Being not Doing

Who are you is a much more important question than what do you do. We’re told that love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control are the evidence we’ll see in those filled with God’s Spirit. Notice this is not a list of grand accomplishments. It’s not a list of tasks to be completed, books to have read or written nor is it an inventory of disciplines to have mastered. It’s about who you are in your heart and is completely reflected in how you treat those around you.

The First Commandment

“Be Fruitful”: full of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control. These are the results of our truly understanding God’s perfect love for us and responding to that love by drawing close to Him.

Self Control

It’s great that with this fruit comes the ability to remove self not just control it. It is the demonstration of all of the fruit listed in the previous ten posts. Another description might be that it is the ability to recognize when we are stepping away from The Lord and making the correction by quickly turning back to Him.

Faithfulness

Full of faith, trusting God with all that we are and all that we have. Knowing that in the big picture, no matter what today may look like, somewhere down the road we will understand and appreciate all that we experienced today.

Gentleness

Mildness might be another way of saying gentleness. This sometimes gets confused with avoidance or being the kind of person that stays away from difficulty. That’s not what this fruit is about. The confidence that comes from the Spirit within us allows us to confront the things that need to be addressed but we are able to do that with gentleness, being considerate of others.

Goodness

I like to think the explanation of this fruit is like the foods we say are full of goodness, in other words, of great benefit. People filled with the Spirit and thus the fruit of goodness, are beneficial to those around them.

Kindness

We demonstrate kindness when we put aside the things that are important to us at the moment and give our focus to what is important to another.

Patience

Patience is a huge indicator of God’s Spirit working in us. I can’t think of an instance when impatience isn’t self-centered. We want things our way; on our schedule and when it doesn’t go that way we get mad about it and make others feel inferior to us by losing our patience.

Peace

“a: a state of tranquility b: a state of security or order c: freedom from disquieting or oppressive thoughts or emotions d: harmony in personal relations.” Sounds like The Spirit to me!

Joy

Being filled with Joy in the face of difficulty is an incredible testimony to the world. The ability to completely put our trust in God when things aren’t looking good is possible through God’s Spirit in us. Everyone finds happiness when life is going well, when we think we know what tomorrow brings and when we feel like we’re in control. But if that is the source of our happiness it will be as fading as our circumstances. The ability to know God’s perspective on whatever is going on with us brings true joy.