grip on the idea of control and practice being at peace can be achieved and is very fulfilling.

How is your peace? Are you connected to God, the most peaceful being there is? I do want to warn you though, when you ask God to help you develop peace, be aware that situations that are not peaceful will begin happening in your life because you cannot develop peace without stress. Anyone can be peaceful if everything is always going exactly as it is suppose to go, the development of peace happens when everything is not going the way it should. However, being at peace by being connected to God is the best way to live and worth developing this part of the Fruit of the Spirit.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  Against such things there is no law.” Galatians 5:22-23 NIV

Joy is the second fruit mentioned in this verse. At one time, I used to believe that joy and happiness were the same thing. However, over the years I have learned that happiness comes from the situation occurring around you. When the situation you are in is a positive one or something that you desire, then you feel happiness, but that happiness tends to last only as long as the positive situation is occurring.

Joy, however, comes from your internal situation, it doesn’t depend on your external situation. Joy can occur no matter what is happening around you. You choose to have joy in your life, where happiness is a result of something else. When you choose to have joy in your life, then the feelings of contentment and hope often accompany it.

How do we choose to have joy? Everyone has joy inside them, it is up to us to decide whether we will express it or ignore it. We choose joy when we choose to focus on others and on God. Focusing on the many blessings that God has placed in our lives helps us to want to choose joy. We can deepen our joy when we build our personal relationship with God. Being in constant communication with God through prayer and studying His word helps to open the well of joy that we have inside of us.

As we work with God in the growth of all the parts of the Fruit of the Spirit, we tend to notice that each of them have an effect on the others. For example, the more joy you choose to have in your life, the more love you want to show.

Choosing joy is something you have to do on purpose, you need to start each day intentionally choosing to have joy in your life. After a while of doing that, choosing joy can become automatic. So, do you want to be happy, until your external situations are no longer what you want them to be or do you want to choose joy? I believe I would rather choose to have joy then wait for something to happen to me that allows me to be happy.

Where do you stand on the idea of having joy in your life?

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  Against such things there is no law.” Galatians 5:22-23 NIV

The first fruit of the spirit that is listed is love. The concept of ‘Love’ has been used over the years in a large array of ways. People love things, such as cars or phones. People love ideas, such as an idea about decorating a house. People have loved places, Disney World. People have loved others in familial ways, the way a parent loves a child or one family member loves another family member. People love others in a platonic way, such as friends and even best friends. People love each other in romantic ways, the way a husband and wife love each other.

The love listed as a Fruit of the Spirit is none of those kinds of love. This love is referred to as Agape love. Agape love is defined as unconditional love, the kind of love that is given without expecting anything in return. Love is not a feeling but a choice and this love is sometimes hard to choose to express. When we choose to express Agape love, we are showing love to people who we may not have warm feelings towards, people who irritate us, annoy us and sometimes even hurt us.

So why would choosing to show this type of love be considered a fruit of the Spirit? Once we are saved, God begins working in us and He helps us to grow. Just as fruit is the product of growth in a plant, this fruit, love, is the manifestation of the growth inside of us. 1 John 4:8 says “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” God is love and the Holy Spirit is God working within us, so showing Agape love is showing how God is helping us to grow in our spiritual nature.

Evidence of this fruit is seen in how we treat others. When we are growing in Agape love, then we are kind in situations where we would have been rude before or we think of what others would like instead of only thinking of ourselves. Even though the growth or maturity in our walk with God does not happen immediately, each time we show love in this way, we are showing someone just a small piece of the love that God has shown to us.

Have you grown in your expression of Agape love?

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  Against such things there is no law.” Galatians 5:22-23 NIV

The fruit of the Spirit is a term that is used a lot in the Christian community. The fruit is a list of 9 different characteristics, traits or attributes that should be visible in the lives of Christians. These characteristics or traits demonstrate that growth and maturity are occurring in a Christian’s walk with God. The list is not a checklist of characteristics that we go through and check off as we accomplish them. For example, we do not move from developing love, accomplish it and then move on to developing joy. They all work together, we may develop one of them faster or easier than another but we have the seed of all of them in us.

As we grow in our walk as a Christian, we begin to develop the different parts of the fruit. An example is that when we are saved, our overall attitude changes but not over night. It takes some time to develop. Any plant that produces fruit does not produce it the moment it is planted. It may not even produce it the first year that the plant is in the ground. The development of fruit takes time, which is something we need to be aware of as Christians. Sometimes we rush to “develop” the characteristics that we believe we should already have when we have not taken the time to let God work in us to produce the right environment for the growth to occur.

How do we know that we are responding to the Holy Spirit and we are beginning to produce the Fruit of the Spirit? As I wrote earlier, our attitude changes, we should begin to notice that in times when we would have been angry before, we are not becoming angry as quickly or when we would have been very impatient with someone that we are giving them more grace.

As we move through the next week or so looking at the fruit, please remember that it is not a checklist that you go down through accomplishing one before moving to the next, but a collection of traits that you develop and grow all together, a little at a time.