Thursday, June 18, 2020
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law… 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… Galatians 5:22-23
When we become one of God’s children,
we immediately have the benefit of the Holy Spirit in our lives. One evidence
of the Holy Spirit in our lives, is the fruit we bear – spiritual fruit that we
refer to as the fruit of the spirit. Yesterday we looked at the fruits of love, joy, and peace. Today we will look at patience, kindness, and goodness.
Patience
Surely there can be no greater
example of patience than that of God’s patience with us, His unrepentant,
disobedient children. We wander away and
even turn our backs on Him sometimes but still He waits, with open arms, ready
for us when we come running back to Him.
In his book A Gardner Looks at the Fruits of the Spirit, W.
Phillip Keller states that patience is the powerful capacity of selfless love
to suffer long under adversity. Being
patient is very hard. Sometimes it means
we have to let go of expectations – expectations we place on people and
expectations we place on God. We have to
let go of how and when we believe things should happen and accept that God’s
ways are not our ways. He knows what is
best for us and we have to trust in Him and His timing.
Kindness
Most of us have experienced someone
being kind to us at one time or another in our lifetime. We all want to be treated with kindness, but
when it comes to being nice to someone else; we have a hard time with it. We are humans and human nature is selfish and
sometimes rude and uncaring. But
kindness and mercy go hand in hand. You
cannot be merciful without being kind, and you cannot be kind without being
merciful. Kindness begins with being
caring, tenderhearted, and compassionate towards each other. We should be looking for ways to show
kindness in our everyday lives. Don’t
hesitate when you see an opportunity because it may be gone if you put it
off. Kindness should begin at home with
the people we are closest to and who mean the most to us but often it is harder
to show kindness there. We often display
our most unkind behavior towards the people we love the most.
But love your enemies,
and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be
great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful
and the evil.. Luke 6:35 God calls us to be kind to everyone – including strangers and not just
friends and family. Sometimes people
will not be grateful to you for your display of kindness or reciprocate it, but
the Bible tells us that our reward will be great:
Today,
when so much unkindness abounds, be intentional about showing kindness.
Goodness
Goodness is the outward evidence of
Christ in our hearts. It is good deeds
motivated by righteousness and a desire to do the right thing simply just for
the sake of doing the right thing. It is
a principle which one lives by. It is a
standard of living a life controlled by the Holy Spirit. It is the selfless desire to be a blessing to
those around you for no reward to oneself but only for the benefit of others. This
is a virtue that can only come as a result of the Holy Spirit inside us.
In the
same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good
works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. Matthew 5:16
