Fruit of the Spirit - Joy

FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT – JOY

Joy is a part of God’s character, He is the God of all joy and it His desire for us to have His joy in our lives.

Like love I do not think the world’s description of joy as a feeling of great happiness is what Paul refers to as the fruit of the Spirit.  Joy is not the same as happiness. Their source is different, the Joy of the Lord is produced in us by the Holy Spirit, (John 14:14), happiness on the other hand is a feeling dependent upon our circumstances.

Life is filled with struggles, sickness, suffering and tragedy, so it stands to reason happiness is not something we continually experience.

Happiness comes from the outside while joy comes from the inside. The Bible says

Philippians 4.4:   Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice.'' And

1 Thess 5.16, ''Rejoice always?''  

And what about having ''joy, joy, joy, joy down in your heart?''  (I know that’s not a Bible verse! ) Joy is ours to have every day in every circumstance because its tied to Jesus within us.

In 1 Thessolonians 5:16 the verb is in the present tense which means it literally says, ''always rejoice and keep on rejoicing.'' This joy is always present in us, no matter what is going on around us. Nothing can take it from us, it can’t be stolen, deleted or diminished.

In Acts 16:25  But at midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God…     from chains in a prison cell.

Nehemiah 8:10 says, "The joy of the Lord is your strength." It was a day of grief and repentance, the day the scribe Ezra read “the Book of the Law of God” in the hearing of the assembly. A generation of Israelites suddenly realized what many previous generations had forsaken—a covenant of love with the great and mighty God. And, according to Nehemiah, they wept.

God meets us in our weakness and He exalts the humble. His joy takes us from weakness to strength because God’s power—His very presence—is greatest when we are most visibly vulnerable.

A friend of mine shared this story with me recently. When she was starting her family she suffered a miscarriage, while she was at the hospital she felt this overwhelming sense of wanting to cry but she didn’t. Over the next hours and into the following days although she was grieving she had this wonderful sense of joy that made her just want to praise God.  She said she actually felt guilty and wondered what others thought about her because she was just praising God. In that sad and tragic circumstance of her life the joy of the Lord was most certainly her strength, it came from within and nothing could take it from her.

(permission to share this story in this blog has been given)

As one of the older ladies in my church sings so often “I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart”.

Joy fruit of the Spirit- is it evident in your life?

Social Media- good or bad?

Recently my extended family were all together, sadly for very tragic reasons but nevertheless generations - cousins, aunts, sisters grandparents were all there. I captured a moment when some of us sat on the sofa and called it Family Time!

I can't find words to do this snapshot justice however I believe it speaks adequately for itself.

The question it raises in my mind is one that is often hotly debated.  Is Social Media a good thing or a bad thing?

What pulls us together as a family when we are scattered thousands of miles apart across the globe is Social Media thus it is a good thing; we keep in touch and up to date with each others lives not feeling the miles of distance between us too much.

Yet it draws us apart when we are right next to each other on the sofa- not such a good thing then.

So is Social Media a good thing or a bad thing? Or perhaps it is both.

The world truthfully shrinks with Skype and Face-time, Instagram Twitter and the mighty Facebook. It's like we are to-gether  in the same room and yet we're not, for in the midst of tragedy no tweet or gram can hold a loved one tight with arms of love and comfort.

It seems as if people have certainly tried to send cyber hugs through Twitter and Facebook using them a means of publicly sympathizing with us in our grief in these difficult days. I suppose it has its place, the messages of support and love have not gone unnoticed and are a source of comfort in one sense and an outlet for emotions and grief in another.

But what happens when the tweets and posts stop? And they surely will in time. What then? How will the emptiness that this broken world gives be filled and the yearning of the deep be satisfied?

For we will find that the world cannot satisfy, we will always come up empty when we seek lasting comfort in the temporal things of and in the world. We will always be searching and not finding the answers either in the arms of one who loves and cares for us or in the messages of sympathy and support tweeted and snapshot memories instagramed or facebooked.

The source of all comfort can only be found in God. He alone can comfort the comfortless with hope that stirs satisfaction in us now and always. When the wells of the worlds comfort and wisdom run dry Jesus is the well that is still running with springs of living water and is eternal, spring of life that will never run dry, that will never disappoint, that will sustain us and satisfy our lives with good things, that will love us when we don't feel lovable, that will heal our brokeness when we can't pick up the pieces and put ourselves back together and when we can't fathom why and we yearn for something, anything that can makes us feel, make us alive again we will find in Him the living water, the spring of life, that satisfies now and always.

Revelation 21:6:

 And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.

Revelation 7:16-17

 They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

Fruit of the Spirit - Love (pt 2)

Fruit of the Spirit – LOVE

Before looking at each of the qualities of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5 let me expand the challenge I hinted at in part 1 of this series.

Answer this honestly, for yourself, it’s not necessary to shout it out for all the world to hear on social media, but answer honestly.

I hope you took a little time to consider and jot down the answer, we can look at this again at the end of the series.

So, now on to the first of the listed qualities. LOVE.

I looked up the definition in the dictionary and here are 2 dictionary definitions of the word Love:

an intense emotion of affection, warmth, fondness, and regard towards a person or thing  Collins dictionary

strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties   Merriam Webster dictionary

Love is one of those things that everyone knows something about and we all have people whom we would undoubtedly say we loved such as mothers, fathers, sisters, husbands and so on. And sometimes we often say we have love for things like I love spaghetti Carbonara and oooh I do so love chocolate!

So while we may know something of love from a natural perspective I believe this is not what Paul is referring to as a quality of the Fruit of the Spirit. Let’s see what the Bible says about love:

Romans 5:8 ESV

But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

John 13:34-35 ESV

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

1 Corinthians 13:7 ESV

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

John 15:13 ESV

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

John 3:16 ESV

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

1 John 4:18 ESV

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

1 John 4:10 ESV

In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

1 Corinthians 13:4

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant

The love Paul refers to in Galatians is Agape love, the same love that caused Jesus to die on a cross for us. It is a selfless love; it is an intimate love.   Those are just a few scriptures but there are so many more….take a look in this great book, the Word of God,  for some. Colossians 3:12-14 and I Corinthians 13 is a great place for a wonderful and challenging description of love.

Even in the Old Testament we read in Song of Solomon that “His Banner over us is love”.  Like the bridegroom in the Song of Solomon, our Bridegroom, Jesus, has set His love over us as His declaration of victory. It is our identity. It is the identifying quality of a Spirit filled christian.

Interesting isn’t  it that this is the first quality of the fruit of the Spirit that Paul mentions, I don’t think it’s been listed first by accident or random choice. There is nothing about the Bible or in the bible by accident, the Word of God is living and breathed and inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Love, then, is the foundation without it there is no joy no peace no longsuffering no kindness no goodness no faithfulness no gentleness no self-control.  

So important is this characteristic that Jesus spent a large part of His last words to His disciples on the subject. In John 13–16, we see Jesus first demonstrates love and then preaches on it: love and obedience, love and the Spirit, love and prayer, love and His friendship, love and joy.

Does your life bear the banner of love? Are you aware of God’s great love for you? Do you have great love for Him and for others? Are you thoroughly saturated in love? “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him” (1 John 4:16). There is no way around it.

The Christian life is a loving life. Love is the fruit of the Spirit which is produced in the life of every Christian.  Let me just note that fruit is not fully developed overnight. It takes time.

Fruit of the Spirit

I went for a meal the other day with some friends and while we chatted and caught up we perused the menu and in particular the daily specials. One of my friends ordered one of the specials but the waitress said "sorry that’s now off the menu"; this friend is a fussy eater and actually likes very little, certainly in comparison to me who will eat mostly everything, but she ordered another dish. A few minutes later the waitress came back "sorry we’ve none of that left" and she gave my friend the chef’s alternative suggestion, but no, my friend tried once more with the one other dish on the menu she would eat.  Sadly for my friend she ended up eating only chips ! Being girls we grumbled about how they should have a better menu and how they should ensure there’s enough ingredients before putting a dish on the menu.

Now I know that one of my friends that day was under some stress and was in the middle of a very difficult situation. That evening as I reflected on our lunch I thought about the lack of choices one friend had from the menu because the chef or whoever was responsible for ordering the ingredients for the dishes in the menu had for whatever reason not got it right. I wondered if my other friend in need had got what she wanted from me as she might have looked to me not just as her friend but as her Christian friend, one living and so walking by the Spirit advertising the fruit of the spirit on my menu board. Did I show her love today? Did I impart peace to her or was I too bothered by own anxieties and stresses?  Was I lacking in any of these fruits that I should be bearing in my Spirit filled life?

John 15:16 and Ephesians 1:4 tells us we are chosen and appointed to go and bear fruit. This concept is often used in Scripture, but what is bearing fruit?

Essentially it is becoming like Jesus. Spiritual fruit will show itself in our lives as a change in our character and outlook.

The Bible gives an excellent description a life characterized by the fruit of the Spirit. Galatians 5:22–23 says, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control."

Is that what others see in my life, what others benefit from in my life? God is not asking for perfection, but He is asking that these fruits be primary characteristics of a life that is lived for Him.

I want to explore this spiritual fruit over the next days and then conclude with how this spiritual fruit is produced in our lives.