But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  Against such things there is no law.  Galatians 5:22-23 NIV

As a young person, starting out in a law enforcement career, I was shocked when someone told me that anybody can charge anybody with a crime.  Now proving they did it may be another matter but if I got mad at someone I could accuse them of hitting me or stealing something from me and just lie in the police report.  It happens.  Now if my lie is ever found out then I could face charges for filing a false police report or perjury if it got to court and I lied under oath.  The same is true with law suits.  Our courts are full of people trying to vent their hatred against others by using the judicial court system or the civil court system.

What if there was a law against love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  Would you be found guilty or would you quickly be acquitted?

We all know people that if they were charged with the attributes listed above that not a jury in the world would find them guilty.  As Christians, this is the standard by which we are to live.  The Bible clearly tells us in Ephesians 4:31 that we are to let all bitterness, anger, wrath, shouting, slander and all kind of malice or plotting evil be removed from us.

Let me warn you, once you are saved, all eyes are on you.  Those who knew the old you are saying that you just did this for show and that it won’t last.  Those who have taken time to know the you that has been saved and is trying to do things the right way will be watching to see if you stumble and hopefully will be there to lift you up and encourage you in your love walk.

All the things that we are not supposed to do come so easily.  It’s easy to get angry.  It’s easy to refuse to forgive and stay bitter.  It’s so easy to raise our voices and demand that we get the last word.  We all love to talk about the person that has wronged us and plotting evil is really easy to do when someone has committed evil deeds against us.  After all we are just getting even, right?

We are called to take the high road, however, never the easy way out.  As Christians we are soldiers, warriors against the evil in this world.  Does that sound like an easy task?  I think not.

In the last 18 months I have found myself in situations that I would never have dreamed would happen.  I have come under attack by people that I thought were my loved ones and would never attack me.  I have seen behavior that I thought I would never have seen exhibited by some of these people.  It literally felt like hell as I was going through it, but I realized that God was teaching me to replace my old ways with the fruit of the spirit.  There was a time in my life that I would have gotten angry and gotten into a shouting match right along with them.  There was a time when I would have plotted revenge.  But what will that do to my witness?  I thank God for the experience and the valuable lessons learned.

I am a child of God.  I was bought by His blood.  He paid a price for me that was way too much.  I don’t deserve any mercy or grace from Him, but yet he shows it to me over and over again.   So, I had a choice to make.  I could act like the rest of the world and show them that I wasn’t going to be treated this way or I could show them the fruit of the Spirit.  I could respond to bitter accusations using the Sword of the Spirit or God’s word.  Let me tell you, that works!  When someone slanders you and plots evil against you and you come back at them with what God says about that situation it totally disarms them.

I have learned that if I walk in love, exercise patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control that God provides the joy and the peace.  It’s not easy, I have been through difficult things but this is by far the hardest thing I’ve had to do.  Exercising self-control when someone is just being mean and nasty to you is extremely difficult, but the pay off is amazing.  God honors the fruit of the spirit, God doesn’t honor horrible, mean, nasty behavior.  God tells us that he will take vengeance on those that come against us.  I’ve seen it and it is not pretty!

As you go through this day pray for God to give you the strength to exhibit the fruits of the Spirit.  The payoff if awesome!  Now I know some of you are reading this and thinking that it is not possible, but remember my friend, with God all things are possible!

Have a great day!