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Overview
Would you like true joy? Healthy relationships? To live free from anxiety? You actually can if you let God’s Spirit grow His fruit in your heart.
Your witness for Christ is only as good as the fruit your relationship with Him produces.
The Fruit of the Spirit points you toward a lifestyle that makes the gospel you proclaim attractive to others because they can see its results in your everyday life, emotions, demeanor, and actions.
Drawing from Biblical examples, Trask and Goodall share insights that both challenge and encourage. They offer true-life examples of the difference you, too, can make when you let the Holy Spirit reproduce the character of Jesus within you.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781400209149 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Nelson, Thomas, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 04/17/2018 |
| Pages: | 192 |
| Sales rank: | 198,692 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.80(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
LOVE
Building Healthy Relationships
While doing premarital counseling in our church, I asked one young, optimistic couple, "What vows do you intend to say to one another in the ceremony?" As a pastor I had sometimes permitted couples to write their own vows if they were vows of commitment and honored God's standards for marriage. They said, "We have only adjusted the traditional marriage vows to be a little more contemporary. Let us read them to you."
Their vows seemed fine until they got to the final line of commitment: "For richer or poorer; in sickness and in health; until we no longer love each other."
I said, "Hold it. What do you mean, 'Until we no longer love each other'?" They said, "Well, couples sometimes fall out of love, and they should not be required to remain married and unhappy for the rest of their lives. Everyone has the right to be happy."
At first I was surprised, but then I thought about it and realized that society had subtly gotten to them; the lack of commitment had become part of their thinking — even on what probably would be the second most critical decision of their lives (the first being their commitment to Christ). Obviously, I needed to continue the premarital counseling sessions to explain God's plan for lifelong loving and commitment.
In Letters to an Unborn Child, David Ireland wrote to the child in his wife's womb partly because he knew that he may never see the child. While his wife's pregnancy developed, David was dying of a crippling neurological disease. He wrote in one of his letters,
Your mother is very special. Few men know what it's like to receive appreciation for taking their wives out to dinner when it entails what it does for us. It means that she has to dress me, shave me, brush my teeth, comb my hair, wheel me out of the house and down the steps, open the garage and put me in the car, take the pedals off the chair, stand me up, sit me in the seat of the car, twist me around so that I'm comfortable, fold the wheelchair, put it in the car, go around to the other side of the car, start it up, back it out, get out of the car, pull the garage door down, get back into the car, and drive off to the restaurant.
And then, it starts all over again; she gets out of the car, unfolds the wheelchair, opens the door, spins me around, stands me up, seats me in the wheelchair, pushes the pedals out, closes and locks the car, wheels me into the restaurant, then takes the pedals off the wheelchair so I won't be uncomfortable. We sit down to have dinner, and she feeds me throughout the entire meal. And when it's over she pays the bill, pushes the wheelchair out to the car again, and reverses the same routine.
And when it's over — finished — with real warmth she'll say, "Honey, thank you for taking me out to dinner." I never quite know what to answer.
What an example of courageous giving and self-sacrificing love David's wife, Joyce, provides us. She clearly understands and lives out love.
The Bible tells us that "God is love" (1 John 4:16). Thus it is no surprise that the first aspect of the fruit of the Spirit that is mentioned is love. For humans, perhaps, there is no greater power in this world than to "act" in God's love. Billy Graham has said, "Indeed, we may say that love for others is the first sign that we have been born again and that the Holy Spirit is at work in our lives."
In Christ we are connected to the greatest love, the absolute source of pure, unadulterated love. If we walk in fellowship with him, we cannot help but be reminded of how to love people with our words, deeds, and actions. In fact, without Christ it is impossible to love people this way. Christ like love is called agape love. It is a giving, self-sacrificing love that has its source in Christ's self-giving love (see 1 Cor. 13:13). John said, "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers" (1 John 3:16).
We must strive to continually practice agape love. When we remain on the vine, we realize that we should love people with God's love. We will also be aware of ways we could love people. In the end, however, we will need to make the decision to do acts of love, for we are not robots that are given the command to love people. We are people of free will who constantly make decisions to do the right thing. The self-control (discipline) portion of the fruit of the Spirit is at work as we choose to respond to others with God's agape love.
CHRISTIANITY IS ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS
Jesus said, "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. ... My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you" (John 15:9–10, 12). Our relationship with God, with other Christians, and with our "neighbors" is where the reality of our Christianity is lived out. Because we have a one-on-one, personal relationship with Jesus Christ, we grow in our sensitivity to people's needs and as a result see them through the eyes of God's love. His love persuades us to take risks for the sake of others.
David Wilkerson was the founder of Teen Challenge and the pastor of Times Square Church in New York City. For decades he created new programs to reach people whom many have given up on. He wrote,
Thirty-five years ago, God put it on my heart to start a boys' home in Amityville, New York, on Long Island. I truly sensed the Lord was behind this work. Yet, after just a year and a half, state officials put impossibly stringent regulations on the home. They told us we had to have a full-time psychologist on staff, as well as a priest or rabbi if we took in boys who were Catholic or Jewish. We couldn't afford to operate under those restrictions, so we simply shut our doors.
We'd taken in only four boys during the brief time we were open, and after we closed down, I lost touch with them. I've always thought that venture was one of the greatest failures of all time. For more than three decades, I wondered why God ever allowed us to move forward with it. This past week, however, I received a letter from a man named Clifford. He told the following story:
Brother David,
I was one of the four boys sent to your Amityville home thirty-five years ago by the Nassau County Children's Agency.
My father and mother were Jewish, but they split up and my mother remarried. She was such a rebel that she put me in a Catholic school. I was sprinkled in the Catholic Church when I was eleven years old.
Right after that, our home became dysfunctional. I had to clean the whole house, cook, take care of my little brother, and care for my mom while working a paper route early in the morning. Once I had to break into my mother's bedroom, where I found her on the floor foaming at the mouth. Lots of empty pill bottles lay scattered around her.
I had attended a huge Catholic cathedral, I had gone to confession, I had genuflected, I had done my rosary — but I only feared God. I was convinced he didn't care about me.
Neither I nor my mother knew that the social worker was coming to place me in your boys home. But I was desperate to get away from my stepfather's abuse, the poverty, and my mother's suicide attempts. So I went along and ended up in your home.
Your house parents were so loving and kind. They taught us Bible studies and took us to church. One day they took us to a little church that was holding a tent revival. I was so bitter inside and so despondent. It was at that little church, under the tent, that the Holy Spirit began tugging at my heart. One night, I couldn't resist any longer. All the years of pain, confusion, and hopelessness came to the surface. I was choking.
Then I heard the preacher say, "Jesus loves you." I got on my knees and prayed, "God, I'm not really sure that you're real, or that you're listening to me. But if you are real, please forgive me, and please help me. I need somebody to love me, because I feel so bitter, rejected, and full of turmoil."
All at once, I felt like somebody was pouring warm molasses on my head and it was flowing down over my body. The bitterness all melted away, God had my heart completely from that day on.
Brother David, that was thirty-five years ago. Now God has called me to preach, and he's moving me into full-time ministry. I found you while surfing the Internet. This thank-you has been brewing in me for thirty-five years. I just want to say thank you for caring, I know what the love of God is.
What if David had not started that boys' home? This young Jewish boy may never have known God's love. Nothing we do for Christ is in vain. This boys' home was not a failure. Though the cost was great, it was worth it because one boy discovered the meaning of God's love.
THREE COMMON MISUNDERSTANDINGS ABOUT LOVE
1. Love develops automatically in an unpremeditated way.
An abundance of Bible verses instruct us to love people. Scripture never presumes that we know how to love; rather, over and over again it instructs us to love and explains why we are to love. John was concerned that Christians love one another and that we love those who do not know Christ. Among his many verses on love, he writes,
"This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are; Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother" (1 John 3:10).
"We should love one another" (3:11).
"Anyone who does not love remains in death" (3:14).
"Let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth" (3:18).
"This is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us" (3:23).
"Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God" (4:7).
"No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us" (4:12).
"Whoever lives in love lives in God" (4:16).
"We love because he first loved us" (4:19).
"I ask that we love one another" (2 John 5).
Joseph Stowell, president of Moody Bible Institute, wrote about an experience he had with news anchor Dan Rather.
Dan Rather was on our campus a couple of years ago to be interviewed on our national radio broadcast Open Line. Dan Rather has not been one of my favorite people. I looked at him as part of the left-wing media establishment with its secular, pluralistic, relativistic, anti-God philosophy. He seemed a little cold to me and a touch arrogant, and he was never one of my favorite anchormen. And there he was on our campus.
Well, during a break he and I spent a bit of time together, and I was shocked because he was the warmest individual. He seemed interested in everything I was saying, and he seemed to care about me.
He said, "I grew up in a Baptist home. In my grandma's house the only things she had to read were the Bible and the Sears Roebuck catalog," He continued, "My grandmother read me the Bible every day."
He went back to the interview, and at the close as the tapes were rolling, ready to go nationwide, one of the interviewers said to him, "Mr. Rather, excuse me, I don't want to hurry anything. But if you were to die today and stand before God at the edge of heaven, and God were to say to you, 'Why should I let you into heaven?' What would you say?" He paused and said, "Well, I have to say it wouldn't be for anything I have done. It would have to be totally by the grace of God."
All of that to say this: I have no idea what his spiritual condition is. This is not a statement about his spiritual condition; it is a statement about a shame I bear in my heart. The shame is it didn't cross my mind once to pray for Dan Rather that God would compassionately reach out and embrace his soul, cancel hell and guarantee heaven, and fill him with abundant living. I hate to tell you that it just never crossed my mind. I was too mad about all this stuff to think about his need for a Savior. I refused to be a middleman in a compassion transaction between God and one who possibly needed him.
In a world full of anger, hate, envy, jealousy, and revenge, we are often influenced to do the same. We must decide every day, however, to be people who are known for how we love.
It is also important to understand that we are people in process. As we grow in our relationship with Christ, we become more like him, more loving. We all have a long way to go, but as disciples, we must continue to grow, develop, and produce more of his fruit. How can you demonstrate God's love in a situation in which doing so is difficult, nearly impossible? Your action could be the catalyst that causes other people to understand that God wants to help them, or it could persuade them that Christ rules your life.
2. Many people believe that just because they understand the definition of love, they will naturally love.
Understanding a concept and acting on that concept are two different things. We may hear sermons on the four Greek words for love — erös (sexual/sensual love), storgë (family or natural love), philë (friendship love) and agapë (God's love). Love, however, is something we do. Therefore, we must discipline ourselves to continually practice love.
In his book The Four Loves, C. S. Lewis explains the different Greek words that are used for the English word love. The Bible often uses the word agape when it speaks about God's love for us and the kind of love God wants us to have for others. Agape is "that highest and noblest form of love which sees something infinitely precious in its object." Bishop Stephen Neill has defined love as "a steady direction of the will, toward another's lasting good."
Even when we do not feel like loving, we can choose to do so anyway. It is an act of the will, a decision we make. You will find that when you do acts of love regardless of how you feel, you will often develop the "want to." Your emotions will catch on, and eventually compassion will grow in your heart toward that person or group of people.
In his book The Myth of the Greener Grass, J. Allan Peterson wrote:
Newspaper columnist and minister George Crane tells of a wife who came into his office full of hatred toward her husband. "I do not only want to get rid of him; I want to get even. Before I divorce him, I want to hurt him as much as he has me."
Dr. Crane suggested an ingenious plan. "Go home and act as if you really love your husband. Tell him how much he means to you. Praise him for every decent trait. Go out of your way to be as kind, considerate, and generous as possible. Spare no efforts to please him, to enjoy him. Make him believe you love him. After you've convinced him of your undying love and that you cannot live without him, then drop the bomb. Tell him that you're getting a divorce. That will really hurt him."
With revenge in her eyes, she smiled and exclaimed, "Beautiful, beautiful. Will he ever be surprised!"
And she did it with enthusiasm. Acting "as if." For two months she showed love, kindness, listening, giving, reinforcing, sharing.
When she didn't return, Crane called. "Are you ready now to go through with the divorce?"
"Divorce!" she exclaimed. "Never! I discovered I really do love him." Her actions had changed her feelings. Motion resulted in emotion. The ability to love is established not so much by fervent promise as often-repeated deeds.
We are to love when we see no results, even when the object of our love continues on his or her path of rejecting, avoiding, or turning against us. Jesus spent much of his last three years with twelve people. He knew that one would be disloyal to him and betray him for money (see Mark 14:10–44; John 6:70–71), yet he continued to minister to him and love him just as he did the other eleven. The fact that Judas was going to commit this act of treason didn't change Jesus' behavior or his love toward Judas. If this is how God treats people who continue to reject him, we should also love in difficult situations. Have you ever gone through a period of time when you disobeyed God? Maybe you totally ignored him. What did he do? He continued to love you and to seek out ways to show you his mercy. We don't love others in the same way as those without Christ love others. Our love should never give up.
Some say, "Well, I'll forgive him for what he did to me, but I won't forget!" Part of what they say is true. It is hard to forget; nevertheless, we must not keep score. If we do, bitterness will infect our hearts and bring great personal injury. Hebrews 12:15 warns us, "See to it ... that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many." Your parents, a sibling, a close friend, or your employer may have rejected you. Very possibly you have had the experience of someone betraying you and bringing harm to your reputation or your person. Forgiving that person sets you free and can cause him or her to take note that there is something unique in you.
Jesus will help you. As you cling to him and decide to treat people like he does, your heart will be transformed and God's love will flow through you.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Fruit of The Spirit"
by .
Copyright © 2000 Thomas E. Trask and Wayde I. Goodall.
Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Foreword by Bill Bright
1.Introduction
Producing God’s Fruit: The Key to a Fulfilled Life
2.Love
Building Healthy Relationships
3.Joy
Rejoicing in Any Situation
4.Peace
Overcoming Anxiety and Conflict
5.Patience
The Benefits of Waiting
6 Kindness
Reaching Out to Others
7.Goodness
Learning to Live Generously
8.Faithfulness
The Foundation of True Friendship
9.Gentleness
The Strength of Being Tender
10.Self-Control
Mastering Our Passions
11.Winning the Battle Within
The Power of a Victorious Life
Notes
Scripture Index
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