Growing Together – Day 30: The Fruit of the Spirit
READ: Galatians 5:22-23 - But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
REFLECT: Over the course of the last 30 days we’ve looked at 9 ways in which God’s Spirit empowers:
Love – thanking God for His love for us, looking for ways to express that love to others;
Joy – celebrating the unshakeable foundation of our happiness;
Peace – the tranquil state of the soul knowing it has nothing to fear from God;
Patience – living out the long-temper with others that God has with us;
Kindness – enjoying the “magical life” of giving and receiving grace;
Goodness – being transmitted like an infection from God to us because we are close to Him;
Faithfulness – God’s Spirit enabling us to live faith – fully;
Gentleness – remembering that we are broken people as we interact with God, and remembering that the people we interact with are broken people, too;
Self-Control – choosing the greater joy that comes from being more like Jesus.
When we pursue these things with the Spirit’s help, Bishop J.C. Ryle describes what kind of Christians we will be. And it is the kind of Christian I want to be –
“There are others of the Lord’s people who seem to be always advancing. They grow like grass after rain; they increase like Israel in Egypt; they press on like Gideon, though sometimes faint, yet always pursuing. They are ever adding grace to grace, and faith to faith, and strength to strength. Every time you meet them their hearts seem larger, and their spiritual stature taller and stronger. Every year they appear to see more, and know more, and believe more, and feel more in their religion. They not only have good works to prove the reality of their faith, but they are zealous of them…When they fail they try again, and when they fall they are soon up again…These are those who make religion lovely and beautiful in the eyes of all.” (John Charles Ryle, A Call To Prayer, 1862)
PRAY: Lord, make this a description of me!