Soil/Soul Types Matter

 

“Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop...”  Mark 4:20

After spending six months with a jungle tribe, a missionary in the last century had led only one man to Christ. The man wanted to be baptized, but because of the difficulties in communicating the full message of the gospel, the discouraged missionary had doubts about the man’s sincerity. So he told him, “I’m going away for a year. When I come back, if you are still following Christ, I will baptize you.” True to his word, the missionary returned a year later. Waiting on the banks of the river to welcome him stood the entire village! “We have all trusted Christ and we now want you to baptize us!” his old friend exclaimed. The seed that had been sown in one man’s life had fallen upon good soil and the harvest was plentiful.

Soil type matters if seeds are to flourish. Heart-type matters if God’s word is to flourish. When His word is sown into a heart ready to hear, it takes root and produces a crop. That crop is soon evident to everyone else. Attitudes change. Interests change. Perspectives change. Sins that were once acceptable are seen as disgusting. A life once focused upon self-interest is now consumed with God-interests, or what the Bible calls “fruit.” This “fruit” is described in Galatians 5:19-23 and has eternal significance. It won’t vanish when this world does. Spiritual fruit results in God-honoring relationships, pure conduct, and new believers being added to God’s kingdom. One way to identify followers of Christ is to inspect the fruit of their lives (Matt. 7:16-22). 

Identify some of the fruit that the word of God has produced in your life. Where could there be more?

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How Productive Are You?

 

“…some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times what was sown.”  Mark 4:20

The dying man forced a smile to his sunken lips. “Thank you, nurse, for your help. I prayed for all you girls today.” The nurse smoothed back white strands of hair from her patient’s forehead. “Mr. Banks, you’re such a sweetheart. Ever since you prayed with that pastor, you’ve changed. We all noticed.” He gripped her hand. “I spent 80 years living for money, fame, and lust. I wasted my life, but Jesus saved me last month, and before I join Him, I want to tell everyone what He did for me.”

God’s word had taken root in Mr. Banks’ heart only a short time ago, but it was already producing fruit. Because he wasted most of his life on selfish pursuits, he can’t be as productive as the missionary who spent a lifetime serving God and others. But thankfully, God does not judge us according to what other people have done. He only holds us accountable for what we have done with what He has given us. A Sudanese widow trying to keep her children alive is not held to the same standard as an American evangelist with advanced degrees. The starving widow may actually do more with what she was given than many others who are squandering opportunities. God knows the material, educational, and spiritual blessings he has entrusted to each of us, and by that standard He judges our lives.

How eternally productive are you?  Are you producing thirty sixty, or a hundred times what was sown?

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Stop that! I mean it!

Of all the character traits lacking in American society today, self-control has to be the most obvious.

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Just look around. People are out of control. Greed, lust, self-promotion, anger, substance abuse, spending, and arrogance are just a few of the ways human beings refuse to control themselves--or better yet, allow God to control them.

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The idea of self-control sounds a little outdated in our culture of reality television and blatant pornography. Self-control has been replaced by externals control because we refuse to do it ourselves. We think we've found clever ways to ignore the boundaries God established long ago, but it's hard to ignore the consequences.

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So we rename them.

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Drunkenness and drug addiction have been cleaned up and elevated to the status of a "disease." Homosexual perversion is now a "lifestyle alternative," and pornographers cry loud and long for their right to "freedom of expression."

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How clever we are! We have deluded ourselves into believing that what was once evil is now acceptable. And we assume that--if there is a God---He's going right along with it.

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But Scripture warns, "Be not deceived, God is not mocked. Whatever a man sows, that will he reap."

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On the flip side of self-control, are the positive traits we should be exhibiting and are not.

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Notice that self-control is last on the list of nine spiritual fruits. I think that's intentional. Without self-control, it is impossible for God's Spirit to so fill us enough to live out the other eight. Without controlling our natural fleshly impulses, we'll easily slide right back into the very sin God delivered us from. Without practicing the daily disciplines of prayer, worship, and study of God's Word, the other Fruits of the Spirit won't be able to flourish.

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Self-control is the ribbon that ties up the package. Without it,there isn't a package.

It's easy to judge the people who are clearly coloring outside the lines, but what about you? Are there areas of your life where you need self-control?

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What about your fantasy life? Your choice of entertainment? Your shopping habits? Your eating habits? Or your temper?

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Are there areas in which you feel defeated or that you'll never measure up? Do your senses of identity and significance need the control of God's Spirit to regulate them? Do you see yourself as God sees you, or are you still using the world's crooked meter-stick to decide your worth?

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Self-control covers far more ground than we may think. It's the icing on the cake, but the most necessary if we want victory in all other areas.

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It's only in fully committing yourself to Christ that you will be able to lay claim to these delicious fruits. You can't do it yourself. Jesus is ready to do it for you, but you've got to give him the key to the orchard gate.

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Old Faithful

Everyone's heard of Old Faithful, Wyoming's geyser that erupts every hour and a half year round. People travel from all over the world to witness the phenomenon.

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It's so reliable, no one worries they'll miss it or it will suddenly stop shooting its incredible arc into the sky.

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We take for granted the things that never fail us. Faithfulness is truly appreciated only when it is gone.

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Faithfulness is the seventh Fruit of the Spirit that God wants to supernaturally instill in each of his children.

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A simple look around tells us why we need it. No one is faithful anymore. The person you took for better or worse got worse and you took off. The "lifetime" guarantee on your new appliance meant the "lifetime of the appliance" which turned out to be six months. We church-hop, friend-hop, job-hop, spouse-hop, and God-hop our way through life and wonder why we're not experiencing all that abundant life Jesus was talking about.

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We're not faithful by nature. Our human nature tells us that if it gets unpleasant, bail out. After all, it's about me and my happiness, so if I'm not happy, something needs to change.

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And that's true. But the something that needs to change is usually you.

All through Scripture, God constantly points to himself and says, "This is how to do it. Watch me. Be like me." He is faithful to us and wants us to mimic that in our earthly relationships and in our relationship with him.

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But it's hard for us to stop our continual search for self-satisfaction. We're like the little boy who stomps on the silver dollar in the mud to get to the shiny penny on the sidewalk. We eagerly trade in the peace of God for a cheap thrill that lasts only until we get it unwrapped. Then we whine that God has deserted us.

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He hasn't gone anywhere. His ways haven't changed. His character hasn't changed. He's the same God who rescued you last time, waiting until you get full of yourself and come back to him.

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And the more we bask in the faithfulness of God, the more we  become that to the people in our lives. He doesn't leave us when the going gets rough. And if he can stick it out with us, why can't we hang in there for the people he's put in our lives?

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Next time you hear or read about Old Faithful, let it be a reminder to take a quick inventory of your own faithfulness.

• Are you being faithful to Christ?
• Is he proud that you bear his name?
• Are you hanging in there with the difficult people in your life?
• Are you staying true to the calling God has placed on your life?

When you stand before him, will you hear the words: "Well done,  good and faithful servant?"

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Faithfulness has a rich reward.

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A Gentle Answer

Remember when the first President Bush called for a "kinder, gentler nation?"

What did he mean?

God knew what he meant. That's why He included gentleness as one of the Fruits of His Spirit. He knew we needed it and could not manufacture it very well on our own.

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Scripture says, "A gentle answer turns away wrath." We can avoid conflict and calm the fiercest rage with something as simple as a gentle word. But how often do we use it? Why speak softly when a shriek will get the job done?

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In a world filled with people Hell-bent on serving their own needs, who has time or energy for a gentle answer?

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Someone bugs me, I bug them back. 
Somebody irritates me, they need to hear about it. 
Some jerk cuts me off in traffic, I'm gonna lay on my horn until they wish they'd never merged. 
Somebody disagrees with my politics, I'll show 'em how loud I can be.

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We're a nation of shouters, as if the win goes to the loudest and most obnoxious. But what have the winners won?

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Okay, so you're first in line. Is it at the expense of your well-being? Isn't your heart still thundering, your mind replaying how you had the last word? Isn't your blood pressure skyrocketing and you're now looking around for anyone else who might step on your rights?

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Is that any way to live? Honestly.

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Gentleness doesn't come naturally to many of us. Left to ourselves, we'd be obnoxious bullies alienating everyone around us and eventually ourselves.

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God ushers His gentleness into our lives with the softest whisper, the barest hint of fragrance, like honeysuckle in the spring. Gentleness is not merely for the benefit of others. Gentleness softens the heart of the one who lives it, making the heart more attuned to spiritual truth. A heart that has been gentled can hear the voice of God. It can understand things not readily seen. It takes time to answer--and in doing so, protects itself from hasty judgements that cause heartache later.

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Gentleness is God's plan of defense against our own rash human nature.

Gentleness protects us from ourselves.

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If you've viewed gentleness as a quality that you either have or you don't, something you offer to others if you like them, think again. A gentle answer turns away wrath, not only the wrath of others, but the white-hot rage that fires inside your soul and keeps the peace of God at arm's length. It turns away YOUR wrath.

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Isn't it time for a kinder, gentler spirit? You can't do it on your own. Invite God's Spirit to do His work in you and you will be amazed at how much better you feel.

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Oh My Goodness!

The title is misleading. I don't have any goodness.

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Do you?

While you're thinking about that, ask yourself "If I do have goodness, then why do I have it?" If you have some innate drive to be good, do good works, think good thoughts, then where did it come from?

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Goodness is the sixth fruit of God's Spirit that he wants to give supernaturally, but it is often overlooked in favor of the more "flashy" ones. We like joy and peace. We will even acknowledge that we need patience. But goodness just lays there on the page, overlooked and under appreciated. After all lots of people are good, aren't they? Even the ungodly do good things, create goodwill, serve mankind.

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So why is goodness a fruit of God's Spirit 

if the ungodly can be good too?

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Focus on the words in the middle of that sentence: God's Spirit.

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Every human being is created in the image of God. We have the capacity within us to channel God's goodness. Without the breath of the living God surging through our beings, we'd be nothing but dirt clods. Any goodness I have exists only because I am created in God's image, to reflect his glory. To be like him. 

Any good in me is simply an imperfect reflection of Christ.

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Because left to myself, I'd stifle goodness every chance I got in favor of selfishness. Any opportunity to do good would be weighed on scales tipped in my favor, with the deciding vote being: "How will this affect me?"

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The kind of goodness God wants to infuse into us is the pure kind. The Mother Theresa kind. A goodness that flows through our words, responses, and actions simply because we can't help it. Being filled with God's Spirit requires that I have emptied myself of ME. God's goodness can't live alongside my self-centeredness.

Supernatural goodness isn't sidetracked by evil, by selfishness, by ambition. How often do you read in someone's obituary about how "good" they were? All dead people were wonderful, have you noticed that?

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Yet, lurking beneath the accolades are wrong choices, sin habits, selfish motives, and broken relationships that nobody mentions. That is man's attempt at goodness. Far from God's ideal.

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Goodness is what oozes from every pore because God has filled us with such energy to do good that we can't do otherwise.

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Goodness is repulsed at sin, nauseated by the world's shoddy imitations of it, and dismayed over what man has done with God's gifts. Goodness is good because it can be nothing else. It isn't taught or forced. It is a natural result of an intimate relationship with God.

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So, one more time...

Are you good?

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Well...Kind Of...

My mom had a little song that used to drive me crazy! She would launch into it when she heard my brother, sister, and me fighting in the backseat on the way home from church.


"Be ye kind...be ye kind...one to another..."


She'd just wail away until we stopped whatever fracas we were causing and focused our energy on glaring at the back of her head. The song may not have accomplished what she was aiming for, but it did serve to unite us in common hatred for the song.


On occasion, I've been known to start that song when my own kids are acting up. They hate it just as much as I did and I'm sure my mom is laughing with me from heaven.


So what is kindness? We know it is the fifth fruit of the Spirit and as we've learned, the fruit of the Spirit does not come naturally to us. That's why it's a supernatural gift and one God expects us to exercise if we claim him as our Father.


The song is actually a verse straight from Ephesians chapter 4. "Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God for Christ's sake has forgiven you."


Notice the words coupled with kindness are tenderhearted and forgiving. Kindness thinks about the other person rather than itself. Kindness jumps right into the other guy's head and sees a situation through his eyes, responding accordingly.


Most of us are too preoccupied with trying to get others to see things through OUR eyes. Our natural inclination is to ACT like we're kind when someone is watching so that they'll appreciate how nice we are. 

But God's kindness is real. God's kindness is like that all the time, when nobody's looking, when it goes against our natural instinct. Kindness restrains our tongue when we'd rather pop off. When a witty barb would get us a laugh. When pointing out someone's deficiency would make us look smarter.


A constant barrage of information hurls itself at our conscience, most of which we cannot possibly respond to. We respond by hardening ourselves so that we no longer see the starving children photos. We easily ignore the never-ending pleas for money from every corner. We can pass a crying child without a second thought, assuming someone else will take care of it.

We're not mean, just immune.

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Kindness insists we take the blinders off, take the cotton out of our ears, and respond whenever it's within our power to do something. That's why kindness is a quality we can only exercise effectively when we're doing it in God's strength.


Naturally...we'd rather not. Naturally, we'd rather pick and choose when to be kind. And to whom we offer kindness.

How kind are you? 

If given the choice, would you rather offer a soft word of comfort or get a laugh? Do you always choose to push someone else into the limelight or do you take the attention for yourself? When irritation has driven you to your limits, do you respond in kindness to those nagging voices?


I know my answers to those questions. The more I learn of God, the more I realize that without him, I am have no capacity to be anything close to kind. That's why I need the Holy Spirit to be kind through me. 
Left to my own goodness, I'm only kind of...


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My Patience is Running Out!

"The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience..."
 
The Greek word for patience used in Galatians 5 is makroqumia and it means about what you'd expect it to mean: long-suffering, slow to avenge wrongs, endurance.

No surprises there. What I did find interesting when I researched this word was how often it Is used to describe God. And the context usually implies that his patience is undeserved and under appreciated.

It's not hard to be patient with someone who's doing the best they can: a toddler trying to walk, an old man shuffling across the street. But the fruit-of-the-Spirit patience is extended toward deadbeats--willful, arrogant, hard-headed people who don't even realize how much patience is being expended on their behalf. 

Like us.

The fruit of the Spirit means just what it says--characteristics of God manifested supernaturally in our lives. In other words, God has shown us time and time again how it's done. Just look at how long he bent over backward for those rebellious Israelites. Talk about unappreciative! He had every right to be fed up, yet he never gave up on them.

The difference between God's patience and ours
 is that God's doesn't run out.

Ours always does. We may stick with it for a while, but eventually we all have a breaking point and say, "That's it. Enough is enough. I'm done with you." And we walk away, shaking the dust from our feet.

The kind of patience the Holy Spirit pours into us is God's kind. It is an unnatural ability to be patient with people who are not trying their best, with situations that won't resolve, with pain that goes on and on. Our human strength and patience has an ending point, but God's doesn't and that's why we need his kind rather than ours.

Is your patience running out?

Good! Coming to the end of ourselves is a great reminder that we need God. He can't fill you if you're already full of SELF.

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Tell him you cannot do it anymore. You give up. You're done. And then ask him to fill you with his patience, his joy, his peace. 

When the line at the bank is longer than it should be, your kid "forgot" for the third time, and the insurance company is wrong again...you won't lose your cool because you're not limited by your perspective.

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Patience is the settled reality that this is God's show and we choose to let him deal with it however He wants to.

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Can I Get Some Peace?

I like this photo because it illustrates what most of us think of when we try to imagine peace--temporary and easily destroyed by the forces around us.

The term "peace talks" always brings a smirk. We know how much good that does in the Middle East and often the people carrying "peace signs" appear to have been ingesting illegal substances.

Peace is the third fruit of God's Spirit. It's the desire of many but attained by few. So why is that? What's stopping us from experiencing at least personal peace?

"Well, DUH!" You say. "Take a peek into my world for a minute!

Calm down. I see you rolling your eyes.

Just as we learned that joy is not a byproduct of our circumstances at the moment, neither is peace. Tornadoes happen. Earthquakes happen. Violence and crime happens. People cut across your yard, kids make bad choices, the jerk on the tractor is taking up both lanes, and your health insurance keeps cutting benefits.

Life is not peaceful. This world is not peaceful. It's filled with chaos, pain, war, and hurt. But you don't have to be.

If the world could give us peace,

we wouldn't need God to do it supernaturally.

So peace is the third character trait we cannot manufacture by ourselves.

We try to find it in a million ways--from bottled form to mind games--but none of it works. So we keep searching for better ways. The peace you felt during your drunken stupor is gone when you wake up. That's not peace.

And God sits by while you try to help yourself. He must watch you ignore what he has clearly stated in his Word a hundred different ways: 

• "The mind set on the Spirit is life and peace."

• "The peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your heart..."
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• "Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts..."

"But," you argue." I do believe in God. I'm a good person, but I'm still in turmoil. My life's a mess, I'm on three anti-depressants, and I can't take it anymore..."

Well, back up then. Did you see anything in in those verses that promised believing in God will give you peace? John Wesley said, "Mental assent is one of Satan's best tools to keep us from God." 

You can know it all, try your best to do it, pray, read the Bible and work really hard at being a Christian...and be the most miserable person on earth.
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This third Fruit of the Spirit is gained through an act of our will. God doesn't expect you to manufacture a pseudo-peace on your own. He expects you to give up trying to control everything and trust him with it all: the overdue bills, the wild kid, the unemployment. Only then can His peace rule in your heart.

Living out the fruit of God's Spirit requires that you stop trying to produce imitations that are based on the world's standards. Some days the only place you will find peace is in the very presence of God. Your world is crashing down around your ears and there is no escape for you except to run to your Father and give up.

But what about when you get there and you know you have no right to be there? You've got a pile of sins stacked up in the corner of your heart that you'd been meaning to get around to making right, but...

God doesn't hand out his peace to just anyone. It usually requires change on our part. But as distasteful as his prerequisites may seem at the moment, obedience is worth it. 

Peace comes when we relinquish our right to it and accept whatever God chooses for us.

So what is keeping you from experiencing peace? Do you think your circumstances are just too stressful to experience peace in the midst of them?

Remember, the fruits of the Spirit are not emotions. Peace is not our natural state. It is supernatural. Jesus said, "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you, not as the world gives..." (John 14:27)

Peace is a choice. A hard choice at first because Satan will insist that you have nothing to feel peaceful about.

Resist him. Remind him what Jesus said, "In this world you will have trouble, but take heart! I have overcome the world." (John 16:33)

Your circumstances may scream chaos, but if you know God, you can choose peace.

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Joy to the World. Yeah, right.

 But the fruit of the Spirit is 

love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Isn't it funny in our modern society how the word "joy" only shows up at Christmastime? You never hear anyone talking about joy any other time of year, but in December we hear Yuletide joy, Christmas joy, Joy to the World, Joyeux Noelle, etc. Mention joy any other time of year and you're likely to get a raised eyebrow.

Ask anyone to define it, and what you'll get is their definition of happiness. We think of joy in relation to our emotions---that giddy happiness that tingles inside our chest when something fantastic is happening.

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But joy is not tied to our circumstances and that's where our ability to manufacture it ends. When the computer crashes, my kid just got an F in Algebra, and my husband's job is on the line, I do have strong feelings tingling inside my chest, but they are nothing close to giddy happiness.

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So how is it possible to have joy all the time?

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I was struck at the number of times in the Bible joy is paired with the words "suffering, tribulation, affliction, and hardship." They go together like peanut butter and jelly. The Apostle Paul was always talking about how joyful he was, usually after he'd been beaten and thrown in prison.

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So what's up with that? I start whining when I have to wait for a slow train to cross the street.

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I am coming to see that these nine fruits of the Spirit are decisions we make every day. We can choose joy or we can choose from any number of negative reactions to the events in our lives. Instead of becoming angry and discouraged when he was arrested again, Paul chose to see it as an opportunity to learn patience, to share in part of the suffering Christ experienced, and to testify to his abusers.

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Maybe you don't have a problem with walking in joy every day, but I am not by nature a joyful person. Not only is the glass half-empty, but my natural inclination is to find out who spilled it and why. 

And that's why God has to do this in us. We're slow learners. He understands that so He carefully listed the traits he wants us to demonstrate.

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That's what I'm learning to do, adopt those nine Fruits as my own and choose to live in them whether I feel like it or not.

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And guess what! It gets easier the more you do it.

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Joy is a sacrifice we offer to God

when we'd rather be crying or beating someone up.
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Joy is the ability to overlook our temporary circumstances
in favor of keeping our eyes on eternity.

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Our emotions follow our will, just like a train. The more we let God's power flow through us to manifest these Fruits, the more our emotions start to catch on. The more we rely on God to live out his life in us, the more it starts to feel natural and the less we have to force ourselves to respond his way instead of ours.

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So, the next time the car breaks down, your son comes home with another section of his body pierced, your daughter calls to tell you she just married a carny, and the power goes off in your house...what are you gonna do?

Joy remembers that God knows about it, cares about it, and will stay right there with you until the crisis is gone. Joy knows that everything I do for God will never fade away and it focuses on that in the midst of earthly stress.

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So whether life becomes a hurricane or the good times are rolling, "consider it all joy!"(James 1:2)

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Can You Grow Peaches?

I tried so hard to grow peaches.

My grandma had the most productive peach trees I've ever seen. They grew in her tiny backyard, right in the middle of the city. She did nothing to take care of them, but there they were, thriving on city soil and smog, producing fruit more luscious than anything you could buy.

So I thought: How hard can it be? I'll do that too.

I bought trees from nurseries, from seed catalogs, from plant stores and fussed over them with tender-loving care. They always died.

So I bought more and tried ignoring them, like Grandma did. They shriveled up.

I checked my soil, checked my fertilizer, checked my water and sun, balanced everything, and bought more. This time, they lived! Twins, side-by-side down by the garden.

Year after year, I watched them, watered them, fed them, and waited patiently while their gnarly trunks thickened and strained upward. 

I smiled as I watched them. It would all be worth it when I bit into that first peach. I could almost taste the sweet juice running down my chin. I might even set up a stand by the road. Sell some. Give some away.

And then at last--the first buds!

In due time, tiny green peaches appeared. My anticipation rose.

And then fell. Because they stayed tiny green peaches. All summer. The size of a nickle and green as a pickle. Finally some desperate bird snatched all six of them and that was the end of my peach harvest.

Season after season, I hoped, prayed and watered, and every year the same thing--nothing. After about ten years of this nonsense, I'd had enough. I took my chainsaw down there and whacked those trees to stumps. It was painful, but it was the end of futile hoping. A peach tree without peaches is worthless and a constant reminder of what it should be and isn't.

People are like that. God expects us to produce what he has invested in us and when we don't, we're nothing but an eyesore--a sad reminder of what we could be, but won't be.

The Bible talks about bearing the Fruit of the Spirit. God calls it that because these are nine things we can't do on our own. They are so opposite from our natural inclinations that if God wasn't producing this fruit inside of us, we'd say "forget it."

At first glance, the list looks pretty simple: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. But when we look a little deeper, we find that this kind of fruit is not man-made. Just as man can't make a fresh peach, he also can't manufacture these genuine fruits in abundance. So what he does is change their definitions so that imitation peach-flavored candy passes for the real thing.

For the next few posts, we're going to look at each one of these Fruits of the Spirit and find out exactly what they are, why you can't manufacture them on your own, and what your life looks like without them.

And if you happen to be one of the fortunate ones who can grow peaches, go ahead and send me a bushel this summer!

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What the World Needs Now...

Love...love...love...

Singers wail about it; teenagers mope around starry-eyed because of it. We use the word to describe our feelings about Rocky Road ice cream, our favorite color, our dog, and the best singer on American Idol. What a handy multi-purpose word!

The problem--as we all know-- is that in the process it loses meaning.

Love is actually God's word. He thought of it first so he should get to define it. And he does an excellent job of defining it in I Corinthians 13. But his definition sounds nothing like ours.

What about when it's applied to the level of commitment between husband and wife?

That's closer, but still a long way off. As humans, we aren't really capable of God's kind of love without God. Even romantic love between spouses is usually rooted in selfishness.

What can he do for me?

How well does he meet my needs?

Is he living up to my expectations this week?

Or the Ann Landers special: "Ask yourself: Am I better off with him or without him?"

Notice how many times "me" and "my" popped up in there. Whether we like to admit it or not, most of who and what we love is based on how well they meet our needs. And that's the definition of selfishness, not love.

The kind of love God is able to produce in us is a sacrificial love. A love that would take beating and torture in the place of someone who hated you. That's the kind of love He has toward us for absolutely no reason at all except that that's just the way he is.

The love the Spirit of God produces says: I know you don't love me, but I love you because I can't help it. You're more important than I am, so what can I give you that you need?

Oooh! Ouch. How many times have I honestly felt that way about someone who didn't deserve it?

A quick test to see if you're there yet: Picture someone you know that you should love and ask yourself how much you are willing to sacrifice for that person.

Probably nothing, especially if they're after your parking space.

It's not likely that we can produce fruit like this without God's supernatural work inside our lives. Unless you've been feasting at the table of God's love, you don't have it to give away.

We give good imitations every now and then, but look closely. Most likely your loving actions are based on either a response to someone's kindness or have at their heart a selfish motive such as: I want them to like me...OR...I want others to see how nice I am...OR... I've felt bad about myself lately and being loving makes me feel better.

See? When compared side-by-side with the real thing, our version of love looks pretty pathetic. Our man-made imitations are fine if we want peach-flavored gelatin instead of fresh fruit, but who wants that?

God doesn't and deep down, we don't either. We crave ultimate, sacrificial love from others, but it's a lot harder to give.

That's exactly why we can't give it without God's love flowing through us in abundance. It's called the Fruit of the Spirit because without God's Spirit loving through us, we can't do it. Especially when they get our parking space.

The song was right. What the world needs now is love. Fortunately, God agrees and that's why it is number one on his Top Nine Countdown of Greatest Traits of All Time.

He doesn't expect you to do it on your own. He offers to do it through you. Which is a good thing, because the more I study His kind of love, the more I realize I can never do it by myself.

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But what about joy? That's the next fruit on the list. Can't we do that on our own? Next post we'll see about that...

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