Fruit Of The Spirit

Welcome Back Beautiful People! I’m Gwen your host for this blog,  Where Is God Now and author of, Where is God!? Blessed Are The Pure In Heart For They Shall See God. I pray all is well with you and your family as we remain in place at home to flatten the curve of COVID-19. This is a wonderful opportunity to cultivate and build our relationship with God, our Heavenly Father. He truly is a good God. This is a time to grow our faith and to trust him more. Don’t waste this precious time. Part of trust and faith involves moving forward when you are not sure what the outcome will be, but believing there are things on the other side that are good and will help us to grow.

This week we are still exploring the introduction of the book, Where Is God!? Blessed Are The Pure In Heart For They Shall See God. On page 7, we see we know where God is. He lives within our heart!  He lives in our bodies. He shows up in us when we show the Fruit of the Spirit in our lives of Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self-Control (Galatians 5:22). Because God is a spirit, He has placed the seeds of the Fruit of the Spirit in us. It is something that has to be cultivated in our lives to grow these seeds so that we and others may see. It is part of the Power we have in Jesus Christ. Some of these Fruit may bear witness in our lives more easily than others but we ALL have these Fruit once we accept Christ.

We serve an awesome God who is supernatural! We don’t understand ALL there is to know about Him and why He does what He does. However, He has given us what we need to know to believe He is the one and true God of the universe. It is a choice we make each and every day to believe and trust him. Hence, why we pick up our cross every day to follow his son, Jesus, who came to set us free! Jesus came to earth to show us how these Fruit will look in our lives. He is our model, example of how it is to live it out in our lives daily.

As we live our lives in the world, part of our mission is to be God’s hands, mouth, and feet. This mission should not be strange to us. We have the help of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. However, Satan comes to kill, steal, and destroy the Fruit we try to bear out in our lives. In the book, we refer to him as a masterful deceiver (page 7). Our challenge is to recognize him when he comes to kill, steal, and destroy things in our lives. He is relentless! His ultimate goal is to kill, steal, and destroy our faith! This is why we need Jesus. We cannot complete the mission of being God’s hands, mouth, and feet on our own. We are wise when we can recognize Satan as a masterful deceiver, because when he tries to penetrate our lives, and he comes in many forms, we can exercise, with the help of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, the Fruit of the Spirit against him. Believe me; it upsets him when he knows he is not winning the battle of shaking our faith! We should get some satisfaction, too, in knowing we are not allowing him to win the battle of shaking our faith.

In becoming God’s hands, mouth, and feet in this world we have to place Self on the Shelf. It is difficult to place self on the shelf when we want things our way. Hence, this is why we have to die to self daily. We have to be willing to trust God in everything (page 7). In order to trust God in everything and being able to SEE him in everything, we have to have a child-like faith and a pure heart. This is how we can SEE God in everything. Situations that arise in our life, good or bad, it is wise to recognize God in it. We praise God for the blessings and we try to learn the lessons in the trials. The thing about trials is if we do not learn the lessons God will bring it to us in another situation. I call it, Different Faces Different Places, of learning the spiritual lessons of God. In the Bible, with Moses, the children of Israel are an example of what happens when we do not learn the lessons God has for us. They wondered in the wilderness for 40 years which should have taken them 3 days to get to the promise land God had for them. The murmuring and complaining had them going around in circles.  Has that ever happened to you? Sometimes we wonder in our wilderness, year after year after year. Could it be we are not learning the lessons God is trying to teach us?

When adversities, trials, and tribulations come in our lives, we should ask, “God what do you want me to learn in this situation?”  Or, “Lord, help me to handle this situation in the right way.” Believe me; He will give us the help that we need through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Hallelujah Praise God! They are our best friends and comfort during those difficult times. Because we truly cannot do it on our own, leaning and depending on them is what we should automatically do. When we are weak God shows himself STRONG in our lives. It is truly a beautiful thing when you think about it. The beauty about our lives is God wastes NOTHING that we go through, good or bad. It is all to grow us up and to become closer and closer to Him. He LOVES us! And we should become more and more like His son, Jesus.  So we look at our trials and tribulations as opportunities to grow. In the natural, we do not necessarily like them, but the sooner we accept and come on board into what God is trying to do in our lives, the sooner we can go through it. God ALWAYS has something better for us on the next level if we shall not faint and make it to the next level… Stay safe from COVID-19. I’ll see you next week! Love & Blessings!