The Fruit of the Spirit
Joy, a fruit of the Spirit
Galatians 5-:22-23 ESV
22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23:gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
The fruit of the Spirit is a blueprint to follow to be more like Christ. Also, notice that it says FRUIT and not fruits. It is all one fruit. If you take any fruit, you will see that it has different parts to it. Take an orange for example. It has an outer layer called a rind. The rind protects the inside from being damaged. Once you peel the rind back you will see a thin membrane that holds the juice pods inside of the wedges. Then there are seeds inside these wedges as well. But they make up just one orange.
Much like this orange, the Fruit of the Spirit is the same. I fully believe that the order of the Fruit of the Spirit is listed is for a reason.
First, there is Love. You can't have anything without love. Love would be the rind of the Fruit of the Spirit. True Godly love holds everything together. Once we have the love of God in us, then we can experience true JOY.
Joy is not a feeling, it is something that we have to choose to do or have... Just like love. But you can't have Joy without love.
Peace... God's great peace can rest on us when we have love and joy. The peace that passes all understanding.
Patience... No one wants to talk about patience. I was told early on when I got in church to not pray for patience otherwise God will put you in a situation that tries your patience. And that may be so. But, do you know how many times patience is mentioned in the New Testament along? I'm glad you asked. ;-) Thirty...the word patience is mentioned in the NT 30 times. So, if we want to see the promise of God, we need to have patience.
Heb 10:36 For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.
Kindness... Now, this goes without saying. No one will ever deny that kindness is truly what we need, especially in this day and age. Where kindness can be so hard to come by in the world.
Goodness... is defined as "the quality of being morally good or virtuous." Being kind and doing good to all those around us.
Faithfulness... We need to have faith that God is going to with it all out for our good, no matter what situation we are in.
Gentleness... The KJV calls this meekness. When have heard the saying, "Be meek but not weak." And this is true. The Bible describes Moses as the meekest in all the land. But yet he stood before Pharoh boldly and didn't back down. But we can't be meek without first God's love. But there are times also when we will have to "stand down" or be defrauded, so we will be patient and have faith to trust in God.
And finally Self-control... This is the inner put of the fruit. We can't get to the part until we have all the other parts of the fruit. How can you have self-control without Love or even peace? This part of the fruit can be the hardest to achieve. When someone bad talks us and smears our good name, we want to confront and make that person set the record straight. But for what? For our own glory or pride? Why not let ourselves be defrauded? The Word says that what is done in secret will come out. Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord. Let. Let God fight your battles. And only pick up a sword if and ONLY if He directs you to do so.
Now, I will be the first to admit that I still haven't gotten these all correct. Especially the self-control part. I also tend to get stuck on the patience part, but these are the things we need to pray for. If part of our fruit is going bad, then we need to take a step (or two) back and ask God to help us work on this part. Then our fruit can be full and ripe.
