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“Look, the LORD your God has set the land before you; go up and possess it, as the LORD God of your fathers has spoken to you; do not fear or be discouraged..” Deuteronomy 1:21 (NKJV)
Warm Fuzzies
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In This Issue
><>Why Hide From The Lord? by The Bossy Church Lady ><> Letting Go of Your Past by Michael Bradley
><> Resources
Why Hide From The Lord?
In John 17:20-25, Jesus prayed that we would be as close to Him as He is with our Heavenly Father. If we want to have an intimate relationship that makes us one with Him, if we want to be as close to Him as Jesus is, then we have to allow Him see and know everything within us.
Well—that’s a given for all believers, right? Well, no. Some of us, old and young, mature and immature in Christ, try to hide certain parts of ourselves from God—especially the sinful or not so good parts.
“Well, why would anyone bother to hide anything from God?” you may be asking.
Simply put, it’s because of our fear of rejection. We tend to think that our maker will just turn around and walk away from us if we’re not perfect.
We do the same thing when we start dating someone; we put our very best foot forward in the beginning of the relationship. We hide the fact that we pig out at the dinner table so much that we have to unbutton the top button of our pants to accommodate our bloated bellies—at least until the third date or so.
If the person we just started dating shows up at our house unexpectedly, we wouldn’t dare answer the door in our favorite pair of flannel pajamas that are so old and faded that it’s just a matter of time before they fall apart in the washing machine. No. We scramble to put on something presentable and brush our hair. What if he or she never came back or called us again after seeing what we really look like while in the comfort of our own homes?
But when we expect God to act like we humans do, when we expect Him to only love us as much as our expectations warrant, we’re telling Him that we doubt His love for us when really, God’s love for us knows no bounds. We’re like a mirror: The love that we allow ourselves to feel from God is always reflected outward towards other people.
We can’t be double minded. We can’t say with our mouths that we believe Him and then harbor mistrust for Him and His intentions toward us in our hearts. In order to make this relationship between God and us work, we have to open ourselves up to Him; we have to be willing to let Him know us intimately.
Listen: We humans can barely remember what we had for lunch three days ago, and we certainly don’t have the ability to make the heavens and the earth like God can. God knows all of our days—past present and future; He knows every step we’ll take in our lives; He knows how many hairs we have on our heads; He knows every thought we’ll ever have. And despite knowing all of that, He lovingly made each one of us inside our mother’s wombs and watches over us every second of every day, always making sure that we have what we need.
Which one of us would die for someone who will only reject us in the end? None of us. I certainly wouldn’t. But God did the unthinkable for everyone. His love for us knows no limits.
So whenever the enemy creeps into your heart and tries to strangle your relationship with the Lord by planting doubts about God’s love for you because you’re not perfect, or because you made a mistake of some sort, remind yourself that God loves you warts and all: He always has and He always will.
Having the confidence that God loves you no matter what will shave a lot of time off your journey into the Promised Land, the land that every believer desires to enter into, which is the state of surety that you are one with the Lord, having the full confidence that you will be with Him forevermore after you die.
Traveling there will be a lot easier too.
In order to get to the Promised Land though, you have to let go of your fear of rejection which will only put up a brick wall between you and God; it will hinder that intimate relationship between God and yourself that you, and God desires.
You can use this in any publication as long as you leave the following byline intact: Copyright 2008 Sandra Purdue, A.K.A. The Bossy Church Lady. Want to read more? Go to:
http://www.thebossychurchlady.net where you'll find even more resources for new Christians.
Guest Article
Letting Go of Your Past
Once you become saved and born again, the Bible tells us that we have now become new creations in Jesus Christ. Our slates have now been wiped fully clean and we have now been given a brand new start in this life if we are willing to properly work with the Lord and allow Him to raise us up in His knowledge, grace and power.
As I have stated numerous times in my other articles, the next step after you have been saved is to fully surrender your entire life into the hands of God the Father so that He is free to lead you into His perfect plan and destiny for your life. You must now be willing to make Jesus Lord over your life, not just your Savior. You must now become both saved and surrendered if you want to get anywhere in your new life with the Lord.
Making Jesus Lord over your life means that you are now willing turn the reigns of your life over to Him and He will now lead your life into the specific directions He will want it to go in. You are now no longer your own. You have been bought back by God the Father at the price of His Son's shed blood. You now belong to God and Jesus and no one else in this life - which includes yourself, your family, and the best of your friends!
Once you enter into this full surrender with the Lord, one of the first things God may do with many of you is to take you back in your past so He can begin to clean up any wreckage that may have occurred. Before you can really move forward into the divine call and destiny that God has in store for you in this life, you first may have to deal with some specific things that may have occurred in your past.
Too many Christians are bound up in their past - as a result, they cannot fully live in their present.
Before you can really start to move forward in your divine walk, call and destiny with the Lord - you will first have to learn how to let your past fully go. Jesus Christ and the apostle Paul make two very profound and life-altering statements in the two verses I will give you in this article. For many, these two specific verses will determine whether or not you will be able to fully succeed in your call for the Lord in this life.
As a result of the curse of Adam and Eve that is still in full operation on this earth, we are all forced having to be born into a fallen, corrupt and imperfect world. We are all stuck having to deal with the reality of pure evil in our lives through the activity of demonic spirits and bad and evil people who have chosen with their own free wills to live out this life on the dark side. As a result, every single one of us will get hurt to some degree and to some extent in this life. There is no getting around it. And for many, some of these hurts will end up being extreme and traumatic.
Every minute of every day someone is getting murdered, robbed, raped, abused or abducted. We literally can't go one day without some kind of this activity being reported on our local news channels.
Jesus Himself said that a certain amount of tribulation and persecution would come our way in this life. This is why the Bible tells us that we have to learn how to become good soldiers of Jesus Christ and learn how to put on and apply the armor of God for our lives.
We have all been born into a war zone as a result of the curse of Adam and Eve - and unless you learn how to walk in the power and anointing of God for your life - some of these torpedo shots may knock you right out of your call in the Lord, if not possibly knock you right out of this life for good through an actual early physical death.
All of us to some degree or another have issues from our past that have to be properly dealt with before we can really proceed to walk into the perfect plan of God for our lives. Some Christians are so bound up with some of the things that has happened to them in their past - that they literally cannot get off the couch to start living again, much less ever fully fly into their real calls and destinies for the Lord.
Many of God's eagles have had their wings totally broken and decimated with some of the torpedo shots they have taken. Many of them are living on anti-depressants and pain killers because they can no longer handle the stress, pain and heartache of this life.
Before an eagle of God can really start to fly into the heights that God has in store for him or her in this life - that eagle has got to break off any chains that may be holding him or her back. These chains are keeping God's eagles grounded. And for many of God's eagles - some of these chains are things they are still holding onto from their past.
Jesus has said that He has come to set the captives free - and one of the areas that we all have to be set free from is some of our wrong thinking that may have arisen out of some of the bad things that may have occurred in our past.
As you will see in the two verses I will list below, Jesus and the apostle Paul are telling us that we have to learn how to let go of our past. Jesus says that anyone who is trying to move forward in his walk and call for God the Father - but keeps looking back - is not fit for the kingdom of God.
Paul says that the one thing he makes sure to do in his walk with the Lord is to forget those things which are now behind him and press forward into those things which now lie ahead of him. Once you put these two verses together, one right next to the other, you get perfect revelation from the Lord on this issue.
Bottom line - you have to learn how to let go of your past before you can start to proceed full steam ahead in your walk and call for the Lord. If you don't learn how to let your past fully go - you will stay stuck and grounded right where you are at and you will never fully accomplish everything that God would've had in store for you in this life.
And that will be an eternal regret that you will carry with you once you enter into heaven and the Lord shows you what more you could have accomplished for Him had you allowed Him to unchain you from your hurtful past. The choice is yours.
You can either choose to stay fully bound up in your past, continue to throw pity parties and blame everyone and everything for your miseries - or you can choose to rise up and make a brand new fresh start with the Lord by choosing to fully surrender your entire life into His hands - and then work with Him to get your past fully cleaned up so that you can fully start to live in the present again and fly into the call and destiny that He has already planned out for you before you were even born into this world.
For many of you who are severely bound up with things that may have occurred in your past - realize that God will give you an ample and reasonable amount of time to get your past cleaned up.
Many of you will need an inner healing from the Lord on certain issues. Though the two verses I will list below state that God wants you to let go of your past so that you can fully fly into the present and future with what He has in store for you - God will not expect some of you to make this kind of quantum leap overnight - especially if some of your past hurts have been extreme and traumatic.
One of the things I have found out in my own personal journey with the Lord is what happens after you initially enter into this full surrender with Him where you now turn the reigns of your life over to Him for His direction and handling. What God will do with you is take you back in your memory lane and bring back up to your remembrance many things that have occurred in your past.
The reason He will do this is so that you can learn from your past. He will show you where He was at and where He was not at on certain things. He will show you some of the good things you did and some of the bad things you did so that you can learn from those past mistakes and not repeat them in the future.
He will show you how He has been behind the scenes the entire time and how He eventually ended up working out some of the bad things for His and your own good with the way some of these things ended up working out.
He will show you the extreme consequences of not fully following Him in this life, and that some of the bad things that may have happened to you were as a result of you making your own decisions without consulting Him first - not being aware of the dangers that were around that corner you were getting ready to turn into.
When God does begin to do this kind of inner work with you - go with Him on it. Let Him show you the truth on many of the matters of your past. If you do, then His truth will start to work to help set you free - no matter how bad some of the things may have been in your past.
God can fully heal you and break off any past chain if you are willing to believe that He can do it for you.
Some of God's people are bound up with false chains of guilt as a result of some of the sexual molestations that may have occurred in their dysfunctional families. God can fully break these types of chains off of you - no matter how bad or how severe you think they may be.
The Holy Spirit is the Master Surgeon. He is the One that will be getting down deep into where these hurts and pains are located. If you are willing to work and cooperate with Him during this inner healing process, He will be able to cut out and completely take away most, if not all of the hurt, pain and trauma associated with some of these painful events.
I will end this article with some of the specific areas the Lord will target once you open up to Him to get your past cleaned up so that you can start to fully live in your present again.
But here is the point you will really need to grab a hold of off the wording of these two Scripture verses. God will take you back in your past for a reasonable length of time so that you can directly deal with certain issues and problem areas He will want to target. But after that time and season has past - you will then need to let your past fully go and concentrate and focus on the present and future as to where God will now be taking you.
There will simply come a day and time that you will have to let your past and all of the hurts from your past completely go. If you don't - you will stay stuck, grounded and paralyzed in your walk with the Lord. You will never able to fly off the edge of that cliff into the freedom and adventure that God has in store for you in this life unless you learn to let your past fully go.
This principle is a basic 101 principle that each and every single Christian has got to get worked into their mindsets. This basic principle could be one of the major determining factors as to whether or not you ever fly off that cliff into the call and plan that God has set up for you to follow in this life. Many of God's eagles never learn to fly with the wings that He has given them because they could not get unbound from the chains of their hurtful past.
As a result, many of God's eagles will lose their one and only chance to make their mark in this world in the call and destiny that He already has in store for them. I believe that is why the Bible says that many are called, but few are chosen. Many of God's people are being called to come up into His higher calling for their lives - but many of them are not being chosen because they simply could not let go of their past.
The choice to learn how to let your past go so you can start to fully live in your present again is an individual choice for each believer. Not even God Himself will override your free will in this area. All God can do is give you the knowledge from His Word that this is what He really wants from you - with all of it being for your own good. And then God will take you back in your past for a reasonable amount of time so that you can get all of your loose ends tied up.
But after that time is up, God will then expect you to make a very important decision for your life. Will you now let your past fully go so that you can fly into the call, destiny and perfect plan that He now has set up for you - or will you choose to stay stuck and grounded, wailing in the misery of your past?
Each Christian will have to make this choice for themselves. This is why the Bible says that we are transformed by the renewing of our minds. You have to learn how to develop right thinking in your thought process with how you think about and view things. And one of the first basic things you will need to learn to think right about is this principle of learning how to fully let go of your past.
Learn how to let go of your past with the help of the Holy Spirit - and then you can step from the dugout out onto the real playing field where the real action is at with the Lord!
Now I'll go to the two Scripture verses that will give us this powerful and life-changing revelation.
The Scripture Verses
1. This first verse is coming directly from Jesus Himself. Here is what He has to say about this basic principle:
But Jesus said to him, "No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God." (Luke 9:62)
Notice Jesus says that "no one" who keeps looking back on his past is fit for His kingdom. The words "no one" is an all-inclusive word. It means all of us - no exceptions.
In other words, Jesus is wanting all of us to get a grip on this principle and get it properly worked into our mindsets so we can all plow straight ahead into the calls and divine destinies that He has in store for us in this life.
2. The second verse is coming from the apostle Paul. Paul really puts this principle in proper perspective in relation to the big picture with what we are all involved in with the Lord. Here is how he puts it:
"Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead. I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:12)
Notice Paul starts out the second part of this verse with the words "but one thing I do." And from there he goes into the principle of not looking at what is behind him - but looking and reaching forward for those things which now lie ahead of him. The words "but one thing I do" is being put in the context of something that he is really making sure that he does on a regular and consistent basis.
This particular mental quality is one that you will have to stay on top of and not let get away from you. It's very easy to start falling back on all of the bad things that may have occurred in your past, and then use that as an excuse to start feeling sorry for yourself or to justify some of the irrational things you may be doing or thinking about doing. Just because your parents may have physically abused you does not give you the right to physically abuse your own children. Just because one of your dysfunctional parents may have been an alcoholic does not mean you have to become an
alcoholic yourself.
Then notice Paul ends this verse really putting everything in proper perspective when he says that what he is wanting to press forward on is the "upward call of God." God the Father has a specific plan and call for each person who will come to Him and fully surrender their entire lives into His hands. But you will never be able to press forward and fly into this upward and high calling unless you can first learn to let your past fully go.
Both of these verses perfectly and beautifully capture this basic 101 principle. This particular principle is, without any question, a major basic and fundamental mental principle that each and every Christian has to get worked into his or her mindset and way of thinking. For many, it will be the difference as to whether or not they fully accomplish everything that God has set out for them in His perfect plan for their lives.
Conclusion
All of us have a certain amount of baggage that we carry from our past. Some of us carry lighter loads than others. Some have learned how to let their past go because they have found out that it will seriously hamper their walk with the Lord and what He wants to do with their lives.
They have found that carrying around some of the baggage from their past and constantly dwelling on it will steal their joy and happiness in the Lord. They have found that it will distort and warp their thinking. These kinds of people have managed to break away from their past so they can fully live and operate in the call of God for their lives.
But many other people have not managed to break free from their past. They are still mired down in the hurts and injustices of their past and can't seem to get any victory over any of it - either in their thinking or in their emotions.
1. For those of you who are still stuck in your past to some degree - ask God to help you out with all of this. If you are willing to enter into a full surrender with Him, then He will start to move and help break you free from your hurtful past. Work with the Holy Spirit once He starts to show you the specific areas from your past that He will want to target.
Here are some specific areas from your past that you can expect the Holy Spirit to move in on very strongly if any of these are in your past and background.
Broken marriages
Sexual abuse of any kind
Physical abuse
Extreme verbal abuse
Being a victim of any kind of crime
Dysfunctional families
Death of a close loved one
Any type of financial disaster
All of these are serious torpedo shots that can knock many of us straight to the ground - especially if some of this has occurred when you were at a young age.
When dealing with people who have been seriously hurt or injured like what you see with victims of any kind of crime or sexual and/or physical abuse - the first thing God will ask you to do is to fully forgive the person who has wronged or injured you - no matter how bad and how vicious that wrong may have been.
We have another article in our site in the
Psychological
Issues page on dealing specifically with the hurts you may have suffered at the hands of someone else. The title of this article is "How to Handle Negative Feelings When Wronged by Someone
Else"
Before God can move to supernaturally heal you from the pain, torment and wounds that were inflicted upon you in your past - you will first have to be willing to fully forgive this person and let that person go into the hands of God for His vengeance, justice and payback. God will be righting all of the wrongs ever done to you in this life when everything is all finally said and done. This is why you can let the worst of your enemies go into the hands of God.
If you are willing to truly forgive this person, then God will move in - and through the power of the Holy Spirit, heal up those wounds so that you can no longer feel them. God will not take away the actual memory of the event, but He can take away the actual pain, trauma and torment associated with the event so that you can get on with your life and not have to keep thinking and dwelling on it.
For those of you who have been severely affected over the death of a close loved one - we have another article in our site titled "A
Powerful Word for Those Who Have Lost Loved Ones" in the
Psychological
Issues section. In this article, a young couple who were faithfully serving God lost their daughter at a very young age. As a result of her early death, neither one of them could get over it, and it then started to hinder their walk with God and what He was wanting to do with their lives. They finally received a very liberating word from the Holy Spirit that finally set them free so they could start living in their present again.
For those of you who have been severely hurt and wounded in a broken marriage as a result of infidelity or abuse in the marriage - realize that God can fully heal your mind, your emotions and your heart on the inside so you can start to function once again in the real world and get on with what He has in store for you in your future.
Many broken marriages have occurred as a result of a person choosing to marry who they thought was best suited for them instead of asking God for His opinion on the matter. As a result of making some very poor choices on their own, many people have had to reap the disastrous consequences of their own lack of knowledge and wisdom in this area.
Next time, make sure you let God lead you to the mate of His choice - not your choice! You have no idea how some people can change for the worse in your future - but God can - and that is why you have to rely on His knowledge and wisdom as to who you should be marrying in this life.
For those who have been brought up in very dysfunctional families - realize that God, His Word and His truth can set you free from some of the warped and distorted thinking that may have occurred in your dysfunctional family. God can show you the errors of their thinking and the errors of their ways so that it does not contaminate you with what He wants to do with your life.
The Bible says that the truth will set you free. God will make sure to get the appropriate truths revealed to you so you can fully understand some of the dysfunctional behavior that was occurring in your family and help separate truth from error so that you do not fall victim to the same type of distorted and warped thinking in your own adult life.
2. When God wants us to learn how to let the past go, I believe He is targeting more of the bad things in our past - especially the things that will really play with our minds and our emotions where our hearts can start to harden up and our thinking can start to become distorted, warped and unhealthy.
We all have many good things from our past. We all have a certain amount of treasured memories that we will never forget. God wants us to keep these good memories intact. There is no harm in going back down memory lane from time to time with many of the good things that may have occurred in our past.
Our past is a part of who we are and who we have become in the Lord. Even some of the bad things in our past have been used by God to shape, mold and transform us into the person that He wants us to become in Him.
What I believe Jesus and Paul are trying to tell us in the above two verses is that we can't allow some of the bad things that may have happened in our past affect our thinking and affect our ability to want to live with full intensity for the Lord and His perfect will for our life.
You only get one chance in the eternal scheme of things to leave your mark in this world to some degree for the Lord. God has a specific plan, purpose, call and list of divine assignments He wants you to complete before you go home to be with Him for all of eternity. Don't let a few bad apples and a few bad events - no matter how bad they may have been - stop and prevent you from becoming everything that God is calling you to become in Him.
Jesus says in Revelation that those who are overcomers in this life will be the ones to rule the nations of the world with Him. You can overcome any of the bad people and any of the bad events from your past with the divine help of the Holy Spirit. God's supernatural help can pull you out of any of the bad and negative emotions that may be preventing you from entering into His perfect plan for your life.
But like Peter and his story of getting out of the boat to supernaturally walk on water - you will have to be willing to step out of the boat, grab a hold of God's hand, and work with the Holy Spirit to help get you cleaned up so that you can fully and finally let your past go. Once you are able to let your past fully go - then you will be ready to fly as a true eagle of God into the plan, purpose and call that He has set up for you to follow in this life.
The choice is yours. You can either choose to let the hurts, wounds and pains from your past continue to strangle and paralyze you - or you can choose to say enough is enough and give God a chance and a green light to free you from some of the bad things that may have occurred in your past. His power and His help is there for you if you are willing to take His hand and allow Him to bring you up out of it!
I'm always delighted to present each new resource that I find because it's my
hope that every one that I include in my newsletters will help you grow in Christ. If you know of any resources that you would like to share with the other readers, feel free to write to me and let me know about it so I can include it in the newsletters.
><> We Christians are supposed to "forgive and forget", but how can we do that when we've been severely wronged? How to Handle Negative Feelings When Wronged by Someone
Else explains the why's and how's of forgiving and forgetting so we can grow in Christ.
><>
A Christian Mother's Guide -
An inspirational book on life lessons on living, loving and working right from your home.
><> Babe in Christ? Seeking answers about God? The Bossy Church Lady's website is packed with inspirational articles, tools,
resources and scriptures that will answer your questions about Jesus.
http://www.thebossychurchlady.net
><> Get a f.r.e.e e-book that will take you by the hand and explain everything you need to know about the end times! If you're a
webmaster, snag the book and give it away to your visitors! The Bossy Church Lady's Take On The End Times
Until next time...
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The Bossy Church Lady 9400 Elm Ct. Denver, CO 80260
“Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” Psalm 139:23-24 (NIV)
Warm Fuzzies
Thank you to all of my subscribers, without you, the new Christian, this newsletter wouldn't exist. I would love to hear from you, but please do not
hit reply to contact me because I won't receive your response. If you need to contact me you can
email me at sandra @ thebossychurchlady.net (without the
spaces in the address).
I'd love to hear what you think! And, if you want to share something with the other readers in a future issue of this newsletter--such as a testimonial, or a poem, devotional,
a story that God has inspired you to write, or even
if you want to advertise your own site-- you
can send it to me at sandra @ thebossychurchlady.net (without the
spaces in the address).
Your privacy is important to me; therefore, I will not sell, rent, or give your name or
address to anyone. At any point, you can select the link at the bottom of every email to unsubscribe.
If your
e-mail program is blocking the pictures in this newsletter or if you would rather read this newsletter online, go to:
http://www.thebossychurchlady.net/backissues.html
(The current newsletter is always at the top of the pages.)
In This Issue
><>Search Me O God by The Bossy Church Lady ><> The Power of Love by Michael Bradley
><> Resources
Search Me O God
“Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” Psalm 139:23-24 (NIV) I love that verse. It sings to me and soothes my soul every time I read it.
As a Christian, I am constantly striving to have a deeper, more intimate relationship with God. The last thing I want is to have my relationship with my maker hindered in any way—especially by anything offensive inside of me. Nevertheless, I, like every other human being out there, do things that rub God the wrong way. However unintentional those transgressions may be, they are still there.
And, being only human, I try to become independent from God by holding small parts of my life or pieces of myself away from Him. While I’m trying to fix my life or fix myself by myself, without realizing it, I’m pushing God back; I’m telling Him that I think I can take care of everything myself. However by doing so, I’m being self-reliant; not God-reliant like I’m supposed to be. All of us do it at one time or another, actually, but that kind of thinking is dangerous because as we’re
traveling along the road to eternity, we inevitably trip over something that was unseen by us.
While we’re tripping and stumbling up the road, we’re wondering why God isn’t close to us anymore. We’re questioning Him as to the reason why He won’t answer us. Soon enough, we become disillusioned with God when really the problem lies within ourselves: We just don’t want to see it.
Bearing in mind that God sees the obstacles before us even though we can’t, when we
apply Psalm 139:23-24 to our own lives we'll avoid stumbling over anything along the way
to the Promised Land. By giving everything to God and asking Him to search us through and through, to look deep inside our hearts, our minds, and our souls and test us and then lovingly expose any iniquity within us,
we're telling God that we trust Him to make any changes that need to be made within us.
We're telling Him that we trust Him to navigate the way to the Promised Land, the place that every believer dreams of entering into.
You can use this in any publication as long as you leave the following byline intact: Copyright 2008 Sandra Purdue, A.K.A. The Bossy Church Lady. Want to read more? Go to:
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Guest Article
The Power of Love
This article will serve as a follow up to our article titled "The
9 Fruits of the Holy Spirit" In that article, I gave you the verse from Galatians where the Lord is telling us that there are 9 specific fruits that He can transmit up into our personalities through His Holy Spirit. In this verse from Galatians, the very first quality that is listed as one of the 9 fruits of the Holy Spirit is the quality of love - and I don't think this was by accident!
As you will see in the Scripture verses I will list below, there is no doubt in my mind that the quality of love is the #1 quality that God would like to get worked into our souls and personalities. Even nonbelievers, atheists and agnostics can see the power of love and how it has the ability to change people and change lives when it is properly handled and walked out.
Hollywood has made tons of movies just on the power of love - especially the special love that can occur between a man and woman in a romantic relationship. Even hard, tough grown men can be brought to tears when watching a real well made movie made about the power of love.
The quality of love is truly universal - as it literally transcends peoples, nations and religions. Love is truly the universal language of this world and people from all different walks of life recognize it for what it truly is and understand the power that is in it.
Then when you read and study the Bible - you see the major emphasis God the Father is placing on it when He tells us that He wants us to love Him, to love ourselves and to love one another.
So if the quality of love is recognized by all peoples and all nations, then why is it that throughout the course of our human history there has been so many wars, so much hatred, so much crime and so much inhumanity done to our fellow man? If everyone knows what love is, then how could so many people throughout the course of our human history commit the evil and atrocious acts they have committed?
Even in our present day and age people still have not learned from the past - as there is just as much hatred and evil operating in this world today as there has ever been. The Bible even tells us that the love of many will grow cold in the latter days - which means things are going to actually go from bad to worst in the coming years.
If man really knows what love is - then why can't more people act, operate and walk in that love so they we can all live in peace and harmony with one another? Why do so many people have to rob, rape, kill, plunder and steal from one another?
No matter what one's religious beliefs and ideologies may be - there is simply no excuse for some of the horrible, barbaric acts of murder, assaults, abductions, robberies and rapes that we see on an everyday basis.
As Christians, we all know that part of the answer as to why men can't love one another in the way that God would really like from us is due to the fallen sin natures that we have all been born into this world with as a result of the curse of Adam and Eve. The Bible tells us that every single one of us has been born into this world in sin and inquity. This is why Jesus had to come to die for all of us - because we have all sinned and have fallen way short of the glory of our God.
However, even born-again believers have problems in being able to walk in love to the degree that God would really like in our everyday lives. We all know that God is expecting us to be able to walk in His love - but we still have problems in being able to love our God, our families, our friends and even ourselves to the degree and to the intensity that He would really like from all of us.
We read in the Bible about all of the verses that God wants us to walk very strongly in this quality - but we still seem to fall way short of being able to actually do it in our real lives.
If we all have the Holy Spirit living and operating in us - then why is it that we cannot seem to draw more of His love up into our personalities so that we can all walk with more of this quality operating in our lives?
I believe the answer lies in the last article I did under this section titled "The
9 Fruits of the Holy Spirit" Too many Christians are trying to walk in the quality of love operating out of their own strength, out of their own emotions and out of their own flesh. Granted, God the Father wants us to do the best we can to try and put this quality into the core of our personalities. But our best is not going to be good enough in this area to get the job done with the way God would really like.
The reason for this is that we have all been born with these fallen, imperfect and sinful natures. This means that we are not capable of walking in perfect love - no matter how hard we try in our own natural strength. So what is the answer if we are not capable of walking in perfect love in the way that our Lord would really like for us to be able to do?
To those believers who are really wanting to learn how to walk in the real love of God in their lives - there is only one way to be able to do this - and that is learning how to draw that love from the Holy Spirit.
And the only way that you can get the Holy Spirit to release His love into you as one of His 9 fruits is that you have to be willing to enter into a true sanctification process with the Lord where He can begin to start the process of transforming you into the express image of His Son Jesus Christ.
There is no other way! There are no other shortcuts that you can take to get this accomplished. It is only when the very love of God Himself starts to flow into your personality can you even begin to love God, love yourself and love other people to the degree and to the intensity that He would really like from you.
Once the Holy Spirit begins this
sanctification process in your life - your job will be to learn how to live, walk and operate in the qualities and attributes He will start to transmit into your personality. Once the Holy Spirit starts to transmit His quality of love into the core of your personality - your job will then be to learn how to walk in that love in your words and actions with others.
Actually, once the Holy Spirit starts to transmit and impart His love into you - it will become much easier for you to be able to love others in the way God wants you to be able to love them.
Once you start to feel God's love for His people - you won't be able to help yourself in feeling that same love for them since God's love will start to mesh with your own love. Once God's love starts to flow and mesh into what limited love you already have in your personality - then you will be able to start to really love other people in the way that God had initially intended for all of us to be able to do.
The missing ingredient in all of this is obviously the love of the Holy Spirit. It is only when the Holy Spirit starts to release His love into your personality as one of His 9 fruits can you truly begin to love your God, love yourself and love other people in the way God intended.
Trying to love others with what limited, imperfect love you may already have operating in you will never get the job done - either to your own satisfaction or to the satisfaction of God Himself. This is why Jesus has told us that without Him we can do nothing - especially in the area of being able to get properly sanctified in Him.
In this article, I will give you some of the best verses from Scripture on the quality of love, and why God the Father is placing such a strong emphasis that we learn how to walk in it in our personal relationship with Him, with ourselves and with the other people in our lives. God the Father is really raising the bar on this one specific quality as you will be able to see with the way that He has worded some of these verses. He is making some extreme and radical statements with what He is expecting from us with just this one quality.
When you first read what these verses are telling us to do in reference to this particular quality, you'll really be able to feel and sense your own shortcomings in this area. But again, realize this is where the Holy Spirit will be coming in big time. Just realize that God knows you cannot reach the level that He is really looking for - and that it will only be possible for you to reach this level only if the love of the Holy Spirit Himself is operating and flowing through you.
When you really study and meditate on the verses I will list below, you can sum all of them up in one simple statement. God is looking for you to be able to love in 6 different areas - all with the love of the Holy Spirit being available to you to help you out in each of these areas. God wants you to be able to fully love in all 6 of these realms. You are to learn how to:
Love God
Love yourself
Love your family
Love your friends
Love your neighbors
Love your enemies
You will notice that there are 6 specific areas that God will want you to really be able to love in. Bottom line - God will want you to love right across the board - from loving Him down to being able to love the worst of your enemies. The first 4 areas are much easier to learn how to do than the last two areas - especially the last one in being able to love your enemies and those who will try and hurt you in this life.
Loving most of your family and friends is easy and comes very natural for many of us because of the strong bonds that we have already established with them. But learning how to love some of your neighbors who you have no real special bond with or complete total strangers will be much harder for you to do - especially with the way that our world has become with so many more people keeping to themselves and being afraid to trust anyone.
However, this can be done with the help of the Holy Spirit. Once you start to feel the love of God Himself for some of these people - it will then become much easier for you to befriend some of these people and help them when the need may arise.
Again, Jesus is the perfect example of someone who was always helping total strangers. When you study what He did as He was walking on our earth, He was always stopping and talking to people, along with helping, teaching, saving, healing and delivering some of these people when the need would arise. He was always there to meet their needs - especially their spiritual needs.
Just as Jesus was able to walk in perfect love in His words and actions with other people - so too can we learn how to walk in that same godly love if we will allow the Holy Spirit to enter us into this sanctification process where God the Father can then begin to work all
9 fruits of His Holy Spirit up into the very cores of our personalities.
Though we will never be able to love in the perfect way that Jesus can since none of us will ever become the fourth person of the Holy Trinity - we can still try to do the best we can in our dealings and relationships with others.
Now I'll give you some of the best and most profound verses from the Bible on the quality of love, how powerful of a thing it really is, and exactly what God the Father is looking for from each one of us in this area. I'll break these Scripture verses down under their appropriate captions so you can fully grasp the revelation that the Lord is trying to give you in this area.
1. Love is the Greatest of All the Virtues
These first two verses really set the stage on how high God is really ranking the quality of love. As you will see with the way these two verses are worded, God the Father is placing the quality of love as #1 in the entire scheme of things.
The first verse lists three specific virtues, with faith being one of them. And then it ends stating that love is the greatest of these three virtues - including being greater than faith itself. Just stop and think for a minute what God is trying to tell us with just this one statement in that having the love of God operating and flowing through us is even better and greater than having higher levels of faith in Him.
Without faith in God - we cannot connect to Him. Without faith in God - there can be no miracles. Faith is our lifeline to the Lord. Without faith in God, we would be spiritually dead in the Lord. So why would God say the quality of love is even greater than our lifeline to Him - which is our faith?
I believe God is trying to tell us something very important with this statement - and the apostle Paul perfectly captures what that something is in the second verse I will list below. Paul makes one of the most classic statements ever made on the importance of love and how this quality fits into the big picture as far as God is concerned.
Paul says that you can have the greatest gift of tongues, the greatest gift of prophecy, the greatest understanding of all the mysteries and knowledge of God, have the highest levels of faith a human can have this side of heaven in God and do some of the greatest works for God - but if you do not have the love of God operating in your life, then all of this gifting, power, knowledge and works in the Lord will all be for nothing! I repeat - all for nothing!
It will have all been for naught when you have to end up giving a full account of yourself to the Lord on your day of judgment with Him. Bottom line - all of your accomplishments in the Lord, and all of the good fruit you may have produced for the Lord in this lifetime will mean absolutely nothing to Him if you did not walk all of this out in the spirit of love. This is why each and every Christian should make it their #1 goal and priority in this life to learn how to walk in the love of God for their lives.
Nothing will touch other people more deeply than having the love of God shining through you and your life. With the quality of love being an universal language that everyone can witness to - this quality, more than any other quality, will be the main one that can lead nonbelievers to salvation in the Lord and lead other believers into a deeper walk with God. I do not think it is a coincidence that the quality of love is listed as the very first fruit of the Holy Spirit in the verse from Galatians on the 9 fruits of the Holy Spirit.
Here are the first two profound verses that will show us how important the quality of love really is in the big picture.
"And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love." (1 Corinthians 13:13)
"Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, but have not love, I have become as sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing." (1 Corinthians 13:1)
This last verse from Paul perfectly puts the quality of love in proper perspective for all of our lives - in that everything we do for the Lord has to be done in love and with love.
2. Walk in Love
These next set of verses will tell us that we all have to learn how to "walk in love," how to "stir up love" and how to "love from a pure heart." They tell us that everything we do for God down here has to "be done with love."
These verses are all good, basic, foundational verses on the subject of love. Here they are:
"Therefore be followers of God as dear children.
And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us ... " (Ephesians 5:1)
"Now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart,
from a good conscience, and from sincere faith ... " (1 Timothy 1:5)
"Let all that you do be done with love."
(1 Corinthians 16:14)
"And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works,
not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together ... " (Hebrews 10:24)
"Finally, all of you be of one mind, having compassion for one another; love as brothers, be tenderhearted, be courteous;
not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling ... " (1 Peter 3:8)
Simply put - God wants everything that we do for Him to be done in love and with love. We simply have to learn how to walk with His love operating in our lives. There is no other way to live this life but walking it out in the love of God towards Him, towards ourselves and towards one another.
3. What Love Is
In my article on the 9
fruits of the Holy Spirit, I gave you the definition on love from some of the different Bible dictionaries and commentaries. For the sake of this article, I am going to go ahead and restate these definitions and then add several more verses from Scripture on what some of the qualities that are in true love from a pure heart.
Here are some of the definitions on love from some of the different Bible dictionaries and commentaries:
Unselfish, benevolent concern for another; brotherly concern; the object of brotherly concern or affection
The self-denying, self-sacrificing, Christ-like love which is the foundation of all other graces
Unselfish, loyal and benevolent concern for the well being of another
The high esteem which God has for His human children, and the high regard which they in turn should have for Him and other people
To love, to have affection for someone; to be a friend; the love of brothers for each other
Now here are two very good verses on what is found in true love:
"There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love." (1 John 4:18)
"Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails." (1 Corinthians 13:4-8)
This last verse from Paul is a real mouthful. True love will always be kind. True love will never flaunt itself for attention. True love will never be jealous of others and their accomplishments. True love will always be thinking of others and their welfare. True love will never rejoice or wallow in evil and sin.
The first verse from John states that there is no fear in love. Those who are trying to love you by trying to rule over you in fear are not truly loving you in the way God has intended. Those husbands who are physically and/or verbally abusing their wives in an effort to try and control them with fear are not operating in true love - contrary to what they may be thinking in their warped and debased minds.
They verbally and/or physically beat their wives down and then pick them up, and then tell them how much they love them so they can keep on perpetuating this cycle of violence and abuse. This is not true love - this is pure evil! The above verse from John says that perfect love will cast out all fear. If these men truly loved their wives, they would not be physically or verbally abusing and violating them in the ways that they have been. These kind of men are an abomination to the Lord - and what they call love - God calls pure evil.
So many people's idea of love for another is to try and manipulate other people for their own personal gain and profit. The last verse from Paul says that true love will never think of evil, much less ever do evil to another - and that it will not seek its own, which means it will never attempt to love another person for his or her own personal gain, profit or ego.
As a result of all the contamination that is in this fallen world, many people have lost the ability to truly love other people in the pure way that God has intended. This is why all Christians need the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit started in their lives - so God can begin to get them cleaned up in their thinking and in their actions towards others.
4. Loving God
Now that we know that love is the greatest of all the virtues and qualities, now that we know what love is and what love is not, and now that we know that God wants all of us to learn how to walk in His love - exactly where is the love to be aimed at?
The very first thing your love should be aimed at and centered on is direct to God Himself! God wants to establish a one-on-on, personal relationship with each one of us - and in this personal relationship God will want you to truly learn how to love Him from your heart and from your soul.
These next set of verses are all very intense in the way they are worded. God is using maximum intense wording in the way that He is expressing Himself on this issue.
The first two verses are telling us that God is wanting us to love Him with all of our hearts and with all of our souls. In other words - God is wanting you to love Him with maximum intensity from your emotions and with maximum intensity from your mind.
In the first verse I will show you, Jesus is telling everyone that the greatest of all the commandments of God the Father is that we learn how to love God with all of our mind, with all of our soul and with all of our heart. When Jesus is telling us that this is the greatest of all of God's commandments - then you know the extreme importance that the Lord is placing on just this one commandment.
The other verses are telling you that God is wanting you to press in and seek after Him with all of your heart and with all of your soul - which again means to seek after Him with all of your mind and with all of your emotions.
These two types of verses fit perfectly together with one another. If you truly love God with all of your heart and with all of your soul - then you will want to press in and seek after Him with that same kind of intensity from your heart and soul. Many Christians say they love God, but they really don't prove it to Him by pressing in and seeking after Him in their daily walk with Him. If you really are in love with God, then you will have a natural desire to want to seek after Him and include Him in every part of your life.
Our God is a God of maximum intensity. The Bible says that His love for us is like a consuming fire. In the same way, God would like to have that love returned back to Him with some level of intensity from our mind and our emotions. This can be done with the help of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit can begin to transmit and impart His love into your personality as one of His 9 fruits so that you can start to learn how to love God in the way and with the intensity that He would really like.
Again, all of these verses are major foundational verses on the love that God would like all of us to have for Him in our own personal relationship with Him.
"Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" Jesus said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all you heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment." (Matthew 22:36)
"And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all of your soul, that you may live." (Deuteronomy 30:6)
"And you will seek me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart." (Jeremiah 29:13)
"... and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul." (Deuteronomy 4:29)
"They entered into a covenant to seek the Lord God of their fathers with all their heart and with all their soul ..." (2 Chronicles 15:12)
" ... you have not been as My servant David, who kept My commandments and who followed Me with all His heart to do what was right in My eyes ..." (1 Kings 14:8)
In this last verse, God the Father is paying a big compliment to King David, who ended up being the greatest of all of the kings of Israel. He says that David followed after Him with all of his heart - which again is denoting someone who was following God with maximum intensity, maximum love and maximum loyalty.
If you are truly in love with God, then you will spend some type of regular quality time seeking after Him, His ways, His knowledge and His direct involvement in every aspect of your life. God will become your best friend, your best lover and your only true loving Father. This is why Jesus is referred to as the bridegroom and we as His bride. This analogy that God is giving us is showing us the kind of intense and passionate love that He wants all of us to have in our own personal relationship with Him.
5. Loving Yourself
In addition to loving God and others, God also wants us to learn how to love ourselves. This is one area where you can really get out of balance on, with many people either going to one extreme or the other.
In the very self-centered society in which now live in, many people have gone to the one extreme of being totally narcissistic - which means they are only concerned about their own personal well-being and their own agendas to the exclusion of anyone else. The world totally revolves around them and their own personal agendas, and they will do everything and anything they can to constantly try to get their own way on things. Most of these types of people are incapable of bonding or loving anyone else but themselves. We all know people who are like this.
Then you have the other extreme - where some people literally want to annihilate their own personalities. They start misinterpreting certain Scriptures verses on what it means to die to one's self - thinking that God wants them to completely forget about themselves and focus entirely on serving Him and others to the total exclusion of their own selves.
When Jesus tells us that we are to die to ourselves - I believe He is trying to tell us that we are to enter into a full surrender with Him so that He is totally free to guide our lives into the perfect will of God the Father.
When you enter into a true full surrender with the Lord of your entire life - you are putting to death all of your desires, all of your goals and all of your wants as to how you should live this life. You are now turning the reigns of your life over to God the Father so that He can start to fully lead you in the directions and paths that He will want you to take in this life.
Dying to one's self does not mean that you try and totally wipe out or annihilate your personality with you who are in God. God wants to build you up in His grace, power and knowledge. He doesn't want to try and destroy who you really are in Him. There are some sects in the Body that are still into self-mortification type practices such as self-flagellation.
It is just my own personal opinion that you do not have to engage in these types of extreme practices. You do not have to beat yourself into submission to God. All God is looking for is that you be willing to lay down your entire life for Him so that He can fully take over the reigns of your life and lead you into the perfect plan and destiny that He has already set up for you before you were even born into this life.
The real answer in learning how to be able to love yourself in the way that God would really like is probably right in the middle of these two extremes. The Holy Spirit will always be there to help keep you in balance with the way you are loving and treating yourself. Just realize that you have to stay on top of this part of the game - always making sure that you do not start to get too full of yourself and start sliding down to the one extreme of becoming too narcissistic and self-centered.
But you also have to make sure you don't start sliding down to the other extreme - where you start to begin to totally forget about yourself and start becoming a doormat for anyone and everyone who will want to try and use you for your goodness and generosity. Once you start to slide down into this type of extreme realm, other people will see it, and they will then try to start taking advantage of you in any way they can.
With all of the physical and verbal abuse that goes on behind closed doors in many marriages and families throughout the entire world - many people have had all of their healthy levels of self-confidence and self-esteem beat right out of them. They not only don't love themselves anymore - they don't even like themselves anymore.
After hearing how no good they are, how stupid they are, how unworthy they are, and how they will never amount to anything worthwhile in this life - pretty soon they start believing in the lies of their enemy. And once they start believing in those lies, they will then start to lose all sense of healthy self-worth as to who they really are in the Lord.
For those types of people who are living and operating in unacceptable low levels of self-confidence and self-esteem - the first thing God the Father will do with you once you enter into a full surrender with Him is to start to show you who you really are in Him and the real treasure and beauty that you really are in His eyes.
The Bible says that God the Father is no respecter of persons. What this means is that every single one of us is on an equal footing with God. What this means is that God loves each and everyone of us equally and unconditionally - which includes you!
The Holy Spirit will really help you out in this area if you are open to receiving His help. He will show you who you really are in Christ, that you are not a nobody - that you are a somebody, and that God cares for you and loves you just as much as He loves and cares for anyone else on this earth.
Really study and chew on the wording of the verses I will now list. The two key words in these verses are the words "as yourself."
In other words, God wants you to love yourself to the same degree and with the same intensity as you would love anyone else. God is not excluding you from this equation - He is including you. This is why He is specifically using the words "as yourself" in each one of these verses. Here they are:
"This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it:
'You shall love your neighbor AS YOURSELF.'
On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." (Matthew 22:38)
For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: "You shall love your neighbor AS YOURSELF."
(Galatians 5:14)
"You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall
love your neighbor AS YOURSELF: I am the Lord."
(Leviticus 19:18)
I personally believe that you really cannot begin to love other people in the way that God would really like if you can't learn to first love yourself. This is why God is specifically using the words to love others as you would love yourself - with all of these words being in the same sentence.
For those of you who are having major problems in this area due to coming from abusive and dysfunctional pasts - there is one Bible Teacher who really specializes in this part of the walk for believers. Her name is Joyce Meyer. Many of you already know who she is. For those of you who do not know her, it is just my own personal opinion that she is one of the best in dealing with the subject of being able to get inner healings from the Lord for those who have been severely abused in their past.
She uses herself as her own punching bag and tells about her own abusive past and how God brought her out of it and raised her up to be the woman He wanted her to become in Him. Her story is a perfect example of: if God did it for her, then He can do it for you, no matter how bad your past may be.
She has many good books and teaching cassete tapes on this subject. You can't go wrong with all of her teachings on this subject.
6. Loving Others
This will now lead us into the next section. God not only wants us to be able to love Him and love ourselves - but He now wants us to be able to love one another.
When God says that we are to love one another, that we are to love others, that we are to love our neighbor - I believe you can bottom-line these statements saying that God wants you to be able to love all of the members of your own family, your circle of personal friends, your neighbors that live around you, and then any total strangers you may ever run across. In other words, God wants you to be able to love everyone across the board of your life.
Remember, this is the second greatest commandment next to loving God Himself. This is how important this commandment is in His eyes. Can you imagine what would happen to this world if everyone would obey and really walk out these two specific commandments?
Here are six key verses all hammering this point home loud and clear.
"You shall not hate your brother in your heart ... You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself:
I am the Lord." (Leviticus 19:17)
"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."
(John 13:34)
"This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you."
(John 15:12)
"Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." (1 John 4:11)
"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love."
(1 John 4:7)
"We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death. Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him."
(1 John 3:14)
The last two verses from 1 John are making some maximum intense type statements. The first verse says that he who cannot love his brother does not truly know God. In other words, God will not know you if you can't learn how to love other people in your walk with Him.
The very last verse then takes it one extreme step further when it says that he who cannot love his brother abides in death - and that he is actually considered a murderer in the eyes of God, and as a murderer, he does not have eternal life abiding in him. This is about as intense of a warning direct from God Himself that you can receive on this topic.
I believe the main reason God is really laying down the gauntlet on the way that He has worded these last two verses is because if we can't learn how to love God and love other people in this life - then we will never be able to live in harmony and unity with others. And if we can't live in harmony and unity with other people down here on this earth, then God will not want us living up in His heaven causing strife and discord among His other children.
This is why it is so important that each and every Christian work very closely with the Holy Spirit in this
sanctification - so that we can all learn how to love God, love ourselves, and love all other people in the way that He would really like for us to be able to do.
With our own natural love not being enough to really grow in this area due to our fallen and imperfect natures - we all have to learn how to rely on and work with the Holy Spirit to get Him to start to release His love into us and through us so that we can begin to reach and touch others with that love.
7. Loving Your Enemies
Without any question, one of the hardest commands that the Lord has given us is that we have to learn how to love our enemies. And when He says our enemies - He is including the worst of our enemies.
How can you truly love someone who has raped you, who has severely abused you in your marriage, who has murdered someone in your family in cold-blood, or who has abducted and killed one of your children like what we see so much of in the local news with the pedophiles still being allowed to run rampant across this country?
It is one thing to be able to forgive this type of criminal, and then let him go into the hands of God for His vengeance, payback and justice. But it is quite another thing to be able take a leap into this realm and actually try and love this person in the way that God would really like for us to love him.
So how can this realistically be done with some of the really bad and evil people that are still walking on this earth? I only have two possible answers for you on this issue.
One - we simply have to rely on the love of the Holy Spirit to be transmitted and imparted into us as one of His 9 fruits. I don't think most of us have this kind of love to give to someone who is simply pure evil with some of the horrible and barbaric crimes we have seen committed in recent years. You simply are going to have to learn how to ride and flow with the love of the Holy Spirit to be able to love these types of evil people in the way that the Lord would really like.
For most of us, our own natural love is not going to take us very far in this realm. This is why it is so important for each and every Christian get this sanctification process started in their life - so God can begin to allow His Holy Spirit to start to release these
9 powerful fruits and qualities into the cores of our personalities.
Second - the only way you can even begin to try and do this with the worst of your enemies is that you have to attempt to see things from God's point of view and perspective. In other words, you are going to have to learn how to see your enemy through God's eyes and how God looks at him. And this is where it really gets deep and intense.
The most perfect example of someone truly loving His enemies in the way God the Father would really like is Jesus Christ Himself. After Jesus had been beat to a pulp before His actual crucifixion, and then nailed to a cross to die a slow and torturous death over a 6 hour period - Jesus makes one of the most mind-blowing statements ever made on being able to love and forgive your enemies.
Before He dies, Jesus speaks out and tells His Father to forgive all of those who had just got done crucifying Him to that cross because they really didn't know what they were doing!
Here is this most profound verse:
Then Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do." (Luke 23:34)
This statement and this action by Jesus is speaking volumes of revelation on this one issue. You can tell by the words and tone of Jesus' statement, that He was really feeling the love of God for these people - even as they watched and jeered as He was dying. In other words, Jesus was still loving all of these people even after they had just got done committing the worse crime that the world has even seen or will ever see again - crucifying the living Christ!
The Bible says that we are to think and act life Jesus. We now have the mind of Christ as born-again believers. This means we are to imitate Jesus in our words, in our thoughts, in our actions and in our deeds in our walk with the God the Father.
If you carefully study the actual wording in the above verse - you might be able to pick up some deeper revelation as to how Jesus could have made this kind of a statement after He had already been nailed to the cross and was experiencing the most extreme pain imaginable. The clue might be in the words
"... for they do not know what they do."
They obviously knew what they were doing by committing this horrible act against Jesus - but the angle Jesus might be seeing all of this from is that they really did not know what they were doing in the big-picture, eternal scheme of things. If they really knew that there was a God and a devil, that there really is a heaven and a hell, and that being cast into hell will be for all of eternity - some of them might have thought twice before engaging in such a horrible and evil act.
Some of God's prophets and seers who have been given actual visions of what hell is really like such as the testimony of Mary Baxter - all have come back with some of the same information. Some of them were allowed to talk with people who were actually down there. And many of them have said that if they had only known that there really was a hell and that their evil and wicked lifestyles would have led them down there - that they would have never done what they did to get themselves thrown down in there.
If you look at all of the evil and wicked people in our world who have committed acts of cold-blooded murder and who seem to have no real remorse for what they have done - they all know they will end up in jail if they get caught. Yet this still does not deter some of them from committing some of these evil and horrible acts.
But what they really don't know is if there really is a hell or not - and whether or not they will get dropped down into it the minute they die and cross over.
If they really knew what was waiting for them on the other side and how horrible of a place hell really is - some of them might have thought twice before committing some of their evil acts.
This might have been what Jesus was referring to when He made the above statement in that they really did not know what they were doing - for if they did, and they knew it would get them thrown down into hell for all of eternity, they may have thought twice before actually doing it.
I don't know if this kind of deeper revelation will be enough for some of you to really be able to love an evil and vicious criminal that may have killed or hurt one of your own. This is a very deep area - and you will have to be led by the Holy Spirit to really be able to love an enemy who has viciously wronged either you or a close loved one.
But if you are able to step outside of your box for just a minute and see how this evil criminal fits into the big picture, and that he will go straight to hell if he doesn't get saved and get his sins forgiven before he dies - then maybe you will be able to see him in the same light that Jesus was seeing those who were crucifying Him - and love him with the love of God, just as Jesus was doing while He was hanging on that cross to die for all of us.
Maybe the love of God can flow into you because you will then see that some of these evil people really do not know what they are really doing in the eternal scheme of things by choosing with their own free wills to commit some of their horrible and evil acts.
But nonetheless, God the Father would like all of us to be able to do this by the way that He has worded the following two Scripture verses. Here are two main verses, with the words coming directly from Jesus Himself that we learn how to be able to do this:
"But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you,
that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? ... Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect." (Matthew 5:44-48)
"But I say to you who hear: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use you.
To him who strikes you on the one cheek, offer the other also. And from him who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who asks of you. And from him who takes away your goods do not ask them back. And just as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise.
But if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive back, what credit is that to you? For even sinners lend to sinners to receive as much back. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return;
and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Highest. For He is kind to the unthankful and evil. Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful." (Luke 6:27-36)
Notice in the last part of the second verse it says that God Himself is kind and merciful to the unthankful and the evil. This may be why Jesus is telling us to love our enemies - because He and His Father love everyone - including all evil sinners.
Jesus ends the first verse above telling us that we should strive to be perfect like our Father in heaven is perfect. If God can love these evil and unthankful sinners, then He wants us to try and be able to do the same thing in our walk with Him.
8. Be Doers of the Word
Now that you know from the above Scripture verses that God is wanting you to love Him, love yourself and love everyone else across the board of your life - including any enemies you may have - now God wants you to be able to show that love in your actions to others.
There are a ton of verses in the Bible about how God wants you to act towards others. I'll leave you with a few good verses showing you the importance that we all learn how to be actual doers of the Word and not just hearers in reference to being able to show love to others in our actions and in our deeds.
"But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves." (James 1:22)
"But whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him? My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth." (1 John 3:17)
"Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the Law." (Romans 13:10)
"A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity." (Proverbs 17:17)
"By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." (1 John 3:16)
"Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)
All of these verses are perfectly showing us what true love can really do in our relations with others. Just as Jesus was willing to lay down His life for all of us in order that we be able to be brought back to Him and His Father - God and Jesus are wanting us to love others with that same kind of intensity and loyalty - even to the point of being willing to sacrifice our life to save someone else's life if that kind of need should ever arise.
Conclusion
When you really study and meditate on all of the above verses one right after the other - the message is coming through loud and clear from God the Father. God has purposely made the quality of love the #1 quality that all born-again believers have to seek to get worked into their mind, soul and personalities.
The quality of love operating in our lives is the only common thread that will bind all of us together with God and one another. Without the quality of love bonding and uniting all of us together - there can never be any true peace and harmony between men and countries.
The main reason there has been so much death, destruction, hate and wars in our past, and currently in our present, is because man has never learned how to really love one another in the way that God had initially intended. And the sad part about this whole saga is that the Bible tells us exactly how it is all going to end up. Man is not going to learn from his past - and thus wars, murders and evil acts will continue unabated until Jesus comes back to our earth in His second coming to set up His 1000 year Millennium Kingdom.
And until that final and glorious event happens, each Christian will have to do the best they can to walk in the calls and divine assignments that the Lord has given to each one of us. The Bible says that Jesus will be coming back for a bride that will be without spot or blemish. This will be a sanctified bride.
Let God the Father start the process of getting you cleaned up and sanctified to the degree that He would really like to be able to do with you in this life. If you do, then you will be ready for the
rapture if the rapture should occur in our lifetime. You will then be a part of the bride that will be without spot or blemish - fully ready for our Lord's return.
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An Update On The Recent Move...
Even though we have a lot more house to maintain, I love it.
I praise God every day for it too. Of course, we still have boxes here and there, some furniture hasn't found a permanent place yet, old furniture is being replaced with new, but it's all part of the process of moving.
Another thing that's amazing about this place is that, even after the house sat empty for nearly a year--according to the mail carrier--everything, the furnace, the hot water heater, and the swamp cooler work beautifully. With the new storm windows
throughout the house, the furnace works a little too well at times.
There were some things that had to be fixed immediately like the foundation on the downstairs addition. It was leaking. And there was a huge evergreen tree in front of the house
that was butted right up against the house. The needles were clogging the gutters and the tree itself housed a family of
raccoons and gave the critters access to our roof and the neighbor's roof, doing
minor damage to each--according
to the neighbor named Chris. And, since any amount of damage always leads to bigger
damage, the tree had to go. The deck on the back had dangerous railing and such steep stairs leading into the yard that we decided to rebuild it entirely to make it safe for everyone.
So, for the first week, I was amazed
by the fact that in the front of the house,
people were taking down the tree, in the back, more people were fixing the foundation.
Next to the cement guys was my husband (who can build better than the best) and his brother-in-law and nephew working on the deck. Everything turned out great and the tree and foundation work was done by skilled professionals at very reasonable prices.
Okay, this has nothing to do with moving, but I thought I'd add that my granddaughter, Dixie, is
doing great. She'll be seven months old on the 14th and she is growing like a
weed. It's neat to watch her learn new skills and explore the world around her. She is such a content
and sweet-natured baby that it doesn't take much to amuse her.
Yeah,
I've been blessed, praise God!
Check It Out!
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This link--which has been removed from back issues-- will expire on Wednesday,
October 15, 2008. As a courtesy, please do not distribute this in any manner as it’s a pre-release copy for subscribers of The Bossy Church Lady’s Newsletter For New Christians only. If you're having trouble accessing the file... too bad! Just kidding! Email me at: sandra @ thebossychurchlady.net or sandra_purdue @ hotmail.com (both
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If you're feeling up to it, I would love it if you dropped me a line at: sandra @ thebossychurchlady.net (without the spaces in the address) to tell me what you think about it. Believe it or not, brutal honesty
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Guest Article
The 9 Fruits of the Holy Spirit
As you will see in the Scripture verse I will give you in this article - there is one very special incredible verse that will tell you that God the Father wants to transmit and impart 9 specific fruits of the Holy Spirit up into our personalities.
The first three articles that we have listed in our
sanctification section all set the stage as to what God is looking to do with each one of us. God wants all of us to enter into a sanctification process with Him so that He can begin the process of molding, shaping and transforming us into the express image of His Son Jesus Christ. He wants to make us into a better and more holy people. He wants to transform us by the renewing of our minds. He wants to put right thinking into our thought process.
In the first article we have listed under this section titled "Sanctification," I gave you the specific verses from Scripture that showed you that it is by the power of the Holy Spirit that this sanctification process is done with you in this life. However, you will not be a passive robot in all of this. You have to be willing to work in cooperation with the Holy Spirit once He begins to start this process within you.
Your job will be to get into the Word to find out exactly what it is God is going to want to change about you. You will need to find out exactly what qualities God will want you to try and "put on" into your personality and what qualities He will want you to try and "put away."
This article will be the first of a series of articles giving you all of the appropriate Scripture verses showing you exactly which qualities and attributes God will want to get worked into your personality and which qualities He will want to pull out of you.
And there is no better place to start this series of articles than with the 9 fruits of the Holy Spirit. If you want to start off by keying on some of the more positive qualities that God would really like to get worked into your personality - really study and meditate on these specific 9 qualities.
When God the Father purposely isolates and spells out 9 specific qualities that will be coming direct from His Holy Spirit - He is really letting you know the extreme importance of these 9 specific fruits.
These 9 fruits are major fruits and qualities that are coming direct from God Himself - and every Christian should do the best they can to work with the Holy Spirit in getting all 9 of these fruits worked into his or her personality.
I'll first start off by bullet pointing each of these 9 specific fruits so that you can have all nine of them isolated at the top of this article. I will then give you the Scripture verse where these 9 fruits are coming from, and then do a brief commentary on each one of these fruits so you can fully understand what each one of these fruits are all about and how they can dramatically change the quality of your life and your state of well-being if you are willing to allow the Holy Spirit to start to work all 9 of these fruits into your mind, soul and personality.
Here are the 9 fruits of the Holy Spirit listed one right after the other in a bullet point format:
Love
Joy
Peace
Longsuffering
Kindness
Goodness
Faithfulness
Gentleness
Self-control
Now here is the specific verse from Scripture where these 9 fruits are being given to us by the Lord:
"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control." (Galatians 5:22)
Before I get into the appropriate commentary on each of these nine fruits, note the following:
The word "Spirit" is with a capital "S" - which means these 9 fruits are
coming directly from the Holy Spirit - not from us.
What this means is that God's love, God's peace, God's joy and God's goodness
can start to be transmitted up into our personality. These are His attributes
and personality qualities that will start to flow and mesh into the core of
our personality.
Think about the ramifications of this - that God the Father Himself is
allowing us to share in a part of His divine nature by allowing His Holy
Spirit to transmit and impart these nine divine qualities right up into our
soul and personality!
This is why God the Father is specifically telling us in
this verse that these 9 fruits are coming directly from His Holy Spirit - so
that we can fully appreciate the magnitude of such an experience.
Jesus has
already told us that He is the vine and we are the branches. The branches draw
their life from the vine - not vice versa. Just as the branch draws its life
from the vine, so too must we draw our life directly from Jesus. Jesus will
release His life into us through the Holy Spirit in the exact same way that
the vine will release the life of the tree into the branches.
In one short,
but incredible powerful Scripture verse, God the Father is giving all of us an
incredible revelation on what can go on behind the scenes in the spiritual
realm for those who are willing to work with Him in this sanctification
process.
Now I'll go on to describe what each one of these nine fruits are all
about and give you definitions from some of the different Bible dictionaries
and commentaries, thereby making it easier for you to work with the Holy
Spirit once He starts to move in on you to try and impart some of these divine
qualities and attributes into the core of your personality.
1. Love
If I had
to rank all of the above fruits in their order of possible importance, the
quality of love would have to be #1. And this is why it may have been listed
as #1 fruit in the above Scripture verse.
Due to the extreme importance of
just this one quality, I'm going to do another article on this quality and
title it "The Power
of Love." This article will also be listed in the
Sanctification Section of our site. There are some very powerful and profound
verses from the Bible on just this one quality alone and it needs to have its
own article to do it proper justice.
Here are some of the different
definitions on what love is from the different Bible dictionaries and
commentaries:
Unselfish, benevolent concern for another; brotherly concern; the object of
brotherly concern or affection
The self-denying, self-sacrificing, Christ-like love which is the foundation
of all other graces
Unselfish, loyal and benevolent concern for the well being of another
The high esteem which God has for His human children and the high regard which
they, in turn, should have for Him and other people
To love, to have affection for someone; to like; to be a friend; the love of
brothers for each other
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.
However, our abilities as fallen humans to love one
another is 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 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. More on this in
the next article.
2. Joy
In the rough and tough world we live in with all of
the crime, disorder and bad things that can happen to anyone of us at anytime
- many Christians have lost a lot of their joy in the Lord as a result of some
of the beatings they have taken in this life.
I remember I had a bank teller
tell me one time that she very seldom sees people smiling anymore when they
come in and do business with her. She says no one seems to be happy anymore
and everyone seems to be carrying around the weight of the world on their
shoulders.
Again, with the imperfections of our own fallen nature, and then
you combine that with how people react differently to adversity - some
Christians have literally had most, if not all of their joy in the Lord,
knocked right out of them.
This is why the above verse from Galatians is so
powerful and so needed by every single Christian today. In this verse, God is
telling us that He can transmit some of His godly and divine qualities right
up into the middle of us like filling up a new car with its first tank of
gasoline. Many of God's people need a fresh infusion of His divine qualities
due to the leaks that have occurred as a result of some of the beatings His
people have taken during the course of their lives.
And 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.
And one of
the things that God can fully restore in you is your joy in Him. And not only
can the Lord fully restore what joy you used to have in Him, but He can also
increase it to a much greater degree and intensity due to the wording in the
above verse - with the quality of joy being one of the 9 specific fruits of
His Holy Spirit!
Here are some of the different definitions of what real joy
is all about:
Great delight; gladness of heart
The happy state that
results from knowing and serving God
That deep, abiding,
inner rejoicing in the Lord
To rejoice, to be
glad
Happy, joyful,
cheerful, rejoicing, festive
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
your system, but to keep it running through you on a regular and consistent
basis.
The Holy Spirit will do this for you if you are open to receiving this
divine infusion from Him and are willing to work with Him to keep it properly
flowing through you on a regular basis.
3. 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.
Realize that the
Holy Spirit has His peace to give to you and that He can give it to you in
great abundance.
I have found that once His peace starts to flow up into your
mind, soul and personality, 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.
Here is
how the quality of peace is described in some of the different Bible
dictionaries and commentaries:
The presence and experience of right
relationships
The tranquility of soul
Sense of well-being and fulfillment that
comes from God and is dependent on His presence
The inner tranquility and
poise of the Christian whose trust is in God through Christ
Tranquility, rest,
harmony, the absence of agitation or discord
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 come your way.
4. Longsuffering
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 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.
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 soul. 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 won't lose
your patience like you used to do.
Here are the different definitions for the
word longsuffering:
Forbearance, patience
Patient endurance and steadfastness
under provocation
Forbearance under ill-will, with no thought of retaliation
Patience, endurance, steadfastness and forbearance
Forbearance under suffering
and endurance in the face of adversity
Ability to endure persecution and
ill-treatment
With the way all of these definitions are reading, you can
really see why we all need the patience and longsuffering of the Holy Spirit
to start operating in our souls and personalities - especially when we are
forced to have to face any kind of adversity. Sometimes it will be the
patience and longsuffering of the Holy Spirit that will be the only thing that
will give you the ability to last the entire length of a storm cloud or trial.
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.
5. 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 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 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 can't 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 operate and flow through you to touch others,
many of the other fruits of the Holy Spirit will start to follow suit in
domino fashion.
Here are some of the different definitions of what real
kindness is all about:
Quality or state of being kind
The steadfast love that
maintains relationships through gracious aid in times of need
Goodness of
heart, serviceable, good, gracious, pleasant
Love for mankind, hospitality,
acts of kindness, readiness to help, human friendship, benevolence, taking
thought of others
Goodness in action, sweetness of disposition, gentleness in
dealing with others, affability
The ability to act for the welfare of those
taxing your patience
As you can see from some of these different definitions,
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 to treat others with
much more kindness and respect in your daily dealings and affairs with them.
6. 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 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 we are to 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
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
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 - 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.
Now here are some of the
different definitions of what this quality is all about:
Beneficence, ready to
do good, love in action
Kindness in actual manifestation, virtue equipped for
action, a bountiful propensity both to will and to do what is good, intrinsic
goodness producing a generosity and a Godlike state or being
The word
beneficence means the fact or quality of being kind or doing good
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 doesn't
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 his own personal
gain because he is 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.
7. Faithfulness
In the times we live in with half of all marriages still
ending up in divorce and with many people getting backstabbed 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 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 dads 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 others.
Now here are what
some of the different Bible dictionaries and commentaries have to say about
this particular quality:
Fidelity which makes one true to his promise and
faithful to his task
Steadfast, dedicated, dependable and worthy of trust
Steadfast, unchanging and thoroughly grounded in relation to the other
Dependability, loyalty and stability
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 - I'm 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 keep us loyal to God, family and friends.
8. 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 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'll 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 really 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 have no more interest
or desire in wanting to establish a good, solid, loving and deep personal
relationship with you.
Now here are some of the different definitions on the
quality of gentleness:
Mildness combined with tenderness
Gracious, kindly disposition, controlled strength
A disposition that is even-tempered,
tranquil, balanced in spirit, unpretentious and that has passions under
control
A character that is equitable, reasonable, forbearing, moderate, fair
and considerate
Power and strength under control
Willing to pardon injuries,
correct faults. One who rules his spirit well
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.
9. 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 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 don't 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 and the abuse of alcohol.
Once
the Holy Spirit starts this
sanctification process with you - be prepared for
some major battles and tug of wars with Him once He starts coming after some
of the negative qualities operating in your personality.
But if you are
willing to yield to Him and allow Him to start to work all 9 of these fruits
into your personality - then you will find yourself starting to grow in ways
and in areas that you never thought were possible in this life. His
supernatural power in this area will blow you away once you see how far He can
really take you to become the person that God would like you to become in Him
in this lifetime.
Here are some of the definitions of what the quality of
self-control is all about:
Temperance, rational restraint of natural impulses
Sober, temperate, calm and dispassionate approach to life, having mastered
personal desires and passions
Calls for a self-disciplined life following
Christ's example of being in the world but not of the world
Restraint or
discipline exercised over one's behavior
The above definitions perfectly
describe what God is looking for once He starts to work and transmit this
quality up into our personalities. This specific quality is one of the major
keys in being able to get any kind of victory over some of the lusts and
desires of our flesh.
Conclusion
All of the above definitions on each one of
the 9 fruits of the Holy Spirit give you a perfect description of what each
one of them are all about, and why God the Father really wants to work each
one of these 9 fruits into your personality.
As you can see when reviewing
each one of them, they are all very powerful - and they not only have the
ability to help change, transform and sanctify you - but they also have the
ability to touch all of those around you.
Nothing will draw nonbelievers and
believers alike to the Lord than a truly sanctified saint in the Lord who is
walking and operating in all 9 fruits of the Holy Spirit. If you are willing
to allow the Holy Spirit to work and transmit all 9 of these fruits up into
your personality to some appreciable degree in this life - you will become a
light that will literally radiate the presence of God Himself through your
soul and personality.
You have no idea how many people you will be able to
save, touch, witness to and help disciple if you have these fruits operating
through you. These fruits will give you a credibility with God and with other
people that no degree or title can give you in this life. This sanctification
process is the ultimate and highest aim and goal with God for our lives.
For
those of you who are not afraid to let God begin this deeper sanctifying work
in your life - keep these 9 fruits of the Holy Spirit directly in front of you
- and work very closely with the Holy Spirit once He starts to manifest these
fruits up into your personality.
These fruits will come directly from Him.
They will be His love, His goodness, His joy and His peace that will start to
flow into you. But you will still have to do your part in all of this. Once
these godly and divine attributes start to be released into your system by the
Holy Spirit - your job will then be to start to walk and operate in them.
If
the Holy Spirit starts to release His quality of love into your personality,
but you start refusing to walk and operate in that love in your words and
actions to others - then He will start to pull it back from you after a
reasonable length of time.
If He starts to manifest His quality of
self-control in you in an effort to try and take out some of the negative
qualities that He will not want operating in your personality, and you refuse
to rely on that self-control, and you override it and continue to operate in
those negative qualities - then again, He will pull it back from you until you
are ready to work in cooperation with Him.
This sanctification process is a
two way street. God is more than willing and anxious to do His part - but you
will have to be willing to do your part. And your part will be to learn what
changes God will want to make with you - and then start to live, walk and
operate in those specific changes once the Holy Spirit starts this
supernatural sanctification process within you. This part God cannot do for
you.
Jesus gave Peter the power and ability to be able to walk on water. But
there was one thing Peter had to do before that supernatural power was
released to him. He had to get out of the boat and start walking straight
forward on that power. It was only when he got out of the boat and started
walking straight forward on that power did the supernatural power of God
manifest that allowed him to literally walk on water!
It's the exact same way
in this sanctification realm with the Lord. God, through the Holy Spirit, will
give you the supernatural power to change, transform and sanctify you - but
you will have to be like Peter and be willing to live and walk in that
supernatural power before it can really start to work to change and sanctify
you.
Jesus is coming back for a Bride that will be without spot or blemish. He
is calling His Church to clean up their act and allow His Holy Spirit to begin
this sanctifying work in their lives. However, the choice is up to each
individual believer. Sanctification is not something that can be forced upon
anyone. God really respects everyone's free will and He will never force His
will or His ways on anyone.
To those of you who will decide to enter into this
sanctification process with the Lord - realize that all of this will not occur
overnight. The Holy Spirit will set the pace and timetable that He will want
to work with you on. You can perfectly trust Him to handle each of the areas
that He will want to get into.
Though some of this may be a bit painful at
times, since none of us likes to admit we have anything that needs changing,
let the Holy Spirit take you as far as He will want to go with you in this
realm - and I guarantee you that your life and your state of well-being will
all be changed for the better - much better!
I'm always delighted to present each new resource that I find because it's my
hope that every one that I include in my newsletters will help you grow in Christ. If you know of any resources that you would like to share with the other readers, feel free to write to me and let me know about it so I can include it in the newsletters.
><> Don’t forget to download Chapter
6 of The Bossy Church Lady’s Official Guide For New Christians: 6 Days
To Knowing All About God - Link has been removed from back issues.
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G.I.R.L. Club: Guiding & Inspiring Righteous - G.I.R.L. is a Christian website, youth group, & club for teen girls. Great tips on daily devotions & Bible reading. Beaver Falls, Pa. (Yes, I know that I've been running this on the last few issues, but this is a great place for teens.)
><>
Get a FAITH-lift at Shelovesgod.com - you'll find inspirational stories, articles, poetry and be able to share some of your own in this interactive Christian women's community.
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