For His Honor

“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.

“Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him.” Psalm 115:3 NIV

When I first read this verse, I was confused. I wasn’t sure what the author was trying to say with this statement. After doing some research, I found that there are few different interpretations of this verse. This is one of the verses that is not a ‘stand alone’ verse because it could be taken out of context and made to look like it means something that it does not mean. However, when it is read in the context of the rest of the passage, it makes sense, at least to me, what the author was saying.

The one interpretation that sticks with me is the one that says that God is able to do what He wills where as the other gods of the time, the idols created by humans, were not able to do anything. Obviously that is because they were just pieces of metal or wood and were not the Living God, they were not our God.

Once I let that take root, the account of the creation of the world took on an even greater significance for me. It was by His will, His desire that the heavens and the earth were formed on the first day as it is recorded in Genesis 1:1. Without His approval this would not have happened. Without His approval or will, we would not have been created in His image as it is recorded in Genesis 1:26-27.

I can only imagine that if God had not decided to create the heavens and the earth or the animals and us at the time that He did, that we may not be the people we are today. It is hard to imagine because if He had not created the heavens and earth and us, we wouldn’t be here to even think about this. If He had decided to wait and do it at another time, the situations that occurred in the garden may have been different, Eve may have said no to the serpent.

None of that matters though because God chose to make the heavens, the earth, the animals and us when He did. He can make those choices because He is the real Living God. The psalm that this verse is a part of is only one of the Egyptian Hallel psalms, psalms 113-118, that were sung during the Passover celebrations after Jesus had ascended. Normally Jesus and His disciples would have sung a certain part and since they were no longer there, this collection was used in their place.

Psalms 113-118 talks about how God is the Living God and can do what He pleases because He is real. Since He is real and not a piece of wood or metal, He has choices and can exercise them. In Genesis 6:9-22, God made a choice to save one family when He destroyed all the living creatures on the earth. He didn’t have to save that one family, He very easily could have started over and created everything again just like He did the first time, but that did not please Him. He wanted that one family to remain and so they did.

No idol or other made up god that we could possibly choose to worship can do that, only our real, Living Lord and Savior can do that.

Heavenly Father, Thank You very much for desiring to create the heavens and the earth. Thank You for wanting to have a personal relationship with us even after all that we have thought, said and done that is not in Your will for our lives. You are so patient with us and we do not deserve that. I am in awe of Your magnificent love for us. Thank You for being willing to be our Lord and Savior. In Jesus’ precious name. Amen

“You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.  You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.  Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely. You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me.” Psalm 139:1-5 NIV

I wrote recently that I am comforted by knowing that God is everywhere and that I cannot hide from God. That He can see and knows what I am doing and thinking. This verse speaks about the idea of God knowing not only what I am going to say but what I am thinking a little more in depth. In my post “Nearby or far away”, I wrote about Jeremiah 23 and how God knows where we are and what we are thinking, saying and doing. I wrote that I take comfort in that because there are times when temptation feels too strong and knowing that God is everywhere encourages me to draw on Him for strength to resist the temptation.

Just as Jeremiah was writing about the mistaken belief of the false prophets, that they could hide from God, David is also writing about the idea of not being able to hide from God. David expresses to God that he knows that God is omniscient and omnipresent. He knows that God is aware of not only what he has said and done but what he is thinking even before he says it. This means that God knows David’s heart and God knows each one of our hearts, as believers.

As true believers, I pray that our hearts are wanting to please God and not sin, but we are human and know that we are not perfect. We are all going to make mistakes and going to sin. Thankfully we serve a God who knows our hearts and knows that we want to please Him. He knows what has happened, what is happening and what will happen, and He is choosing to love us anyway. That is amazing to me.

The last part of this passage is also comforting. David states that God hems us in from all directions as well as lays His hand on us. When we think of a hedge or bush, we think of a barrier between one thing and another. A bush or hedge at the end of a yard is a barrier between that yard and the next, for example. That bush or hedge can also serve as an object of protection, which is how David is referring to it in this passage. God hems us in, He protects us from all sides.

David stated that God lays His hand upon him and you can feel that David does not mean that God is doing this in a way of controlling David but in a way that means God is showing him grace. So God knows what we are thinking, before we do, He knows what we are going to say, before we do, He knows what we are going to do, before we do, but most importantly He knows our hearts. God then chooses to lay His hand upon us in acts of grace and protect us because we are His children and our hearts long to please Him.

Heavenly Father, I pray that as you continue to know all about each one of us, believer or not, that You continue to love us. Thank You for that, Lord. Thank You for knowing us intimately, knowing our hearts and while knowing all that we do, that You still want to give us grace and protect us. We are so underserving of Your grace, but You love us so much that You give us Your grace anyway. I am humbled by that, Lord. I pray that everyone who reads this today, has chosen You as their Lord and Savior or is led to choose You as their Lord and Savior. I pray all of this in Your Son’s most precious name, Jesus. Amen.

“Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth!” Psalms 8:9 NIV

When I read this verse my heart fills with joy. I try to imagine what David must have been feeling as he wrote such beautiful words to our Lord and Savior.

Lord, our Lord.

The idea that we can call God, our Lord, is amazing to me. The absolute love that David is showing God at this moment is genuine. God created all the earth and His name is celebrated by His children throughout the earth. This being who has done all this, wants to have a relationship with you and me, so humbling.

God created everything, the heavens and earth, which is amazing. Then He placed us, humans, in charge of everything here on earth. He trusts us with His creation. This entire psalm is a song of praise to God and all that He has done for David and us, His children.

I can almost see David lifting his arms up in adoration of God as he shouts out “Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name.” That must have been a beautiful site. When I am worshipping God, I try to put all of my mind, heart and soul into it. God doesn’t deserve anything less. He doesn’t deserve to have only part of me worshipping Him. I want to react to hearing music devoted to Him, being in His presence and reading His word with that kind of outpouring. I want my worship to be coming from the very depths of my soul. I want to show God how much He means to me, how majestic I believe He is.

David knew what God was capable of, He knew the level of forgiveness God was willing to give His children. David had committed several sins, one right after another, in a short period of time and if anyone could have felt like God was not going to forgive them, it could have been David. However, David humbled himself and approached God with true sorrow in his heart and God forgave him.

Sometimes the most heart felt worship comes from the moments when we are at the lowest points and are feeling not worthy of any forgiveness. David experienced those moments, so he knew that to have God in his life was an honor and privilege. David was absolutely right when he proclaimed that our God’s name is majestic.

What comes to your mind when you hear this verse? I hope it moves you emotionally.