This past Friday, we talked about the first five Fruit of the Spirit (if you didn’t catch that post, you can read it here). Today, we’ll discuss the remaining four, as well as my method for living out all nine daily. I hope that you’ve already been making an attempt to live out the first five since Friday. I realize that it’s not an easy task, but I pray that I can help you with that. Here’s the scripture to refresh our memory:
Galatians 5:22-23 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Goodness Titus 3:4 But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared… God is good. This ties back in to what I said in the last post. We’re called to be like Christ. If Christ is good, we should be too. I believe that goodness is about following God. It’s about integrity. It’s about loving others. To me, goodness is all of the Fruits wrapped into one. Faithfulness Psalm 37:3 Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. To befriend something or someone is to become close to it. To know it. To understand it. That’s what we’re commanded to do with faithfulness. Befriend it. Walk in it daily. God is so faithful to us. The least we could do it return the favor. Be faithful to Christ. Love Him. Defend Him to others. We are His bride, after all. Gentleness Ephesians 4:1-2 Walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with…gentleness… If this verse looks familiar, it’s because I used the same one for patience. And the explanation is the same as patience. Walk in your calling with gentleness. Show it to others, and you’ll get it back in return. Self-Control Proverbs 25:28 A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls. Destroyed. Easily destructible. That’s what I think of what I read the scripture. Without self-control, you will be destroyed. And honestly, you’ll probably be the one to destroy yourself. Without self-control, you won’t be able to stop yourself from doing reckless things, nor will you be able to stop yourself from being around people who will destroy you. You don’t want to walk around today’s society without self-control. Pray to God for that ability. I promise you that He will help you find it. When I first began to really look at the Fruit of the Spirit and decided that I wanted to make it a priority to make these a normal part of my day, I developed a method of sorts. What I did was focus on one Fruit per day. That’s not to say that I disregarded the other eight Fruit. I was just very intentional about focusing on one at a time. For example: on Monday, I would focus on intentionally going out of my way to show love to people. But the trick is to not only show love to the people you like, but to show it especially to those you don’t. Then on Tuesday, I would focus both on intentionally showing love as well as intentionally having a joyous mindset about whatever the day threw at me, and so on and so forth until I got through all nine. It took me a lot longer than nine days to really form this habit. I went through all nine about four times over. It wasn’t easy, not in the least. But I did it. Through the strength of God, I was eventually able to make living out all nine Fruit of the Spirit not just a habit, but a lifestyle. If this is something you struggle with, I encourage you to not only follow my method, but pray and ask God for help. He’d be more than happy to assist.
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MissionIn short, I started this blog because I want to give girls all over the world hope. All of the topics I write about on this blog are things that I have struggled with or am still struggling with. I want to help young women everywhere achieve freedom through Christ. Archives
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