Rebekah has been sharing with us, among some
other things, concerning the ministry of the Holy
Spirit in our lives.
And I'd like to just continue along that
theme a little by turning to Galatians chapter
5 and reading with you verses 22 and
23.
Galatians chapter 5 and verses 22 and 23.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love,
joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
meekness, temperance.
Against such there is no law.
When the Spirit of God speaks here of
the fruit of the Spirit, he's speaking of
something that is supernatural.
And when we read this list of virtues
of the Christian life, we must be careful
to realize that these have nothing to do
absolutely nothing to do with similar traits that
the world may know about.
You say, oh, my neighbor down the street
belongs to the Mafia, and he loves his
children.
Forget it.
It has nothing to do with this whatever.
The fruit that's mentioned here is absolutely supernatural.
An unsaved person cannot do any of the
things that are found in this list.
He can't love in the way it's meant
here.
He can't have joy.
He can't have peace.
He can't exhibit long-suffering, no way, because
these are supernatural.
The unsaved person is absolutely foreign to him.
Not only that, you and I who are
believers in the Lord Jesus, we cannot produce
any of these things by our own effort.
They're only produced by the Spirit of God
through us.
But I think it's only fair to add,
although God wants to make me holy, although
he wants to see this Christian character in
my life, he'll never do it without my
cooperation.
In the Christian life, there is a curious
mingling of the divine and the human.
Only God can make me holy, but I'll
tell you, he wants my participation, too.
And the will of God is that your
life and my life should crackle with the
supernatural.
God wants you and me to be radioactive
with the Holy Spirit.
He wants us to live an otherworldly life,
so that when people come in contact with
us, they'll know there's something different about us.
Now, is that true of us?
Like in our community?
I suppose in every community there are all
kinds of little battles, you know, fights going
on.
Is that right?
Am I a part of them, or do
I arise above flesh and blood so that
I have nothing to do with them at
all?
When my angels battle with Mrs. Bratislava's brats
down the street, and she comes and tells
me off in a few well-chosen words,
how do I react?
In kind?
Tip for cap?
Or do I turn around and show some
kindness and courtesy to her?
That's really what we're speaking about here in
Galatians chapter 5, verses 22 and 23.
Another worldly, supernatural type of behavior that labels
itself as clearly the work of the Spirit
of God.
So, when we come to this first word,
love...
Oh, it's so confusing, isn't it, the way
that word's used today?
Let's be very clear.
This is not the love that's associated with
passion.
It's not the love even of friendship.
It's not the love of affection.
But it's a divine love, the type of
love that God has shown to us, and
which He wants to see shed abroad in
our hearts by the Holy Spirit who indwells
us.
It's a love that's impartial, unselfish.
It seeks the good of all.
It's a love that goes out not only
to the handsome, but to the homely as
well.
Not only to one's friends, but to one's
foes.
That's what makes it distinctly supernatural.
Jesus said, If you love those who love
you, what thanks have ye?
Do not even the heathen the same?
And, of course, the answer is yes.
It doesn't take divine life to love those
who love you, does it?
But it does take divine life to love
those who've wronged you, to love those who
have hurt you, to love those who are
out to get you.
One of my favorite illustrations of this kind
of love concerns our dear brother, Dr. McCulley.
Years ago, when we were at Emmaus Bible
School, he and I were praying together there
in Oak Park.
We were praying about some of the situations
at the school, and as we were there
on our knees in a little apartment, his
mind went back to Ecuador, and he prayed.
He said, And Lord, let me live long
enough to see those fellows saved who killed
our boys, that I may throw my arms
around them and tell them I love them
because they love my Christ.
The fruit of the Spirit is love.
Dear friend, that love isn't natural.
It's supernatural.
And I'll tell you, that prayer was heard
in highest heaven, and God allowed him to
live long enough to see those fellows saved,
and he went down and did throw his
arms around them and tell them he loved
them because they loved the Savior.
I often think of that fellow, Nitsuo Fushida,
who led the attack on Pearl Harbor, radioed
back triumphantly the tremendous success of his mission.
He was absolutely jubilant and ecstatic with what
had been done.
And then, as you know, the tide of
war turned, and the United States rose once
again, and this dear fellow was infuriated by
the end of the war, and he dedicated
the rest of his life to the task
of bringing the United States before an international
tribunal to try the United States for atrocities
perpetrated on prisoners of war.
And he gave himself to that task.
Well, in the United States, there was a
Christian lady, and her parents had been killed
at that time in the Philippines.
They were missionaries in the Philippines, and they
had been killed.
And God gave that woman a tremendous love
for the Japanese people, and she determined to
give herself to visiting the Japanese prisoners of
war in this country.
And she did.
She went to the camps.
She went to the prisons, and she visited
them.
She told them about the Savior, and she
brought New Testaments to them and shared these
New Testaments with them with love.
The fruit of the Spirit is love.
She really loved those people.
In a sense, they had killed her parents.
And sometimes they used to say to her,
Why do you do this?
Naturally speaking, you're supposed to be our enemy.
Why do you come and show this love
and affection to us?"
And she would say, It's because of the
prayer my parents prayed before they died.
She never told them what the prayer was.
And so, after the war, Mitsuo Fushida started
his interrogations of these prisoners.
And over and over again, this story would
come up of a Christian lady in the
United States who visited the prisoners.
Not so much atrocities, the very opposite.
How she would visit them and share the
gospel with them and give them New Testaments,
and how oftentimes she spoke of the prayer
her parents prayed before they died.
And this was very unsettling of Mitsuo Fushida,
very unsettling.
It wasn't at all the type of information
he wanted to get.
And after a while, in a very strange
way, a copy of the New Testament came
into his hands.
And he read the book of Matthew, and
he was fascinated.
He went on to the book of Mark,
and he was just captivated.
He couldn't let go.
And he was reading the book of Luke,
and the Spirit of God flashed into his
heart.
He came to those words, Father, forgive them,
for they know not what they do.
And then he knew the prayer that those
missionaries had prayed in the Philippines before they
were killed.
And he turned over his life to the
Lord Jesus, and Mitsuo Fushida spent the rest
of his life traveling throughout the world, telling
men and women the good news of reconciliation
through the Lord Jesus Christ.
What had done it?
What did it?
I'll tell you what did it.
The fruit of the Spirit in a woman's
life in this country.
He was reached by that love which went
out to those people.
This love is sacrificial.
It's absolutely unconditional.
It seeks nothing in return.
Absolutely pure, unlike most of the love of
this world.
Absolutely pure, free from any impatience, envy, pride,
vindictiveness, or spite.
The greatest virtue of the Christian life, and
without it, all our noblest endeavors are in
vain.
The fruit of the Spirit is love.
But that isn't all it says.
It says the fruit of the Spirit is
joy.
When we come to the Lord Jesus Christ
in simple trusting faith, we find what Peter
spoke of as joy unspeakable and full of
glory.
And once again, we want to emphasize that
the joy that is spoken of here is
something the world doesn't know anything about.
It doesn't know anything about it.
We use the word in the world.
The world uses the word, but it's not
the same thing.
The world's joy is closely linked to circumstances.
The joy which is the fruit of the
Spirit is independent of circumstances.
Anyone can rejoice when everything is going his
way, but this joy springs from our relationship
to the Lord Jesus Christ at the right
hand of God.
And it's absolutely independent of earthly circumstances, and
really, for a Christian to be permanently robbed
of his joy, you'd have to take Christ
off his throne.
It's really right to say, the source of
all my singing is high in heaven above.
That's right.
My joy has a wonderful foundation there at
the right hand of God, and I'll tell
you the scaffolding can be falling down all
around us, but we can still have our
joy.
I think we'll see that as we go
along.
It springs from our relationship to the Lord
Jesus and his precious promises.
Now, an interesting thing about this joy, the
fruit of the Spirit, is that it can
coexist with suffering.
That's strange, isn't it?
Can you be joyful in suffering?
Yes, this is the fruit of the Spirit.
Turn to Colossians chapter 1, please.
Colossians chapter 1 and verse 11.
Colossians 1, 11.
It says, Amazing,
isn't it?
Patience and long-suffering with joyfulness.
And then if you'll turn over to 1
Thessalonians chapter 1 and verse 6, you find
this strange combination of words.
It says, And ye became followers of us
and of the Lord, having received the word
in much affliction with joy of the Holy
Ghost.
Christian joy can coexist with suffering, and suffering
saints have testified down through the centuries of
the church's history that he giveth songs in
the night.
Any of you who do hospital visitation or
a home visitation know how very true this
is.
Joy can coexist with sorrow.
That's a strange thing, isn't it?
Joy that is the fruit of the Spirit
can...
You can have it at the same time
you have sorrow.
You can be standing by the grave of
a loved one, and there's sorrow there, and
there's joy, too.
To know that he's been forever released from
sin and sickness and sorrow and suffering and
death, and he's gone in to see the
King in his beauty.
And, of course, there is the severing of
tender earthly ties, and there is the pain
and sorrow connected with it, but the joy
is there.
Just the same.
But joy, the joy which is the fruit
of the Spirit, cannot coexist with sin.
That's distinctive, isn't it?
It cannot coexist with sin.
When we sin, we lose our song.
Years ago, I knew a young fellow who
started to indulge doubt concerning the Word of
God, and he came to me one day,
and he said, "'Mr. McDonald, I've lost my
song.'" That's right.
You can't have sin and have joy at
the same time.
I'm glad to say he got his song
back when he put his mind under the
Word of God and not above it.
But our song is gone until we confess
and forsake that sin.
The Lord Jesus taught his disciples, when they
were persecuted and reviled and cast out, to
rejoice and be exceedingly glad for great was
their reward in heaven.
And that's exactly what they did.
We turn over to the book of Acts,
and we read that they rejoiced that they
were counted worthy to suffer for his namesake.
There it is again.
Rejoice that they were counted worthy to suffer.
As you and I, I know, have read
the testimonies of people who were standing up
there before the crowds and stones were flying,
and they reached up and found blood from
their face, and a great surge of Christian
joy flooded through their souls to think that
they had been counted worthy to suffer so
for the Lord Jesus Christ.
The fruit of the Spirit is joy, supernatural
joy.
I say anybody can rejoice when circumstances are
good, but Christian joy rejoices when circumstances are
at their worst.
And I think one of the loveliest expressions
of that in the Bible is found back
in the book of Habakkuk in the Old
Testament.
The book of Habakkuk, and chapter 3, verses
17 and 18.
Habakkuk, chapter 3, verses 17 and 18.
It says, "...although the fig tree shall not
blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vine.
The labor of the olive shall fail, and
the field shall yield no meat.
The flock shall be cut off from the
fold, and there shall be no herd in
the stall."
Boy, you could hardly have a worse situation
than that.
He's really painting a bleak picture, and yet
after he gets through all that, he says,
"...yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I
will joy in the God of my salvation."
Wonderful, isn't it?
The fruit of the Spirit is joy.
But not only so, the fruit of the
Spirit is peace.
And once again, we have to think of
this in a supernatural way.
Now, we know that as soon as we're
justified by faith, we have peace with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ.
We know that.
We know that we have peace of conscience,
because we know the sin question has been
dealt with, that our sins have been put
behind God's back, and that he'll remember them
no more.
But God wants us to have the peace
of God ruling in our hearts.
He wants us to have the peace of
Christ umpiring in our hearts.
What do we mean by this?
Well, we mean the serenity and the tranquility
that come from knowing that our times are
in God's hands, and that nothing can happen
to us apart from his pervasive will.
Sometimes I don't think we realize what a
wonderful thing it is to be a child
of God, to know that we're the apple
of his eye, that he holds us in
the palms of his hands, and our names
are inscribed upon his heart, and it matters
to him about us.
And whatever comes to our lives comes as
a result of infinite love, wisdom, and power.
And when I appropriate that by faith, I
have the peace of God in my heart.
So, it means I can remain calm when
I have a tire blow out on the
freeway.
It means I really don't have to lose
my cool when traffic keeps me from meeting
that plane on time.
It means that even in a car crash,
I can know his peace.
Or when grease ignites on the kitchen range.
It was peace, this peace that enabled Peter
to sleep in jail.
There were some other people that weren't sleeping
at the time.
It was this peace that enabled Stephen to
pray for his guilty murderers.
And this was the peace that enabled Paul
to take over in that shipwreck.
Imagine the prisoner giving orders to the crew
and the captain.
That's about the way it was.
This is that supernatural work of the Spirit
of God in our lives that when our
plane flies into clear air turbulence and is
being thrown around like a feather in a
gale, when it drops 3,000 feet at
one time and the wing tip of the
plane flexes 13 feet, and everybody in the
plane is screaming and trying to get the
Swiss steak and gravy and peas off their
clothes, it's the peace that's the fruit of
the Spirit that enables the child of God
to commit his soul to the Lord and
to rest in him.
It's something you can't anticipate beforehand, but it's
very real when it happens.
Oh, it's the peace when I go into
the doctor's office and he says to me,
I'm very sorry to tell you that it's
malignant.
And I'm able to say, it's perfectly all
right, doctor.
I know the Lord.
For me, it'll be absent from the body
and at home with the Lord.
We had a sister in our assembly just
recently.
That's exactly what happened, except that the doctor
said to her, I'm sorry to tell you,
but your heart condition is much worse than
I had anticipated.
And she said, doctor, it's perfectly all right.
I know the Lord and it'll be eternal
glory for me.
And he got very nervous and changed the
subject.
That's why we sing, and I'm sure that
strikes a lovely response in ours.
Peace, perfect peace.
I don't know if you've ever noticed, that
first line is a question all the way
down at him.
Peace, perfect peace in this dark world of
sin?
That's the way it was written.
Question mark.
Peace, perfect peace by thronging duties pressed?
Question mark.
Peace, perfect peace with sorrows raging round?
Question mark.
With loved ones far away, our future all
unknown?
Jesus we know, and he is on the
throne.
The fruit of the spirit is peace.
And not only so, it says the fruit
of the spirit is long-suffering.
Long-suffering.
It speaks to my heart.
Terrible to have a short fuse, isn't it?
This is the opposite of that.
Long-suffering is that which bears up patiently
and triumphantly under the aggravations of life.
How are we doing?
It can refer to the circumstances of life,
but more often it refers to people, the
aggravations that people bring to you.
If you want to think of long-suffering,
think of our God, and think of how
long-suffering he is with the human race.
I tell you, we live across the bay
from San Francisco, and I want to tell
you San Francisco is sin city.
And I often think, in moods where I'm
as carnal as a goat, if I were
God, I'd just wipe the thing right into
the Pacific Ocean.
It's that bad, you know.
God isn't like that.
God is long-suffering.
And he looks down and sees this terrible
jungle of sin, and still he's not willing
that any should perish.
He wants all men to come to him.
And he wants his long-suffering to be
reproduced in you and in me as well.
He doesn't want me to be quick-tempered.
He doesn't want me to fly off the
handle or to try to get even with
people.
He doesn't want me to display the impetuousness
of the world, but he wants me to
display a kind of conquering patience.
I've really been moved to read the writings
of Kari Ten Boom and their experiences in
the concentration camps.
She, her sister, her father taken off to
concentration camps, and how, of course, her father
and sister eventually died there.
But oftentimes when she and her sister would
be talking together, Betsy would say to her,
Kari, we've got to do something about these
people.
After we get out of here, we've got
to do something to help these people.
And Kari, of course, kept thinking of the
poor people who were suffering with her.
That wasn't what Betsy was thinking about.
She was thinking about those who were perpetrating
all these atrocities on them.
Betsy was thinking, Kari, when we get out
of here, we've got to do something to
help these people find the way of love.
And Kari wrote this, and I think it's
beautiful.
She said, and I wondered, not for the
first time, what sort of a person she
was, this sister of mine.
What kind of road she followed while I
trudged beside her on the all-too-solid
earth.
What was it?
The fruit of the Spirit is longsuffering.
And I might just say, too, that the
road Betsy followed was the road of longsuffering
that Kari followed, too, although she disclaimed it
in her own humble way.
If you haven't read those books, you really
should.
Really should.
See the grace of the Lord Jesus coming
out in human lives like that.
See the fruit of the Spirit being developed
under those circumstances.
And then our verse goes on to say
that the fruit of the Spirit is not
only longsuffering.
The fruit of the Spirit is kindness.
The King James Version says gentleness, but almost
all modern versions say kindness.
Kindness describes the gentle, gracious, generous disposition that
results in the doing of favors, the showing
of mercies, and the bestowing of benefits on
others.
Kindness is gracious, not harsh.
Sympathetic, not indifferent.
Helpful, not uninvolved.
It's considerate, compassionate, and charitable.
Now, there is a natural kindness in this
world.
You meet people of the world and you
say, My, isn't he kind?
My, isn't she kind?
A natural kindness, but this is supernatural.
It goes above and beyond all man's natural
kindness.
And, for instance, it lends, hoping for nothing
in return.
That is natural.
Household financial lends, hoping for something in return.
That's the natural, right?
This kindness shows hospitality to those who can't
repay, and it rewards every insult with a
kindness.
Years ago, there was a Christian fellow in
a university, and in that section there was
a young fellow who had become an alcoholic.
And he became so repulsive and vile as
an alcoholic that even his worldly friends gave
up on him.
And finally, he was just tossed out of
his quarters where he was living.
They didn't want him there anymore.
And the Christian fellow heard about it, and
he went to him.
And he said to him, I understand that
you're out of your quarters.
And he said, Yeah, that was right.
He said, Well, I have an empty room
in mind.
He said, If you'd like to come and
stay there, you may.
And so, that alcoholic moved in with the
Christian fellow.
Now, that Christian fellow oftentimes used to have
to clean up for him after he was
sick, used to have to undress him and
bathe him, practically put him to bed.
And this went on week after week.
Christian fellow with a servant heart of the
Lord Jesus, showing kindness to a repulsive fellow
like that.
And finally, it got to this alcoholic.
And one day, he said in irritation to
the Christian, he said, Look here, what are
you doing all this for?
What are you after?
And the Christian said, I'm after your soul.
And he got it.
You see, if the fruit of the Spirit
is reproduced in our lives, it really produces
results.
It really does.
I love to tell the story of dear
Dr. Ironside.
Ken mentioned his lovely books out on the
book table.
Dr. Ironside was in a house, and he
had accumulated a lot of junk in the
basement.
That's in the days when you used to
call the junk men, and he'd sell all
the old papers and magazines and metal and
all the rest.
And so, dear Dr. Ironside called the Jewish
junk dealer.
And when he came, Dr. Ironside, he had
a bit of mischief about him, too, you
know.
And he started to haggle with this man,
telling him what wonderful junk it was, you
know, and how much money it was worth.
But the other man had different ideas.
His philosophy was you can beat an egg,
but you can't beat a Jew.
And so, you know who won.
You know who won.
And so, he was triumphantly carrying out the
papers and the rags and the metal and
all the rest.
And as he was going out with the
last armload of it to the truck, Dr.
Ironside called him back and said, Oh, he
said, come back here, there's something I forgot.
And the poor fellow, he thought Dr. Ironside
was going to go back on his hard
-fought battle, you know.
And Dr. Ironside reached in his pocket and
took out 50 cents and handed it to
him.
He said, here's something I'd like to give
you in the name of the Lord Jesus.
And the Jewish junk dealer went away, shaking
his head and saying, Nobody ever gave me
anything in the name of Jesus before.
The sin of the spirit is kindness.
Isn't that wonderful?
Isn't it wonderful when the spirit of God
makes us innovative like that?
And we show Christ to people.
All that Jewish man ever associated with Christians
was persecution.
He said, nobody ever gave me anything in
the name of Jesus before.
The fruit of the spirit is kindness.
Then it says the fruit of the spirit
is goodness.
And goodness here means, it means excellence of
character.
It means somebody has described it as virtue
equipped at every point.
Goodness means that the person is kind, he's
virtuous, and he's righteous in every area of
life.
It's the opposite of badness.
If you want to know what a good
man is in this sense, think of what
a bad man is.
A bad man is deceitful perhaps, immoral, treacherous,
unjust, cruel, selfish, hateful, covetous, perhaps intemperate as
well.
But the good man exists truth and righteousness
and honesty and every other desirable trait.
I think Paul helps us in understanding goodness.
He says, for a righteous man, one would
scarcely dare to die.
Yet for adventure, for a good man, one
would die.
For a righteous man, you wouldn't.
That righteous man, well, he pays a hundred
cents on the dollar.
He's honest in that sense, but he lacks
the milk of human affection.
He's not loving and he's not lovable.
He's absolutely straight, straight as a ruler.
But the good man combines all that straightness.
He's affectionate and lovable as well.
And we see it, of course, in the
life of our Lord in a superlative sense,
the goodness.
It's a terrible illustration to use sometimes, I
think, but it's supposed to be true.
Murdoch Campbell, in one of his books on
the Psalms, tells of a highland minister who
had a wife who seemed called to make
life miserable for him.
And one day he was sitting by the
fire there in the manse, and she came
in and she grabbed the Bible out of
his hand and tossed it into the fire.
And he looked up at her and he
said, I don't think I ever sat by
a warmer fire.
And you know, that broke her and his
thorn became a lily and his Jezebel became
a Lydia.
You see, it's when we fight back, it's
when we act in the flesh that we
lose the battle.
But if somehow or other we just turn
over the reins to the Holy Spirit, let
us let him reproduce these things in our
lives, my, what a difference it would make
and what an impact upon the world.
The fruit of the Spirit is faith, and
I think almost all translators here agree that
the word is really faithfulness.
It doesn't mean saving faith.
All Christians have saving faith, but this means
faithfulness.
It's fidelity and dependability in dealings with God
and with one another.
Someone has said that faithfulness is being true
to oneself, to one's nature, to any promise
given, to any trust committed.
We have a saying, that man's word is
as good as his bond.
That means that if a man says it,
you can depend upon it, he's absolutely true
to his word.
The faithful man keeps appointments on time, he
pays his bills on schedule, he attends the
meetings regularly, he performs the duties assigned to
him without having to be checked up on
all the time, constantly reminded.
This man is true to his marriage vows,
and he's faithful, unfailing in the discharge of
his family responsibilities.
The faithful man, according to the Scriptures, is
a man who is true to his word,
even if it's going to cost him something.
He doesn't cancel one supper engagement for another
when the diet might be better in the
second one, the menu.
He doesn't renege on a work assignment when
the opportunity comes to go off to the
lake.
He sells the house at the agreed price,
even if later he could have got $10
,000 more for it.
And, of course, the ultimate in faithfulness is
being willing to die rather than renounce the
Lord.
I think that we don't read enough of
the stories of the Christian martyrs.
If we read more of them, we'd find
what faithfulness really is.
King demanded that a Christian recant his testimony
of faithfulness and loyalty to the Lord, and
the Christian said, The heart thought it, the
mouth spoke it, the hand subscribed it, and
if need be by God's grace, the blood
will feel it.
That's faithfulness.
Pauly Carp was taken and threatened to be
burned at the stake, and he was told
that he could have his life if he
would just recant, and he said, These 86
years have I served my Lord.
He never did me any harm, and I
cannot deny my Lord and Master now.
The promise is given in Revelation, Be thou
faithful unto death, and I will give thee
a crown of life.
So it's a time when Michael Faraday gave
a marvelous scientific demonstration in England.
The Prince of Wales was there, and the
demonstration was so marvelous that the crowd rose
in one great ovation to him.
And afterwards, the Prince of Wales proposed a
motion of congratulation, and the thing was put
to a vote and a resolution was carried,
and everybody waited for Michael Faraday to come
forward.
You know, he had slipped out and gone
off to the meeting where he attended every
week to attend the prayer meeting.
Faithfulness to the prayer meeting.
The fruit of the Spirit is meekness, and
all the commentators will tell you that they
have a hard time defining this word, meekness.
When we think of meekness, we think of
Caspar Milquetoast, the comic strip character who is
the essence of timidity and weakness.
But meekness here comes from supernatural strength, and
I would suggest to you that the real
meaning of the word meekness is brokenness.
Brokenness.
It refers to a believer's loving submission to
all God's dealings in his life, and it
refers to his meek receiving of the blows
of life from other men as well.
He's self-effacing, this man, not self-asserting.
When he makes a mistake, he's quick to
apologize and ask for forgiveness.
Once again, if I could just refer to
Dr. Ironside.
You know, a lot of people tried to
pick arguments with him over non-consequential matters,
and sometimes Dr. Ironside would say to him,
to the man, When we get to heaven,
one of us is going to be wrong,
and perhaps it'll be me.
You know you can't argue with a man
like that.
He's meek.
He's broken, you know, and God wants us
to be broken.
And finally, the fruit of the Spirit is
temperance, and this means self-control, not just
with regard to alcoholic beverages, but in every
area of life.
By the power of the Spirit of God,
the Christian is called upon to exercise self
-control.
Self-control in his plot life, in his
appetite, in his speech, in his sex life,
in his temper, and every other power that
God has given to him.
Paul spoke of this a lot.
He spoke of the Christian athlete, the Christian
soldier, the need for discipline in the Christian
life.
I often hear Christians complaining that they can't
kick a certain habit, you know.
They just buckle under this habit.
When you say you can't kick it, you're
saying the Spirit of God isn't powerful enough
to enable you to kick it.
I have unsaved friends that have kicked habits,
pretty strong habits, too.
They didn't have the power of the indwelling
Spirit of God.
No Christian can honestly say that, because the
fruit of the Spirit is self-control.
So here we have it.
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy,
peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.
Against such there is no law.
May the Lord send us forth with a
real desire to no longer judge ourselves by
how we stack up with those in our
community or at work or at school, but
how we really compare with these fruits of
the Spirit as they're revealed in the Word.