Scripture

FRUIT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

7 July 2021 /

This is one topic that has been constantly ringing in my head. I just love how GOD draws your attention to the things HE wants you to pay more attention to. It could be a thought that keeps nagging, Devotions and Sermons you come across, a discussion with someone, the songs you listen to, anything that will always be about what HE wants to catch your attention about.
This was one topic I was able to recite the Verses it comes from without flinching, as I remembered them from my C.R.E class, but I had never really studied it. I had never paid attention to the context of the Verses that come before and after the Verses that talk about it. That will be a whole new topic, but please do study them.
The message came in two teachings and these are teachings I could not keep to myself, and if more come, I will keep sharing.
Here goes what I heard GOD speak to me about it.

Let us first read what the Bible says about The Fruit of The HOLY SPIRIT.

But The HOLY SPIRIT produces this kind of fruit in our lives: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self-Control. There is no law against these things!

Galatians 5:22‭-‬23 NLT

Various Bible Versions vary in the names of the aspects of The Fruit Of The HOLY SPIRIT, and I might use the various versions alternatively in the Blog.

FIRST TEACHING

I was drawn to read this portion of Scripture more intentionally, carefully listening to what The HOLY SPIRIT was saying about it, and I realised before anything, I needed to use each of these aspects of The Fruit to gauge them against who I am, how I am and what I do. This is where my latest journey of being retaught this beautiful topic begun.
Below each aspect of The Fruit Of The HOLY SPIRIT, I will quote what The Message Bible says about each aspect, and below the Message Bible Version of it, I share the questions of Self-Analysation that I got for each.

Love
📖 Affection for others.
→Do I love all without reason or do I love only those that I choose to? Is my concern unselfish towards all or for them that I choose?
Joy
📖 Exuberance about life.
→Do I have Joy unspeakable regardless of the challenges or is it seasonal and dependant on my circumstances in life? 
Peace
📖 Serenity.
→Is my Peace one beyond my own understanding or do I give it meaning only when the storms subside? 
Patience
📖 A willingness to stick with things.
→Do I wait on GOD or do I choose to go outside HIS Will because I feel like HE is delaying my blessing? 
Kindness
📖 A sense of compassion in the heart.
→Is my kindness from The HOLY SPIRIT or do I use it to lure people to me?
Goodness
📖 A conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people.
→Is my goodness for show and gain or because GOD has worked on my heart?
Faithfulness
📖 Loyal Commitments
→Even when no one is watching, I’m I in line with GOD’s Purpose and Will over my life? 
Humility
📖 Not needing to force our way in life.
→Do I feel better than everyone else? Do I see myself as better used of GOD than all or do I understand that I am just but a vessel? 
Self-Control
📖 Able to marshal and direct our energies wisely
→Tempered easily much? Unmindful of my words much? Delving into sin much? Allocating most of my time to other things other than GOD much?

Each one of us might hear different Self-Analyzation questions depending on where you are in life.
You can use my template to gauge yourself against what Scripture says you should be.

SECOND TEACHING

I thought the First Teaching would be the end of it, but GOD does not stop until the whole point is home.
I have found myself, as a Christian, getting super comfortable and forgetting that I need to get better by the day.
Lately, GOD has been speaking to me to analyse my life and take out any sin.
At first I was like, “But LORD, I have been trying to be good… What have I done now?”
HE taught me that my good work is not what validates me but HIS Grace, the finished work of CHRIST on the Cross. What I keep doing or trying to do is not what matters, but my full surrender to HIM is what HE wants of me. And HE led me to Sermons and Devotionals that pointed out my foolishness.

HE led me back to The Teaching of The Fruit Of The HOLY SPIRIT and I could hear HIM ask me what the opposites of the aspects of The Fruit are. At first I didn’t get it, but when I wrote the opposites down, it loudly hit home.
Galatians 5:23 says that there is no law against these things. I want to look at this Verse in two ways.
One, that there is no law that GOD ever gave or gives that speaks against these aspects. There is no command that was given to us that says anything against them. So, they are right and good and exactly what GOD wants for us and for us to be.
Two, that outside these aspects there is lawlessness. No governance, no order. GOD gave us commandments to help us live in a certain way that pleases HIM and also for our own good. Living in the opposite of these aspects means living outside the very commandments that GOD gave us, outside the law of GOD. These aspects encompass the commandments GOD gave us and living outside GOD’s Commandments is disobedience and GOD’s Law is against disobedience.
But the Bible has said that there is no GOD Law against these things, these wonderful aspects of The Fruit Of The HOLY SPIRIT. So what is against these things? Disobedience? Living outside the law of GOD? The very things that GOD opposes? The ones HIS Law is against?
Living outside or against a law that GOD does not oppose is simply disobedience. Therefore, living outside the aspects of The Fruit Of The HOLY SPIRIT, that GOD does not oppose, is disobedience.

When I became fully aware of what is against these aspects, then the reason for why HE was asking me to analyse my life finally made sense. I don’t even need to mention how humbled I was when I realised the amount of disobedience I was living in.
I always thought disobedience was only present when you break those “Big Obvious Commandments.” You know, the ones about murder, theft, adultery and those other big ones! But disobedience is also in the detail. The fine print detail. The very things that you ignore and think will never affect your walk with GOD.

So I went out for the Dictionary to look for the opposites of each (now I know they are called antonyms 😃).
There is definitely what some people will say the Bible says about the antonyms for each aspect. For example, there’s the Verse that says that there is no fear in love and I have seen the conclusion being, therefore, that the opposite of love is fear according to them.
But here, I wanted to be so so basic so that I could grasp exactly what GOD was telling me.
Let us do something similar to what I did up there.
Below each aspect of The Fruit Of The HOLY SPIRIT, there will be a Bible Verse that talks about it. Below that, there will be the antonym(s) of each aspect and below the antonym(s), a Bible Verse that talks about the antonym(s).
There are numerous other Bible Verses that speak about the same, but these are the ones that speak to me.
And now to see the fine print, *read Disobedience.

Love
📖 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of GOD; and every one that loveth is born of GOD, and knoweth GOD. He that loveth not knoweth not GOD; for GOD is Love.
1 John 4:7-8 KJV
←Hatred, Loathe, Detest
📖 The one who hides his hatred while pretending to be your friend is nothing but a liar. But the one who slanders you behind your back proves that he’s a fool, never to be trusted.
Proverbs 10:18 TPT
Joy
📖 Don’t be dejected and sad, for the Joy of The LORD is your strength!”
Nehemiah 8:10 NLT
←Misery, Despair, Distress, Trial, Tribulation
📖 Anyone who does evil can expect tribulation and distress—to the Jew first and also to the Non-Jew.
Romans 2:9 TPT
Peace
📖Then you will experience GOD’s Peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. HIS Peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in CHRIST JESUS.
Philippians 4:7 NLT
←Conflict, Turmoil, Disorder, Agitation
📖 For GOD is not a GOD of disorder but of Peace, as in all the meetings of GOD’s Holy People.
1 Corinthians 14:33 NLT
Patience
📖Patient endurance is what you need now, so that you will continue to do GOD’s will. Then you will receive all that HE has promised.
Hebrews 10:36 NLT
←Impatience, Intolerance, Quick to Retaliate
📖 Whoever is patient has great understanding, but one who is quick-tempered displays folly.
Proverbs 14:29 NIV
Kindness
📖 Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.
1 Peter 4:9 NIV
←Unkindness, Meanness, Lacking Thoughtfulness, Lacking Sympathy
📖 Your kindness will reward you, but your cruelty will destroy you.
Proverbs 11:17 NLT
Goodness
📖 A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart. What you say flows from what is in your heart.
Luke 6:45 NLT
←Wickedness, Unrighteousness, Lacking Principle
📖 But the way of the wicked is like total darkness. They have no idea what they are stumbling over.
Proverbs 4:19 NLT
Faithfulness
📖 Yet YOU desired faithfulness even in the womb; YOU taught me Wisdom in that Secret Place.
Psalms 51:6 NIV
←Unfaithfulness, Inconsistency, Undependable, Disobedience, Lacking Loyalty
📖 When you live in these vices you ignite the anger of GOD against these acts of disobedience.
Colossians 3:6 TPT
Humility
📖 And all of you, dress yourselves in humility as you relate to one another, for “GOD opposes the proud but gives Grace to the humble.”
1 Peter 5:5 NLT
←Pride, Vanity, Boastfulness, Self-Centredness, Self-Gratification
📖 First pride, then the crash— the bigger the ego, the harder the fall.
Proverbs 16:18 MSG
Self-Control
📖 Better to be patient than powerful; better to have Self-Control than to conquer a city.
Proverbs 16:32 NLT
←Indiscipline, Lacking Moderation, Over-Indulgence, Lacking a Sense of Control
📖 A person without Self-Control is like a city with broken-down walls.
Proverbs 25:28 NLT

Pheeeeewwww!!! You get the picture? Quite self-explanatory there. And here I was asking GOD what I had done!
How many times did I say or do something that was against The Fruit Of The HOLY SPIRIT? Something that I thought was minor like being unkind for whatever reason, lacking loyalty, claiming misery over myself because of what I was going through?
I was completely challenged and I repent of all the times I went against The HOLY SPIRIT, quenched and grieved HIM. HE wants to and loves to give us these things. HE knows how important they are in our lives and walk with GOD.
You know those days you are so confident, so well dressed, ready for that ground-breaking, career-making, ceiling-reaching, promotion-enticing presentation you will make in that Office Meeting, that took you days and nights on end making it perfect, then you go up to present what you had prepared and the boss tells you, “It’s not there yet…” with that look on his face?
What I felt was nothing close to it. You may know what it feels like when GOD points out your foolishness with such a gentleness that you wished was a shout, then you would understand why you feel so embarrassed and somewhat angry.
But I have come to accept that every time GOD rebukes and corrects me, HE does it with every love and wanting to see me become a better person.
HE is not one to see one sliding into a comfort zone and leave them there. If you have ever made a Prayer asking GOD to grow you, then you know what that means.

Missing out on any aspect of The Fruit of The HOLY SPIRIT is actually sinning, referring again to Verse 23.
We are never complete without The Fruit of The HOLY SPIRIT and we will always end up in idolatry if we go filling the void in our hearts with things that do not come from GOD. We end up being unable to guard our hearts against the things that will eventually destroy us.
Love with a lack of Peace or Joy or Patience, or Self-Control ceases to be Love. Goodness without the rest is actually a false feeling of Goodness, and so on.
And if you are lacking any of them, you are against the law of GOD. Lacking any one of the aspects will always lead us down the path of sin.
Sounds so complicated and hard, but fret not. The HOLY SPIRIT is Gentle and a Great Teacher. HE will show you what you need and when you ask, it shall be freely given to you. And when you miss to have them, be quick to repent, HE is faithful to forgive and HE knows our weakness.

Each aspect of The Fruit of the HOLY SPIRIT is what GOD wants us to have in us. Not just some bits and parts of it.
The Bible talks about The Fruit of The HOLY SPIRIT and not Fruits of The HOLY SPIRIT, so that we never think that we can get to choose one separate fruit or fruits of our choice. Meaning that we should take all the aspects of The Fruit in its entirety, at the same time. 
We don’t get to choose which aspect of the Fruit suits us best, but we take in the whole Fruit with all the aspects. You can’t choose one and leave the other. All the aspects are mixed up in every bite.
It is not a spoilt fruit that we have to cut off the rotten unwanted parts. It is fresher than fresh could ever describe. You won’t cut off Love, or Peace or Joy or another portion that does not work for you. It is a Good Fruit that when we take in fully, we take in what GOD intends for us.

I know that there are times when we shall miss or ignore an aspect or more of The Fruit Of The HOLY SPIRIT because of an existing challenge, but I have learnt that life challenges were never meant to come our way to take away what GOD has given to us. HE wants us to learn to embrace these aspects even when it seems impossible and unreal in the trying circumstances.
Joy and Peace can truly exist in the middle of a storm. Patience can exist in the middle of a delay or a wait. Kindness can exist in the middle of a bullying. Only The HOLY SPIRIT, that gives The Fruit, can show you how.
GOD wants us to live out these Verses that JESUS is speaking to us today:-

Come to ME, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.Take MY yoke upon you and learn from ME, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For MY yoke is easy and MY burden is light.

Matthew 11:28-30 NIV

Following the ways of CHRIST is rest. Being in CHRIST is rest. GOD’s Commands are not heavy and cumbersome because of the finished work of CHRIST on the Cross, Grace. You will not have to work out the commands on your own and by your works anymore. HIS burden is light.
HE wants you to live a life unyoked to the logic of the World that has it that for every misfortune, Joy has to evade you, for every sin committed against you, you have to be mean to stand your ground, showing them what you are made of, for every unkindness shown to you, you have to retaliate, for every thing you see them doing wrong, you must throw on them the fire of judgement and label them as hopeless, all that and more.
It is too tiresome and GOD wants you to travel light.

Allow GOD to show you what you are lacking and what you need. Everything you need, HE will give you for your good.
Christianity might look like one hard place to be, but these commands GOD gave and gives us are so that we can be in a constant Worship of HIM, and it is for our own good, I say again.
And we thank JESUS for leaving us with HIS HOLY SPIRIT, WHO guides us through the straight and narrow to an Eternal Life with GOD.
The only way you can receive HIM is by accepting JESUS CHRIST as your Personal Saviour if you haven’t yet.
Feel free to contact me on how to, or may GOD lead you to People and a Church that will guide you.
If you already are born again, The HOLY SPIRIT is in you. Ask HIM to reveal to you what you need revealed.
May we live lives that please GOD, that are in obedience to each of HIS Commands. May we be made Holy and Perfect just like HE is.

More of GOD’s Grace, Love and Light,
Lydia Ndwiga.

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