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This week’s study will give you a thorough understanding of why we should never pray for longsuffering (slow to anger, patience), or any other fruit in our lives. Once we learn to use the other fruit, patience and kindness is easy! We’ll study that all this week.
Next week will probably be the last, depending on how the Holy Spirit leads. I hope you already feel excited and ready to allow the Holy Spirit to lead you into producing more fruit. Once you live life as a very productive Christian, you’ll never want to go back! Even just having a willing heart and desiring change will bring a blessing; because the Holy Spirit steps in, strengthens you, and helps you. Also, I’m believing with you and praying over you that you’ll build on this revelational knowledge in your own life and use it to minister to others.
But first, who did their homework?
- Did anyone pay attention to their thought life? It’s a very important part of following Christ and growing.
- I’m going to assume everyone followed the New Testament saying, “If you can’t think anything nice, don’t think anything at all.” It is very difficult at first, but once you’re determined to set that love rule in motion the Holy Spirit jumps in and helps you.
- What about claiming blessings on past situations? Did you notice a difference?
Let’s jump into this week’s study, but first our fruit scripture!
Galatians 5:22-23 NKJV
22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.
Longsuffering, no one I know likes this word! The Greek word for longsuffering is makrothumia and means patience, and it’s sometimes translated to slow to anger. That’s a little easier to accept. We’re told in Psalm 103:8 that God is “slow to anger and abounding in mercies.” While any verse describing God’s Character should describe us, we have our flesh nature to deal with.
Anger isn’t necessarily bad. The Bible does say in
James 1:19-20 NKJV
19So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; 20for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.
The Original Hebrew manuscript says, “For the anger of the sons of man does not do that which is good before Yahweh.” There is such a thing as righteous anger. It you find out children are being harmed, and you’re angry and want to protect them, that’s righteous anger. If you find out someone in the church is stealing money from people one by one and you become angry, that’s not a wrong or bad response. Now, if you decided to take a baseball bat and take matters into your own hands, it’s a problem before the government and the Lord! The rule to anger is…
Ephesians 4:26 NKJV,
“Be angry, and do not sin”: do not let the sun go down on your wrath,
Anger is bad when we become emotion ruled, anger ruled, as opposed to being spirit ruled. Human anger is like poison. Righteous anger for example, takes the matter before the Lord to inquire how to solve the problem. Human anger, as we read in James, “anger of man does not do that which is good before Yahweh,” isn’t good because it wants or better yet demands a punishment. Normally, it’s something worse than the crime! You wouldn’t go around randomly thinking, “I want to kick you in the butt. I want to bash your heads in.” Oh no, we love Jesus and a bashed in head is a serious deadly life altering injury. If someone makes you mad enough, then you might say, “I want to bash their head in. I want to beat them with a baseball bat. I want to kick ‘em in the butt… to the middle of next week.” We’re all guilty of human anger at some point.
Let’s be honest, we all have something called “pet peeves,” a low tolerance for someone or something that agitates us. I looked up some common things that agitate people: chewing noises, repetitive tapping, interrupting, texting during a meal or while talking, scraping teeth on a utensil, scratching a chalkboard, speaking in typing shortcuts (TMI, BRB, POV), someone driving slow when you’re late, too much perfume/cologne, typing in all caps, and not replacing toilet paper. While those are silly things that agitate us, except the toilet paper, there are more serious offenses like gossip, slander, theft, lying, betraying, and other hurtful behavior we have to endure. Dealing with pet peeves, or these little unimportant things, that agitate us will help us grow so when a difficult situation arises, we’ve already trained for it.
The question is, “How do we become slow to anger, if we’re not supposed to pray for it?”
Most often we are taught to ask God to give us fruit, like patience. You can ask and ask. I’ve never seen the Lord give patience to anyone. We don’t even have a scripture that God is passing it out. Ever hear someone say about patience, “Don’t pray for patience! You’ll be very miserable!” These types of comments are always followed up with a list of frustrating stories. Who here has been one of them? I’ve noticed through the years, Christians start to believe there is truth in Murph’s Law, “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” But why?
Fruit is a choice, growing pains, it’s allowing your spirit man to dominate your life instead of your flesh. Making decisions in favor of fruit, or Characteristics of God, will cause us to grow. If you’re praying for a shortcut, “Lord, just give it to me,” your prayers are actually being answered by the enemy. As a result, many people think God is sending other people to make us frustrated and angry so we’ll grow. The Lord was never sending and will never send people to make us miserable or to teach us a mean lesson to grow in patience, the enemy was behind it. There are no stories in the Bible where the Lord places a call on a man’s life to act like the devil or cause someone to sin to “expose your weaknesses to teach you a lesson.” If that were true, sin would be the work of the Lord. The Lord wouldn’t be a just God using humans against each other. In the end, I’ve never seen fruit produced in anyone’s life from those prayers.
Now, God can and will use people to help you grow. But I want you to understand it’s different. I like this story as an example.
(Tell a story about how God really did use a person to help someone grow. Not based on a mean random act of His Will, but the behavior of a Christian causing the judgement. If you need one, my true story is below.)
This is a story from an ex-arrogant minister
I was at the gym during the day, which I’m usually not there. To my surprise, they hired an overweight teenager with one of his legs pointing in the wrong direction and even worse a rounded back as a “personal trainer.” (Rounded back means sitting a lot) This kid was yammering on to a young woman about how he’ll teach her kick attackers. He leaned his huge body to the side, so he could lift his leg up higher, and began kicking, “KA-POWIE!! KA-POWIE! KA-POWIE!” he shouted. I laughed a little out loud, because I couldn’t help it. Stuff was jiggling everywhere in his yellow shirt while he was making his own comic book sound effects. After his Ka-Powie routine, he taught her to swing weights, which I think is a horrible choice. Anyway, I went over to tell a friend so we could both laugh at the Kung-Fu Ka-Powie Panda. After watching him and both laughing, the Lord strongly put it my heart, “Sign up for his training.” I responded with, “haha!” and kept going. All of a sudden, nothing was funny and I felt a huge wave of conviction for walking out of love come over me. I knew in that moment that God wanted me to sign up for his personal training class. There’s old school “gym-rat pride,” which I was full of and I didn’t want to submit to a younger jiggly kid with no muscle, let alone even be seen looking like I needed his ignorant expertise. I repented immediately, and then begged God over and over to please take that burden to sign up for his training off of me. I left the gym. All that day and through the night I couldn’t shake it until I went back the next day and signed up. His so-called “help” was ten kinds of horrible, and even worse than I expected. He made ignorant accusations and was deaf to reality. I wanted to tell off the arrogant panda until he cried and couldn’t sleep at night. At least my arrogance was based on reading knowledge and over 20 years of experience. In the end, I did grow, very painfully at that, and I learned not to make fun of people, because I’m going to get judged by God. So now I share the story, and tell people to be mindful of their heart attitude or they may be submitting to their own Kung-Fu Ka-Powie Panda in the future.
I used this story, because it’s not that God decided to put this boy there to be made fun of and suffer shame so someone can grow. Jesus took our shame, so that would make God a liar and an abuser. We don’t have stories like that in the Bible. Often times when people are angry, they curse others, “Go to hell” and other such evil. God is not playing part of this. If you think back to the beginning of the story, this person judged the boy as being unfit as a personal trainer. Scripture says (Matthew 7:1), “Judge not, that you be not judged.” Because of their judgement, God judged them. Judgment carries a sentence. This person can’t blame God for their growing pains.
We need to make sure we unplug our focus on God being the author of tribulation for growth. So, praying for patients causes tribulation, or our attitude can bring a judgement causing our own tribulation.
Let’s see what scripture has to say on this matter, because experience has to agree with the Word or that information gets tossed out.
Paul said in Romans 5:3
New King James Version
And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance;
Webster’s Bible Translation
And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also; knowing that tribulation worketh patience;
Amplified
And not only this, but [with joy] let us exult in our sufferings and rejoice in our hardships, knowing that hardship (distress, pressure, trouble) produces patient endurance;
God is not the author of tribulation or temptation!! God is not sending you people to annoy anyone, tempt anyone, test anyone, or try anyone. People that entice you to sin are sinning too. James makes it clear God is not the author of this!
James 1:13-15 NKJV
13Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. 14But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. 15Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.
God is not bringing forth anyone’s death! Death is an enemy, and, we already read in a past study, in Revelations it’s the last enemy to be destroyed. So, maybe like me, you prayed for patience because a minister told you that you should. A common example of what happens, a very slow person cuts you off in traffic, and continues to drive slow when you’re late. You become angry, and call the person in front of you some names. Now you’re walking out of the debt of love that Jesus said we owe people. The slow person stays in front of you, and you end up losing your joy and then peace. By the time you get to where you’re going, you’re so mad you speak out of the flesh and gossip about the “idiot” that made you late. Two sins, and the truth is that the “idiot” only made you an extra 1 or 2 minutes late, because driving 10 miles over the speed limit doesn’t get you there much faster. God has nothing to do with that scenario! When you’re praying for fruit, you’re literally praying for tribulation to come upon you! The enemy is happy to oblige you, as we see in John 10:10,
The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.
One more about the enemy in 1 Peter 5:8 NKJV
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.
The NKJV Bible defines sober and diligent as self-controlled and watchful. We’re supposed to be on the look-out, as in expecting him to show up and when he does make sure we’re not a “may devour.” Do not invite tribulation into your life. It’s an open invitation to be devoured.
Let’s get ready to work the fruit.
It's easy to love those that love you. It’s easy to be full of joy when life goes your way. It’s easy to have peace when nothing is opposing you. Write this down: Don’t ever pray for opposition, because you’ll be set up by the enemy to fail. When opposition just comes, you’ll have grace from God to overcome.
In the meantime, practice your fruit on your pet peeves, because it will start to develop your fruit. Instead of imagining digging your finger in your ear to pop in the person’s mouth that’s whistling, wanting to smack that fork out of someone’s hand for scraping their teeth on it, or wanting to pee in the neighbor’s garden fountain because you have to listen to that pee sound every summer night, use your fruit!
When that day comes when someone calls you mean names for no reason, takes advantage of you, or gossips about you; you’ve been practicing and you’ll easily rise above it with perfect peace and stride on towards the Lord’s blessing. If you haven’t been practicing, you’ll have a high chance of failure because you’ll need to grow a lot more to overcome.
What do you do when a bad situation is thrust upon you? How do we work the fruit? Not work on the fruit, but partake of the fruit you grew.
(Use a real situation that everyone can be onboard with wanting to step out of love, and not walk in the spirit.
If you need one, my real situation is below. Use my analyzing example to fit your story.)
I’m going to use a real story of a Christian lady, so that we can see how to actually use the fruit we’ve been cultivating. I have never heard anything like it, and hope we never will.
This was her problem in her own words:
There is an older lady at my church. If you watch her for 30 seconds, you can clearly see she’s a sandwich short of a picnic, a few fries short of a Happy Meal, her elevator doesn’t reach the top, the lights are on but no one is home, the engine is running but absolutely no one is behind the wheel. I think you get the idea. Church started, people were singing, and she was going around touching people, as usual. She was heading back to her seat so I stopped watching for her. All of a sudden, like a creepy movie, she appeared next to me with that crazy look on her face staring directly at me. I held my hand up like a stop, and kindly said, “Wait a min. I’ll give you candy to pass out.” As in, “Don’t touch me, be on your way!” I got a handful of various yummy caramels from my bible case, as I was getting them, she said, “I’m going to give them to MY FRIENDS!” I could absolutely careless!! I held them out in front of her and said, “Give them to whomever you want.” I was blocking her from getting close to me. She smiled and immediately sprung up into the air taking a flying leap at me. She crashed her head into mine, and smashed her chest on mine. I went into shock from being hit so hard! She said, “OUCH! I hit our heads together really hard. It hurts.” I sarcastically snapped back, while still in shock, “YA THINK?!” She was rubbing her head and said, “I sorry.” I told her, “Here, take your candy and go.” She left rubbing her head. I have neck issues. She slammed my neck backward and caused a tremendous amount of neck pain, jaw pain, and then followed up by migraines. I had to go to the chiropractor, but I couldn’t go the next day because it wasn’t safe for me to drive. I had to wait for a friend to drive me. Once I did get there, she hit me so hard it took electrodes, a massage, and a few maneuvers to fix, plus a follow up appointment.
When bad situations are thrust upon us, this is what we must do, go through the fruit. But first let’s look at the picture again. Take notes on how to use the fruit for future reference, because the order is important!
Love:
Pray for the person that did wrong to you. Let’s continue to use the crazy old lady as an example, “God, I know you love her. I know you created her for something better than this, even though I can’t see it right now. I’m really really mad, but I am forgiving her by faith. I am doing my best to release her into Your hands and to take care of this situation. I’m doing my best to let this go and not dwell on it.” Sometime after you pray and refuse to dwell on it, when you know you’re calm, ask the Lord how to handle the situation, “What action would love take?”
Joy:
You need some of your joy restored! Any type of bad event that we go through, no matter how much oil of joy you have, some joy needs to be restored. The joy of the Lord is your strength, and we need strength to walk in the spirit. First things first, make sure you write this down, ask the Lord to bless you with spiritual blessings so that you will come out of the storm better than you went into it. Then release the oil of joy, an outward celebration, start singing and dancing, preferably in your house so there aren’t any videos. Even if it’s a song from junior church, “I got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart.” Make a joyful song up if you have to…. A song minister once broke out into a song,
“Blocking youuu has blessed meee.
Blocking youuu has blessed meee.
I don’t care what you say.
I don’t care what you say,
but blocking you has blessed me.”
In all seriousness, we’re supposed to be singing to the Lord. Make up your own song or change the words to a song. “When the Spirit of the Lord comes on my heart, I will dance like David danced.” Change it to “When the Spirit of the Lord comes on my heart, I’ll have joy like David had.” While this all may seem unimportant, silly, and a waste of time, it’s really not. This is how we fight spiritually. Joy will be your strength to hold peace, and overcome. Realistically, do any of us really want to dance around the house and sing when we’re going through a problem? NO! But if you want your joy restored and supernaturally strength, get to ancient dancing!
The woman dealing with the excentric older lady, said that after she prayed in love, she sang songs when she was tempted to be upset. That’s good advice.
Peace:
Refuse to allow bad thoughts, replays of events to run through your mind, or even any thoughts of how I should have done this or that aren’t allowed to dance in your head. It happened, it’s over. Even if you have to tell yourself 10 times in a row, “NO! I am not thinking about it again. God’s got this. God is working it out.” If you’re struggling too much, go back to the fruit of joy, put some music on and sing out loud. Singing or talking out loud will stop your mind from working. If you’re still struggling, get Nehemiah 8:10 out, and plan a celebration meal and declare the day holy unto the Lord.
People act like Christianity is easy, but it’s quite the contrary! Putting the Word of God into action takes fortitude and persistence. We can’t just roll over and let our mind do whatever it wants. Write this down: If you’re not doing something with your mind, your mind is doing something with you. As we studied last week, keep your mind on the things of the Lord at all costs. This truly can mean the difference between life and death for some people. If someone is in the hospital and you’re believing God to intervene, but your thoughts are on a will, funeral arrangements, and who you’re going to call to tell the bad news; that’s a double-minded man unstable in all his ways (James 1:6-8). This is a very serious matter! Many prayers and battles of Christians are lost because of the lack of peace fruit. A peaceless mind will poison your faith! Keeping your mind focused on Lord and Word produces peace that has a confident expectation that your prayer will be answered.
The lady in story said she refused to think anything bad. She just kept reminding herself of this crazy lady’s good qualities, evangelizing, and kept her sights focused on a blessing from God.
Longsuffering:
Without the love of God, strength from joy, and peace of God on us, we would never be able to be longsuffering/slow to anger without feeling drained and stressed out. To get this fruit operating in your life, simply lean on love, joy, and peace, then this fruit will do its own work if you refuse anger. When the other fruits are operating, choosing to be slow to anger is easy! “Might be easy for you,” you probably want to snap back, but everything takes practice.
Some of you had a good start in life, your parents taught you not to get angry. They started helping you practice early. Others had parents that taught them to fight, about everything, and get the last word too! Everyone had a different upbringing, but with the Holy Spirit living inside you, anything is possible to overcome leaning on Him.
How exactly do we let this fruit do its work? When thoughts that stir up anger come, “I can’t believe they did that to me…” Sometimes you can actually feel anger physically coming on you. Treat it like a grenade, because that’s what it is in the spiritual realm, it’s meant to blow up what you built on The Rock, Jesus. Throw it off you. “No, I’m not taking that anger. I’m going to let God avenge me. I’m going to take a blessing in Christ.”
Exodus 14:14
The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.
There is a man that shared his testimony that’s stayed with me through the years. There was a position opening up in the company he was working for at the time. Him and another man applied for the job; the other man was less educated and less experienced. They gave the job to the less experienced man, because they didn’t like the color of his skin. He was angry and his flesh wanted to fight and file lawsuits, but every time he prayed, he just didn’t have peace about it. He forgave them and let the anger go. A few weeks passed, and he got a job offer from another company offering him the amount he was supposed to get. He thought it was a joke, and didn’t take it seriously. They came back and offered him double. Once he realized it was real, he took the job and got double. Double for his trouble.
If you hold your peace, the Lord will fight for you; but if you fight, He’ll allow you to handle it. The issue then becomes, if the punishment doesn’t fit the crime, then you’re up for a judgement as well. Letting the Lord fight and win your battles will result in gathering up some type of spoil.
Sometimes we downright have to remind ourselves of what God has forgiven us from, and what He expects from us in return (same forgiveness) to help us throw back those Anger Grenades.
The woman in the story said anger kept trying to rise up, especially when she was still in pain. She kept refusing it, and telling herself I’m going to get blessed.
Kindness:
We didn’t really go over this. But with love, joy, peace, and no anger, you’re free to be kind despite what someone else has done to you. We don’t have to pretend like someone deserves our kindness that we don’t know or pretend that someone didn’t hurt us or make us angry. Kindness is what looks past the other person’s status or failures and treats them lovingly as Jesus would. What do I mean by status? Someone on the street asks you for money, and you think, “I don’t know you!” I do want to say, for safety reasons, if someone approaches you for money, walk away and talk to the Holy Spirit. If He says yes, get the money out away from the unknown person, and then re-approach them. Don’t pull out wallets or cash where they can grab. The reason we ask the Holy Spirit away from the person is because we don’t want to fund alcohol, drugs and other bad behavior, because we’re reacting on feeling bad verses a more logical response, will they use it for good?
Moving on….
How do we show kindness in our life in the face of adversity? Let’s see what Jesus said,
Matthew 5:44-45 NKJV
44…bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, 45that you may be sons of your Father in heaven…
Let’s study the word kindness by first looking in the Old Testament, because that’s either the original language Adam spoke or something very close.
Proverbs 19:22 NKJV
What is desired in a man is kindness, and a poor man is better than a liar.
The word kindness in Hebrew is checed (kheh'-sed) and means favor, good deed, loving-kindness, merciful, mercy, and pity. King James often translates this word as mercy and not kind or kindness.
One more scripture, this time one showing us it’s God’s Character and the definition in the Old Testament.
Numbers 14:18 NKJV
The Lord is longsuffering and abundant in mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression…
We just want to look at the Word mercy, checed in Hebrew, the same Hebrew word as above. It’s translated as mercy in this verse instead of kindness in other verses. One more example from…
Ruth 2:20NKJV
Then Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, “Blessed be he of the Lord, who has not forsaken His kindness to the living and the dead!” ...”
Why such different words with different meanings? I’m going to read from Practical Theology Today about the word checed.
Practical Theology Today:
The Hebrew word hesed (sometimes transliterated as chesed) is translated into English using a variety of different words/terms depending on the translation. Hesed is difficult to translate because it stands for a cluster of ideas—love, mercy, grace, kindness. It wraps up in itself all the positive attributes of God. Hesed is one of Yahweh’s most treasured characteristics. This is a rich and robust term for which no single English word (or two words, in the case of “steadfast love”) is sufficient. Beyond a sense of love and mercy, embedded in hesed‘s meaning is covenant loyalty and relational fidelity. Hesed is freely given, often unexpectedly, without requiring anything in return.
Often times people lean very heavily on the Greek and Greek meanings, when we really need to lean more heavily on Old Testament definitions. The reason is because language and culture go together. I’ll give you one quick example of this. The Promise Land, a land flowing with milk and honey. If you study honey and the ancient context, that’s not necessarily referring to honeybee honey. It’s referring to sweet syrup, and most-likely the ancient Israelites drew up an image of date syrup. Right now, if you go home and watch a video of someone from a developed country go into an African tribe and give them candy, they eat it and call it honey. Their culture determines the language they use. Often times underdeveloped countries have multiple words for sky, because the sky has a bigger impact on their lives than it does ours. We have descriptive words only to refer to the sky’s condition. Always keep that information in mind when studying the Word in Greek and Hebrew.
In the case of the Gospels, they were written in Hebrew. In the case of the Book of Galatians, it’s unknown if it was written in Greek or Hebrew. We can only speculate. That’s our fruit scripture if you forgot. Let’s look at the word kindness in Greek quickly.
Using our fruit scripture in Galatian 5:22,
The Greek word for kindness is chréstotés (khray-stot'-ace) and means gentleness, good(-ness), kindness. Strong’s Exhaustive says it means “morally, excellence (in character or demeanor).” HELPS Word study says, “Spirit-produced goodness which meets the need and avoids human harshness (cruelty). We have no term that quite carries this notion of kind and good.”
The Holy Spirit has revealed some deep wisdom on the issue of kindness for us. Write this down, because it’s revelational wisdom from the Holy Spirit. Doing acts of kindness when you haven’t been manifesting God’s Character of love, joy, peace, and longsuffering is viewing kindness in place of love. Think about that for a moment.
“I let someone in front of me in line, because I’m walking in love.”
“I lent my car to a friend, because God wants me to love them.”
“I’m nice to people… I buy girl scout cookies and give to kid’s programs.”
People who aren’t right with God even do this, “I punched and stabbed a lot of people growing up, so now I help people and give to the homeless.”
This isn’t the case to say, “justification by works.” This isn’t about works, it’s about acts of kindness and love getting confused. Let’s make sure we understand what the Holy Spirit is teaching, because it’s very deep. If a Christian isn’t walking in love, having anger outbursts, quick to judge people, hasn’t been valuing people, hasn’t been forgiving and so on; letting someone go first in traffic, giving someone a couple extra dollars that’s short at the register, or lending to those who ask IS NOT fruit. You cannot skip the line! When your love walk is out of whack, those kind acts aren’t replacements for love or indicators of fruit bearing. That would come from the flesh realm for whatever reason.
This is a real example: There is a Christian man that witnesses at work, buys people Bibles, helps anyone that he can with problems they’re having, and prays with and for people. When the company “does him wrong,” he’s the first one shouting, telling everyone, and fighting back. He’s not using works to justify himself; he’s getting love and acts of kindness confused. He thinks he’s walking in love, but he’s not (1 Corinthians 13:5).
Remember how our first study was on Fruit Inspection and we talked about it being our safety? This is it right here. If we mediate long enough, most of us have probably mistaken kind acts of others as love fruit. To have kindness fruit, you must have love, joy, peace, longsuffering; without it there is little to no kindness fruit. Understanding the difference is for our own safety!
Kindness isn’t just an act of kindness, it’s like practical theology said it, “cluster of ideas—love, mercy, grace, kindness,” it’s an attitude of the heart, or as we keep saying, it’s allowing God’s Character to flow out of you from your spirit and the Holy Spirit.
This is something we all need to mediate on this coming week; the difference between acts of kindness and love.
How do we activate kindness when our flesh is fighting against it?
Lean on your fruit: Love, joy, peace, longsuffering. Whatever point you’re struggling, go back to that fruit and let that one work. If you’re walking in love but lost your joy, then start producing joy, move on to peace, and then longsuffering. Making the decision to show mercy, grace, and kindness will come easy to you.
The ending of this lady’s story is beautiful. She said two weeks later, the crazy lady tried to hand her water from the fridge at church. When she went to hand it to her, this just flew out of her mouth, “No thank you, but that was very kind of you to think about me. Thank you.” That’s not the best part. She wrote, “Two weeks later I badly injured an old surgery. My stomach swelled up and I was in a lot of pain. Instead of complaining how I was in pain again, I remembered overcoming what that crazy lady did to me. I asked God to show me His mercy and grace, and heal me. I drove to church by faith. As I listened to the minister teach, the swelling supernaturally went down and by the end of the service I had no pain (normally it should have taken a week). I know because I kept my love walk in check, my faith would work, and I was ready to receive a blessing.”
I hope after this week’s study you feel inspired about producing fruit and fruit inspecting, because your eyes are fixed on blessings. Next week, we’ll talk about how to make it even easier to produce fruit, fertilizer so to speak. We’ll quickly skate through the other fruits, because the Lord has revealed to us that love, joy, peace, longsuffering, and kindness are the biggest offshoots. I think those should be our biggest focus in this study. Once you get those fruits growing, goodness and faithfulness follow much easier. Seems like gentleness and self-control just popup out of nowhere!
Homework!
- Practice longsuffering on your pet peeves. Pleas work on them, I’ll be asking you to share next week!
- Talk to the Lord this week about any Anger Grenades that you have taken in the past. Ask Him to recreate that moment in your life, so you can throw that grenade back to the pit of hell where it came from.
- Mediate on kindness this week. Do an evaluation if you accidently mistook acts of kindness for love, not just in other people but your own life.
Prayer Points:
- Thank You Father for teaching us and helping us to understand that it’s easy to produce fruit.
- Please continue to speak to our hearts and teach us that with Your help we can completely change in a short amount of time.
- Reveal to us if we have taken in any Anger Grenades that caused spiritual damage and how to repair the damage done very quickly.
- We believe You are the God of time, and You can recreate any moment while we’re in Your Presence. Please give us the opportunity to respond differently to situation where we made a bad choice.
- Show us how much of Your Breath of Life is operating through us, and teach us how to get more of Your Life and Character working through us.
- Teach us how Your Breath of Life keeps us well and gives us long life.
- Thank You for being slow to anger, filled with mercy and grace towards us, and loving us unconditionally. We love You and want to reflect Your Character.
In Jesus Name, Amen.
