The Fruit Of Love

Howard Thurman in Disciplines Of The Spirit, tells of one of the most unusual jobs. A large

General Hospital hired a high school girl to be there mice petter. Her sole occupation was to take

white mice out of their cages several times a day and pet them. They had learned that when mice are

made to feel loved and secure they give much more authentic results in experiments. When they are

relaxed and given a sense of well-being, they better cope without panic.

Science is confirming all the time that God is love. It is finding that all God made needs love to

be at it's best. People who love their garden and their plants produce better crops and more beauty.

Love is the universal need of all life. Dogs and cats can admit their need for love. They thrust their

heads into your hands and face, and demand to be loved. But man likes to be independent and not

admit to needing others, even though it is the number one need of man for happiness. There are

endless numbers of movies and novels where people delay love and even lose it because they will not

admit their need. This is the ultimate in pride, for God Himself is willing to admit He needs love.

The first commandment is that we love God with our whole being. Paul in Romans 8:28 says that

God works in all things for good for those who love Him. In I Cor.2:9 he writes that no mind can

conceive of what God has prepared for those who love Him. In time and in eternity the best is

reserved for those who love God.

Jesus did not hesitate to declare His need for love.. He needed the love of His heavenly Father,

but He also needed the love of man. In John14 He repeated His need often. In verse 15 He said, "If

you love me you will obey what I command." In verse 21 He said, "Whoever has my commands

and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too

will love and show myself to him." In verses 23-24 Jesus sums it all up with these words, "If anyone

loves me he will obey me, if anyone does not love me he will not obey me."

If God the Father and God the Son long to be loved, it is the height of folly for any man to deny

his need for love. Ashley Montague writes from the point of view of a scientist-

"The study of love is something from which scientists long shied away. But with the increased

interest in the origins of mental illness, more and more attention is being paid to the infancy

and childhood of human beings. What investigation has revealed is that love is, beyond all

cavil or question, the most important experience in the life of a human being. Show me a hardened

criminal, a juvenile delinquent, a psychopath or a "cold fish," and in almost every case I will show

you a person resorting to desperate means in order to attract the emotional warmth and attention

he failed to get but which he so much desires and needs. "Aggressive" behavior when fully understood

is, in fact, nothing but love frustrated, a technique for compelling love-as well as a means of taking

revenge on the society which has let that person down, disillusioned, deserted and dehumanized him.

Hence, the best way to approach aggressive behavior in children is not by aggressive behavior toward

them, but with love. And thisis true not only for children but for human beings at all ages."

The Scripture and science agree, the greatest of these is love. Love is the highest virtue man is

capable of giving or receiving. You cannot give God or man any higher gift than the gift of love.

The highest goal of life is to be like Christ. The only way to approach this goal is to be a person

filled with love. This is the same as saying one needs to be filled with the Spirit for He is the source

of love. The fruit of the Spirit is love. The more we are filled with the Spirit of Christ the more we

will have the fruit of love.

Many say that the sign you are filled with the Holy Spirit is that you will speak in tongues, but

that is an experience that occurred only in Corinth and was not an issue in any other church of the

New Testament. The real sign of being filled with the Holy Spirit is the fruit of the Spirit, and the

first fruit and main fruit is love. The most loving Christian is the most Spirit-filled Christian. Paul