What the Fruit? The Fruits of the Spirit – Part 2

What a lovely thing love is. As a blogger who started off mainly writing about marriage, I obviously have written a lot about it in the past. I have shared my beliefs that love is not just a noun, but a verb, and that love is a choice. I have shared my beliefs about God’s love for each of us, and tried to reflect my love for Him. I have attempted to convey the depth of my love for my husband, although the truth is I don’t think I could ever put that into words. Now, I want to share my thoughts on love as a Fruit of the Spirit.

What is a Fruit of the Spirit, you might ask? I wrote about this in greater detail in my last post, but basically it sums up to this; when we accept Jesus as our savior, the Holy Spirit comes to live inside of us, and as we continue to walk with God the Spirit produces a lot of awesome things in us and in our lives. Some of the best of these things are listed in Galatians 5:22-23, and they are appropriately named the Fruits of the Spirit. God uses his Holy Spirit to fill our lives with fruitfulness and abundance. The closer we walk with him, the more fruitful we become.

 

“But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!”

Galatians 5:22-23 NLT

 

As you can see, the first thing in this list is love. I think that is significant. Love is the reason for everything, if you think about it. God created us and the entire world so we could love him. When we failed to do that, he sent his son, Jesus, to sacrifice himself so that we could be reconnected with God and all of his perfection. Since the beginning of time, God has desperately loved us and wanted to be loved back by us.

In Matthew 22:37-40, we are told that love is our greatest calling. “Jesus replied, ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: Love your neighbor as yourself. The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.’” (NLT). Love is the most important thing that we are supposed to do. Every good thing comes from love, because every good thing comes from God, and God is love.

In 1 Corinthians 13:13, it says “Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.” (NLT). So love is the beginning and the end of everything. Our greatest gift in life is God’s love, and our greatest joy is in loving him back. But love wasn’t just made to be between God and people. As the second greatest commandment makes clear, love is supposed to be between us humans as well. When we have love in our lives, it is a reflection of God. He wants our lives to be full of him, and that means full of love.

There are so many forms that love can take, and they are all part of God’s will for us. He wants us to have amazing friends whom we love and who love us. He wants us to have strong, loving relationships with our family members. He wants us to show love to strangers and neighbors. And of course, he wants us to know his love for us and love him back with all of our hearts, souls, and minds. For many of us, he also wants us to know the romantic, passionate, and unconditional love between a husband and a wife. Not everybody has a desire to be married one day, but for those who do, this is something that God also desires and has planned for them.

You see, the Fruit of the Spirit is not only produced in us, giving us the ability to love others more like him, but it is produced in our lives. The Spirit brings goodness to our lives. He wants to bring each of us who desires it into a strong, happy, healthy marriage that is full of love. It is in this kind of relationship that we can begin to understand even better how much he loves us. When I look at my husband, I know that the love I feel is just a fraction of the love that God feels for him, and for me. And that is really saying a lot, because I have never loved anybody so much!

For those of you out there who are single or in a relationship but not yet married, I pray that this post gives you hope for your future. If you want to be married, and you are walking with God, then you will be. His timing is always perfect. You will never look back and think “You know, this is great but I wish you would have made it happen sooner, God.” I fully believe that if you do have to wait longer than you wish, then when it does finally happen for you, you will look back and say “Wow, I see what you were doing, God. Thank you for being wiser than I.” It doesn’t always make sense to us at the time, but God really does know what he’s doing. And his plans are always for the good.

One last thing; knowing who God is, I can confidently say that although he may allow suffering in your life at times to use it for the good (remember, he never causes it), he does not want the majority of your life to be suffering. If you are in pain because of love right now, particularly romantic love, then please remember that God loves you so, so, so very much. He does not want to see you in pain, emotional, physical, or otherwise. He wants to fill your life with the Fruit of the Spirit, including love. If you walk close to him, then I promise you he will.

 

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”

Proverbs 3:5-6 (NIV)

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