The Fruit of the Spirit

Love: One of the main messages that comes through loud and clear from studying our Bible is the extreme importance that God the Father is placing on that everyone learn how to love Him, love ourselves, love one another, and to even go as far as to be able to love our enemies and those who will try and hurt us. Our abilities as fallen humans to love one another are very limited. This is why it is so important for each and every Christian to work very closely with the Holy Spirit to get this fruit worked up into the core of our personalities. It is only when the love of the Holy Spirit starts to flow and enter into our personalities can we even begin to love God, love ourselves, and love one another to the degree and to the intensity that God would like to see from each one of us. To those of you who will be entering into this sanctification process with the Lord – this quality should be listed as the #1 quality you should really attempt to put on into the core of your soul and personality. The Holy Spirit will be moving on you very early and very quickly to get this quality imparted into your mind, soul and emotions due to the extreme importance of it in your walk with the Lord.

You can be the greatest man or woman of God and have some of the greatest gifts of God flowing through you – but if you are not walking with all of this in the spirit of love and humility, it will have all been for naught.

Joy: The quality of joy is a much needed quality in this day and age. No matter how bad of a beating you may have taken in this life – God can still fully heal, deliver and restore you if you are willing to work with Him in this healing process. Realize that God can transmit this divine quality right up into your personality – and this will be His joy, not your joy, once it starts to flow up into you. And once God starts to release His joy into your system, you won't be able to help but feel it. And once you are able to start feeling it again, it will become much easier for you to learn how to walk back in it in your own daily walk with the Lord.

The Bible says that the joy of the Lord is your strength. This is why it is so important that every Christian have some level of God's joy operating through them in this life. Without God's joy operating in your life, things can begin to dry up. Nothing is ever fun anymore. Everything can start to become a chore. Before you know it, you will want to start to withdraw from others and life in general.

The joy of the Lord can really give you an incredible surge of strength in your own daily walk with God – especially when you have to take on some really tough situations. This is why each Christian should work very closely with the Holy Spirit in not only getting Him to release His joy into their system, but to also keep it running through them on a regular and consistent basis.

Peace: This is another major quality that we all need operating in our lives, especially with all of the uncertainty of this life and never knowing what is going to happen next.

Jobs are no longer as secure as they used to be. You never know when the company you work for may be bought out and your job will be gone in a flash. Half of all marriages are still ending up in divorce. We are all forced to constantly live under the threat of future terrorist activity, never knowing when or where the next attack will come from.

With all of this kind of heightened activity that we are all forced to deal with on a daily basis, it becomes very easy to lose your sense of peace, especially your peace in the Lord. Again, this is one of the 9 fruits of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit can really help you pick up the slack if you start losing your own sense of peace over some of the storm clouds that could hit you in this life. I have found that once His peace starts to flow up into your mind, soul and emotions, it really is as the Bible says – a peace that surpasses all human understanding – especially when that peace comes in right in the middle of a severe storm cloud that you may be going through. The quality of peace should be one of the main qualities that you should try and get worked up into your soul through the Holy Spirit in the sanctification process. Without the peace of God operating in your life, you could become very easily rattled, shaken, tormented and knocked right off of your game in the Lord the first time any adversity should ever come your way.

Long Suffering: One of the main definitions of the word longsuffering is that it is referring to patience. And patience is another sorely needed quality in the fast paced world in which we live in today.

Just watch people standing in line at the grocery store or at your local fast food restaurant and watch how short some people's fuses are today. Road rage is still a major problem on some of our highways. Look at someone the wrong way and they will want to try and take your head off. Many people have been killed or seriously injured because someone lost his temper over something that was very trivial.

With the fast paced ways of our society, many people have had their fuses shortened up and it thus takes very little to set them off. As a result, many people have very little patience operating in their personalities today.

For Christians, this poses a major dilemma. One of the ways of our God is that He is a very patient and longsuffering God. His ways are not our ways. And one of the things you will find out very early on about His ways is that He works on a much slower time frame than we do. And unless you learn to adjust to His slower way of working things out, you will find yourself easily losing your patience with Him and how He wants to work things out in your life.

God operates on a much longer and slower time frame than we are used to operating in the fast paced world in which we live in. You will really have to work with the Holy Spirit on this particular quality to get it properly worked up into your personality. The reason for this is that your own impatience will start to act up and try to override the patience and longsuffering that the Holy Spirit will try and transmit to you. At times, it may become of battle of wills – your will against His will.

But once the Holy Spirit starts to try and manifest this quality up into your personality, then you have to try and move with it and allow it to get worked into your mind and emotions. If you do, then His patience will start to override your impatience, and before you know it, your fuses will start to lengthen and you will not lose your patience like you used to do. Learn to ride and flow with the patience of the Holy Spirit in your daily life and walk with the Lord – and you will then be able to enter into a much more restful and peaceful state within your mind and emotions.

Kindness: As a result of more people being impatient, having short fuses, and with everyone always being in a hurry – many people have lost the ability to treat others with kindness and respect. A kind word, a kind action to another person can really do wonders for them.

When you study the life of Jesus in the New Testament, you can really tell how kind He always was with other people in His dealings with them. Jesus is without question, the ultimate role model for all of us of someone who was fully walking and operating in all 9 fruits of the Holy Spirit.

The quality of kindness will go hand in hand with the quality of love. Once the Holy Spirit starts to transmit His love up into you, the quality of kindness will follow right along with it. It will then become much easier for you to be able to be kind to others once the love of God starts to flow more into your personality.

You cannot help but be more kind to others if God's love is flowing through you. This is why the quality of love has to be the main quality that you really concentrate on getting more of from the Holy Spirit. Once the love of God starts to flow and operate through you to touch others, many of the other fruits of the Holy Spirit will then start to follow right after it in domino fashion. This is a very beautiful quality to have transmitted up into your soul and personality by the Holy Spirit. Not only will you be able to touch others with this godly quality, but you will also be able to touch yourself – because you will feel so much better about yourself if you can learn how to treat others with much more kindness and respect in your daily dealings and affairs with them.

Goodness: The Bible says that it is the goodness of God that will lead sinners to repentance and salvation. The quality of goodness is another real powerful quality to have operating through you.

This particular quality has a real drawing power to it. Not only does the goodness of God draw people direct to Him, but this fruit of goodness operating in a believer can also draw people direct to God through the actual believer. Spirit-filled saints who are walking with many of these fruits operating through them are like a magnet. Many people who have been saved through an individual believer say that what drew them in was the love and goodness they saw shining through that believer.

Jesus says that we are to carry His light and let that light shine before men and not attempt to hide it. Part of His light are these 9 fruits of the Holy Spirit shining through an anointed believer. Nonbelievers are really drawn to someone who has some degree of these nine fruits manifesting through them.

However, there is something extra special about the quality of goodness. Many Christians can effectively witness to others by just living right and being a good example and role model for others to follow. Many nonbelievers carefully watch and study some Christians because they know there is something really different about them.

One of the key qualities a nonbeliever will pick up on in a solid Christian is this quality of goodness. This quality has an ability to really get down deep into the core of a believer's personality. To those who really have this quality, you can tell that it is something operating deep down inside of them. This quality is not something that waivers like some of the other qualities can. These people are good down to their very cores of their personalities. You can see it and feel it when you get around these types of people.

As a result of seeing this God-like goodness deeply ingrained into their personalities, there is an immediate drawing towards them. You feel totally safe around them because you know you can totally trust them and you know they would never deliberately hurt you.

Children are quick to sense and pick up on this quality in people who really have it. These types of Christians draw children and adults to them like magnets. This is why this particular fruit and quality is so important for each Christian to have. With it, you can easily draw many more people to the Lord.

If the goodness of God will lead people to repentance and salvation with Him – then the goodness of God operating through an anointed believer will have the ability to draw nonbelievers into salvation. And the goodness of God can be transmitted and worked up into your personality through the power of the Holy Spirit. You can have the actual goodness of God shining through you to reach others if you are willing to work with the Holy Spirit in this sanctification process. This particular quality is a very powerful fruit to have operating in your personality because of the drawing power it has in it. And the beautiful part about this fruit is that this quality is so pure in its goodness – it does not have any manipulative qualities within it.

In other words, a truly good person could not even begin to try and use you or manipulate you for their own personal gain because they are too good and too righteous to even begin to think along those lines. This is why these kinds of people are so trustworthy and why so many people are drawn to them – because you feel so safe by just being around them.

Faithfulness: In the times we live in with half of all marriages still ending up in divorce and with many people getting back stabbed in the workplaces with people they thought they could initially trust – this particular quality is one that is really needed in our day and age. This quality is not only needed in our own personal relationship with God, but it is also needed in our own personal relationships with our friends and our families.

Once you are saved and have entered into a true, personal relationship with the Lord – one of the first things you will really have to grab a hold of is holding fast to the Lord and staying faithful to Him for the rest of your eternal life. Once you are saved and have entered into a true, personal relationship with the Lord, there is no turning back – ever!

This is what got the Jewish people in major trouble with God the Father back in the Old Testament. They could not stay faithful and loyal to Him on a consistent and regular basis. There were times that God the Father was literally calling them harlots and adulterers because they would not stay faithful to Him, especially when they kept chasing after other gods.

God the Father really holds this particular quality in high esteem, and this is one quality that He will really expect you to operate very strongly in – not only in your own personal relationship with Him, but also in your other personal relationships with your family and friends. In other words, He wants you to be faithful and loyal to your spouses, to your children, to your parents, and to your good friends.

Too many people are bailing out from their spouses and their children if they hit a few minor speed bumps in their marriages. Too many spouses are having affairs behind their spouse's back, thereby destroying all of the trust and faithfulness that may have been built up in the early years of their marriages. Too many fathers are bailing out of their marriages, and then forgetting and forsaking their own children – and sometimes for good, never wanting to see any of them ever again!

If God brings you a wonderful mate, wonderful children, and good and wonderful friends – then He will expect you to stay loyal and faithful to all of them in your own personal relationships with them. A true friend will stay by your side for life – through thick and thin and for better or for worse. Just as God will stay faithful to you in His own personal relationship with you – He will expect you to stay loyal and faithful in your own personal relationships with the other people in your life. With the self-centered and materialistic world in which we now live in, where many people's only goals and ambitions are to get as much as they can out of this life while they still can – I am afraid this is one quality that is in very short supply. Most people are lucky if they manage to make 2 or 3 good, true, loyal and faithful friends in this lifetime.

This is one quality that God the Father is really watching all of us on. He is watching who is going to stay true, loyal and faithful to Him – and who will stay true, loyal and faithful to the friends and family that are brought into our lives.

The flesh is strong – especially in the area of wanting to satisfy its lust for the material things of this life. This is why this quality is one of the 9 fruits of the Holy Spirit. We all need the faithfulness of the Holy Spirit worked into us to help us keep loyal to God, family and friends.

Gentleness: Many men may draw back a bit from this next fruit, which is the quality of gentleness. Whether some of the liberals like it or not, Jesus was incarnated into a human flesh body – but this incarnation was done as a man – fully man and fully God. He was not incarnated into the body of a woman – no matter how any liberal tries to spin this basic fact, with many liberals trying to make God gender neutral.

Since Jesus walked our earth as a man – the Son of Man – study His actions very carefully when you read the gospels and how He handled different types of people. There were times that He would engage and set people straight, like He did with some of the Scribes and Pharisees. But there were other times that He dealt with people very gently, with kindness and gentleness. His gentle way of handling some of these people is what really jumps out at you when you really study how He handled different types of people.

Again, Jesus is the perfect role model for all of us to study and learn from – especially with how He handled people while He was walking down here on our earth. For men in particular, His actions and behavior towards others should be a major study for all of us and we should seek to pattern our own daily walk after Him. And one of the qualities that He had operating in Him with great abundance was the quality of gentleness.

The quality of gentleness is another major quality needed in our world today. So many people have been beat up and hurt in their dealings with other people – that just a gentle word, a gentle touch from another Christian can really open up the door for that person to be able to receive Jesus and His healing, saving and deliverance power into their lives.

Once you really start walking in the Holy Spirit with His fruits operating and flowing through you – you will really be able to feel and sense when you should handle a certain person or a certain type of situation with more of a touch of gentleness rather than with any kind of stern rebuke or condemnation. There is a time for tough love – but there are also times that just a gentle and loving touch is all that is really needed to properly handle a certain situation.

The Holy Spirit will guide you in all of this. Just realize that the quality of gentleness is one of the 9 fruits of the Spirit, and this is one of the fruits that He would really like to get worked into your personality, especially in being able to use it when dealing with and helping out others.

Parents especially need this fruit operating through them, as it is very easy to get out of balance with the way you are correcting your children. Sometimes more of a tough love approach is needed, but at other times more of a gentle approach will be better suited for the situation. If all your children ever hear from you are stern words of rebuke and criticism, and it is never properly balanced out with words and actions of love, kindness and gentleness – then after a certain period of time your children will start to pull away from you and they will then have no more desire in wanting to establish a good, solid, loving relationship with you. Not only will other people love and gravitate towards you more if you learn how to walk in this quality – but you will be at much more peace with yourself since you won't always have to be fighting and striving with others when trying to help them out.

Self Control: Last, but not certainly least, is the quality of self-control. This one is huge, and I mean huge! Once you start to enter into a true sanctification process with the Lord – expect the Holy Spirit to move in on you very early with this specific quality.

The reason for this is that we all have a certain amount of character flaws operating in our personalities. There are some bad and negative qualities that will have to go.

The Bible tells us that our spirits and our flesh will war against each other in this life. Our flesh wants immediate self-gratification at all costs and will stop at nothing to try and get it. Our spirits know that some of our fleshly desires are not right for us and as a result, there will be a tug of war between the two – and sometimes it will be a major tug of war. And the only thing that will be able to curb and control some of the desires of our flesh is the quality of self-control.

Since we all live in a very self-centered and materialistic type world today, many people have very poor impulse control. If they see something they immediately want, they will do anything they can to try and get it. They will not be denied until they get what they are going after. These people are obviously very weak in the quality of self-control. They are ruled by their own flesh rather than by the Holy Spirit. That is why the Bible tells us that if we can learn how to really walk in the Holy Spirit, then we will not fulfill the lusts of our flesh.

Due to our fallen and sinful natures, all of us are weak to some degree in the quality of self-control. This is why God the Father made sure to have this fruit listed as one of the 9 fruits of His Holy Spirit. We all need God's self-control operating in our lives and in our personalities if we are going to have any hope in getting cleaned up and properly sanctified to the degree that He would like to get us to in this life.

If you do not have God's self-control operating through you – you will have very little victory over such things as bad tempers, judgmental and critical spirits, an unforgiving spirit, and vices such as smoking, the abuse of alcohol, drugs, gambling and food addiction.

Once the Holy Spirit starts this sanctification process with you – be prepared for some major battles and tugs of wars with Him once He starts coming after some of the negative qualities operating in your personality.