February 22 - Galatians 5:22-23

February 22 - Galatians 5:22-23

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”

The Holy Spirit was sent by Jesus to teach us how to live in the kingdom of God while we still live here on earth.  Now, is it possible that we can actually show the world around us that the Spirit of God is encouraging us?

The fruit that we show in our lives of His activity in our lives is found in these seven attributes. 

We show love – not just loving those who love us or those who are nice to us, but we show love always, no matter what.

We are joyous – not just when we are happy about things because life is going our way, but true joy that comes from the depth of our being.  Joy that signifies the most important thing in our life is our relationship with God.

We show patience – enduring patience that remains long after we are tired of putting up with the things that annoy us.  Patience that waits through everything else.
We show kindness – not simply to those who are clean and tidy, smiling and sweet; but even to those who are filthy and on the street corners, ugly and mean.

We share goodness – our lives truly reflect the goodness that comes from God. When the rest of the world thinks that getting away with something is the easier way to exist, we choose to do the right thing – no matter what.

We show faithfulness – the depth of our faith in God never gives up, no matter the cost.  We will never allow the foundation of our faith to be shaken because God is our solid rock.

We show gentleness – when what we want to show is our strength and power, we back off and allow gentleness to overcome us.

We exercise self-control.  We don’t need to have everything that we want, we don’t need to say everything that wants to come out of our mouths and we don’t need to do all of those things that make us momentarily happy.

There is no law that would stop us from living as the Spirit calls us to live.