7.31.23            Patience, Goodness, Kindness, Faithfulness, Gentleness   This week I want to focus on these five fruit of the Spirit which are all part of the totality of love when we live in love, peace, joy, and humility, the other fruit of the Spirit described by Paul in Galatians 5:22-23. These five qualities that the […]

6.26.23   In Galatians 5:19-23, Paul contrasts the “acts of the flesh” with the ‘fruit of the Spirit.’ The flesh deals in all that we feel free to do in the world, regardless of the objections of our conscience or the laws of God(v. 19-21). “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, […]

12/5/22   After the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary, announcing to her that she would bear a son, Jesus, Son of the Most High, Mary hurried off to visit her much older cousin, Elizabeth, who was now six months pregnant with John, who would precede Jesus in declaring the Good News and baptizing people. When […]

Over the last seven weeks I have been writing about the fruit of the Spirit. To me Paul is describing all the facets of love that we can aspire to in our lives, as we follow Jesus. These gifts from the Holy Spirit take us beyond human love which is very choosy about who is […]

The last fruit of the Spirit that Paul writes about in Galatians (5:22-23) is self-control (NIV, NRSV) also translated as temperance(KJV).  That sounds like an outward control of bad habits, but it’s more an attachment to Jesus’s teachings and His leading us to the kingdom of God than us controlling our own behavior.  Priorities change […]

  We Christians are a faith-filled people, faithful to the God we worship, faithful in worshipping regularly, faithful in prayer, but are we faithful to what Jesus taught and how he lived? Or are we still too attached to the world’s ways and too dismissive of Jesus’s ways? We should ask ourselves these questions: Do […]

Fruit of the Spirit Kindness, Goodness and Gentleness   Kindness, goodness and gentleness are love in action in this world, with everyone we meet, with friends and family and enemies. The ability to be kind, good, and gentle grows in us—like all the fruit of the spirit–as we follow Christ in our lives, especially as […]

We Americans talk so much about happiness, but happiness is a just short-lived positive reaction to meeting our goals or buying the next thing on our list or getting someone’s approval. Happiness is really about what our ego- and culture- dominated lives desire. It has only to do with superficial goals and the surface of […]

  The fruit of the spirit in Galatians 5:22-23 is a description of the attitudes and mind-sets that we develop as we give our lives more and more over to God, as we give up the world’s viewpoints and adopt a broader, truer way of thinking and being. As the fruit ripens in us, we […]

Since March 2020 the COVID-19 has ruled our lives, from working at home instead of in the office, to wearing masks everywhere we go, to few parties or group encounters, to so many changes in the school schedules. It’s been dizzying and trying. And yet, we human beings are highly adaptable. So, we have done […]