St. John Studies

There it is…

Every time I go down the street…

Just a simple sign that says so much…   

BE  KIND

Someone has felt the need to remind us that being kind today is an important thing.  They feel so strongly that they made a sign and placed it in their front yard.

Maybe it is because our world today is rife with examples of people who are not kind; they are downright cruel.   It seems that every nightly news show has at least one video of someone behaving badly.  Examples are everywhere now since every cell phone has video capability and every cell phone user knows how to upload videos to social media platforms.  Go to those platforms [for example, Facebook] and you will see numerous examples of unkind behavior every day.   It seems that many of us must like the entertainment of watching people exhibit hurtful behavior.

Why make such a big deal about this?

Because the fruit of the Spirit includes the fruit of kindness or gentleness. 

Here’s the deal; if you profess to be a Christian, the fruit of kindness should show in your life.  If it doesn’t, you know you should be working on learning how to show it in the future.  This kind or gentle behavior overcomes what Pastor Graham* calls the “harsh and austere.” Graham states “indeed, gentleness is love enduring.”   

No Christian should be surprised by this because Jesus Christ was truly a gentle person.  Look at the timeframe of His life.  There were no institutions in Jesus’ time that were merciful.  There were no hospitals, no mental institutions, no places for the poor, and no homes for orphans.  We think we live in a cruel world today but today’s world at least has entities that care for those that society labels “the forsaken.”

Think about it; in the middle of a truly unkind world over two thousand years ago, a man was born, a man who performed countless acts of gentleness and kindness.  And that Man said “follow Me.”  That to me means “do as I do”.

Let’s be frank.  People who have some success in their life sometimes seem to find it easy to be hard on those who have had trouble.  There is some deep-seated need to be superior that is at the root of lots of unkind behavior.  It is even less difficult to be unkind to those who are hateful to us but what does Jesus say about those situations?   “Peter [said to Jesus] Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven” [Matthew 18: 21-22].  But it also seems to be difficult to be kind to those who are less fortunate, people whose only problem is that they are downtrodden:  “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of Mine, you did for Me.”  Many don’t seem to have the heart for helping the poor: “For I was hungry and you gave Me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave Me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite Me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe Me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after Me” [from Matthew 25].

In the Bible, Jesus was kind to the people who had the hardest lot in life.  He dealt harshly with hypocritical religious leaders but to everyone else He showed a wonderful, loving kindness. 

Think about the people today who are on the outside of the Christian faith looking in.  They see Christians who cannot summon gentleness in regard to those who need it most.  Maybe an observer of Christianity is a sinner and on the verge of repentance: imagine how turned off they would be when a Christian turns a blind eye and a deaf ear to people who need simple honest, loving compassion. 

At the heart of this problem is the Christian who is judgmental.  At the heart of this problem is the Christian who is legalistic.  At the heart of this problem is the Christian who is cruel…and yet, they still see themselves as a “good” follower of Jesus Christ. 

Then think of the model of Jesus Christ, who was tender, gentle and kind to everyone.  That kind of person is the best recruiter for the faith.  Even little children felt they could approach Jesus without fear.

Today the language of cruelty is everywhere.  In fact, many feel that gentleness is a sign of weakness, but Graham says “they are wrong!”   Graham quotes Charles Hembree who says “In our age of guided missiles and misguided men there is a desperate need for us to learn how to show gentleness.  It seems strange that in an age when men can reach the moon, bounce signals off of far planets, and receive pictures from whirling satellites we have great difficulty communicating tenderness to those about us.”

Graham sees the power of kindness as the greatest tool in the toolkit of the preacher.  A preacher can preach eloquent sermons but if he or she can be kind to people in the congregation, they can really lead the people to Jesus Christ.  “The gentle heart is the broken heart—the heart that weeps over the sins of the bad as well as the sacrifices of the good.”

It is not good to underestimate the power of kindness in a harsh world.  When all around us we see people who are capable of hateful behavior, it speaks volumes when one single person remembers to simply…

BE KIND.

*Pastor Billy Graham from his book The Holy Spirit…

All people need patience, don’t they?

But do we really want to do what we have to do in order to get it?

One of the first things I heard when I was a new “born again” Christian was “don’t pray for patience.   God will put you in situations where you will need to have it and you might not like those situations.”

What is this warning all about?

Testing…“Patience is closely related to testings or trials in the Bible, and that is only logical.  We may be patient in ordinary life, but how do we react when trials come?  It is then that we especially need the fruit of the Spirit—patience” [ Graham*, 259-60].

There you have it…the reason why Christians should think twice about praying for the Holy Spirit fruit of patience.  Patience seems to grow most in hard times.

But let’s think a bit more about those testings or trials.  Can those times be good for us?  What does James mean when he writes “Consider it all joy my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.”  Yes, testing or trials can reap good results.  We can have stronger faith, we can find ourselves drawing closer to God, we can be more active Christians, able to help others who are going through trials.

I am not a weight lifter, but I understand the theory behind resistance training.  It is all about the development of strength.   You have to lift weights and tear down your muscles in order for them to recover and grow stronger.  Patience development works the same way.  The more we have regular challenges and recover from those challenges, the more we can have strong faith development.  Regular patience trials help in the day to day frustrations we face and when the major battles come [and they will] we will have enough Holy Spirit God power to endure.

It does not have to work this way; all of this can go the opposite direction.  Trials and testings can erode a person’s heart.  Graham says what many suspect; that sometimes people are attacked by Satan.  Some don’t know enough to recognize this or maybe they refuse to believe that Satan is real.  Some don’t have enough faith to call on God. 

There is a remedy for these attacks.  You can call on God instantly when you feel you are being assaulted.  I have a habit of praying when things go wrong because I know God can handle any situation by giving me strength that I do not have, wisdom that I have never considered, and protection from barbs that come from Satan.  For Pastor Graham, “the best time to pray is the very moment a tense situation or an unspiritual attitude overtakes me.  God the Holy Spirit is always there, ready to help me gain victory in the spiritual battles I face—big or small.”

Don’t wait to pray; do it instantly and spontaneously; do it voluntarily and consciously.  It needs to be a part of your life, an integral part of who you are as a Christian. 

This brings up situations that are so negative that we wonder why they happen.  It has been my experience that searching for a reason for a trial in the midst of a trial is not very helpful.  Graham quotes Charles Hembree about affliction and the fairness of God: “In the full face of affliction it is hard to see any sense to things that befall us and we want to question the fairness of a faithful God.  However, these moments can be the most meaningful in our lives” [261].   When things go a negative direction, it would be best for the Christian to take the words of the Psalmist to heart “Weeping may last for the night, but a shout of joy comes in the morning [Psalm 30:5]. 

It sounds like Godly help in times of weeping will come quickly, but many will tell you that it may not.  At times in my life, it has seemed like God comes to help very slowly, certainly not the next morning when a trial comes at night.  At times like this there is a concept called longsuffering.  Longsuffering is hard to endure but people who can endure for long periods of time and maintain a strong faith in God show the world an awesome witness as they continually turn to God to help them through their time of trouble.  They don’t give up.  Jesus told His disciples “By your perseverance you will win your souls.”  Longsuffering wins souls as people see firsthand the power that blesses the Christian. 

Pastor Graham says that we need to be careful about this kind of witness, because some may misunderstand it as failure to take action.  Instead of suffering for a length of time, critics think the afflicted person should take action.   Of course there are certainly times when we need to speak out, act out, to have righteous indignation.  Jesus drove out all those who were using the temple for buying and selling.  He should have taken action against the long-standing practice of worldly commerce in a sacred location.   People who actually suffer for a long time don’t choose to suffer; they just endure their pain and keep their faith.

Think about it; all people need patience.  Sometimes life just does not respond to our immediate requests. Life can be complicated and stressful and we find ourselves in many trials and tribulations.  Should we pray for patience?  Why not?  We really won’t be asking for God to send hard times our way like the opening quotation says.   We don’t need to worry about trying times coming because we pray for patience.  Difficult times come for the believer as well as the unbeliever regardless of our prayers.

What good is the Holy Spirit fruit of patience? 

When those hard times come, we will be able to handle them…

Praise God!

*from his book The Holy Spirit

You leave the house a little late and as you travel down the road, you get behind a postal vehicle, making multiple stops on a busy street.  You suddenly get even more behind schedule.

You are tired and you just want to go home and eat dinner but you know you don’t have what you want to eat in the refrigerator.   You stop at the local market for a couple of items and when you get to the check-out line there are five customers in front of you. 

Your wife has a nagging health concern and it worries you a lot.  You pray every day for her to get relief.  Every day you pray the same prayer that she would heal but the answer from God seems to be no.  Her health concern is not going away.

What are we talking about here?  Of course, you know…patience waiting for what we want.

Pastor Billy Graham writes that the spiritual fruit of love, joy and peace speaks to our “Godward” relationship.  The next cluster of fruit [patience, kindness and goodness] has to do with outward relationships.   He opens his discussion with the words “if we are short-tempered, unkind and rude, we lack the second cluster of fruit of the Spirit.  But when the Spirit controls us, He works to transform us so that the buds of patience, kindness and goodness begin to blossom and then to be fruitful” [Graham, 258].

Patience or “long suffering” in the King James Version comes from a Greek work that speaks of how we are steadfast while we are being provoked.  Patient people seem to be able to endure ill treatment without anger or thought of retaliation.  It is an outward fruit because this fruit is seen in how we relate to others.  Obviously when we are irritable, vengeful, resentful or malicious, the Holy Spirit fruit of patience is not in control.

How does patience come about?  Reading between the lines of Graham’s book The Holy Spirit, I think it has a lot to do with perspective taking.  People with patience can empathize with others, having the ability to take someone else’s position.  A self-centered person may scream at the postman in my example above but a person with patience may understand that the postman is merely doing their job.  They must stop to deliver the mail. A self-centered person may scowl and tap their toes in frustration in the check-out line, maybe even expressing frustration at the cashier, but the person with patience sees that the five customers in front of them are really just trying to get home too. They don’t intend to make your life miserable.  They just beat you to the cash registers.  The check-out person is probably doing the best they can to get you out of the store; they are not your barrier to peace.

Patience is closely related to perseverance.  Patient people have the ability to wait for results, when others throw up their hands and express frustration, push to get the results they want, or maybe even give up.

Keep in mind that many feel Americans today live in a culture that is often short on patience.  All around us we see role models of people who just don’t have the ability to wait.  Some of the wealthiest people in our society would rather use their riches to buy what they want than wait for it.  Time conscious people commit road rage violence when someone cuts them off as they try to get to their destination.  Some folks have financial trouble based on the overuse of credit cards.   They don’t want to wait until they have the money for an expensive item.  They want it now and they charge it, not thinking about the impending bill that will eventually come in the mail. 

Patience is a key part of taking on the face of Christ. Too often we admire it in other people but we just can’t find a way to exhibit it ourselves.   The Apostle Paul teaches that we can be “strengthened with all might according to His glorious power, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness” [Colossians 1: 11].  In other words, we can learn patience if we are willing to learn it from God.  Sometimes we might think we are not getting what we want and it is due to God keeping it from us. That is not true.  Sometimes we might even blame Satan for our troubles, putting our feelings of frustration at his doorstep.

Here is the source of our lack of patience, not God, not Satan, but us.  When we get frustrated or angry and our resentment begins to build, we need to recognize that it is our own selfishness that is to blame.  When we feel a lack of patience, it is our old nature that is coming out, rather than that “new person” who was born again with Jesus.    Some of the first steps to growing in the fruit of patience is recognizing the frustration, owning the frustration and repudiating the frustration, asking God to work with us to grow the fruit of patience.

When it comes to prayer, there is the old saying that God always answers prayer.  Yes, my wife has had a health problem that has nagged her recently and I have been praying for her to have a lessening of her pain, a return to normal health.  As a person who is praying for her, I want her healed right now, but that is not to be.  Then I realize that God is answering my pray.  I really want Him to give me a yes, your wife if healed.   I am frustrated that He is telling me no; she is not healed yet. 

Then my patient self kicks in, and I believe that what He is really saying is “wait.”

I will wait…

“Shalom”… the Jewish word for peace.

We all wish we had it on a daily basis, but often we don’t.  We worry, we lack confidence, and we experience despair, in spite of our faith.  We feel we don’t have any faith or we certainly don’t have much and we certainly don’t have peace.

One of the most common things I sometimes hear from some Christians about their faith in times of crisis is this: “I don’t know why I worry so much.  I believe in God.  Why is this happening to me?  Why can’t I trust God that everything is going to be ok?  Why don’t I have peace, you know that peace that passes all understanding?  Why can’t I get through this and feel good about it?”

Let’s take a moment and look at the opposite of worry, lack of confidence and despair.  Let’s look at Pastor Billy Graham’s* picture of a Christian who has peace.  “He stands alone on the battlefield, by faith garrisoned round with God’s holy weapons, and in command of the situation.  Such a man is not troubled about the future, for he knows who holds the key to the future.  He does not tremble on the rock, for he knows who made the rock.  He does not doubt, for he knows the One who erases all doubt” [Graham, 253-54]

A pretty high bar, isn’t it…

We need to acknowledge that this faith and resulting peace that we are all supposed to feel is often born from a mountaintop experience.  Some people report that they are ready to commit to faith in God when they hear a truly inspirational sermon.   Maybe they experience something that seems miraculous, for example the birth of a child.  They have prayed for a long, long time and then in a dramatic fashion, their prayers are answered.  Faith could be born from something as simple as the sounds of a beautiful song, a phrase in a book, but for the first time in a person’s life, they know that God is there…and they commit to having faith.  They are a new believer in God and they may have peace that they have never had before.

And then they leave the mountain.  They find themselves in what John Ortberg** calls “the valley of ambiguity”.  It makes ultimate sense that once you begin to believe in God that your belief should be a stable, everyday thing, but it is not.  Ortberg writes that “one of the biggest illusions is that our minds are generally governed by reason.  But our minds are not logic machines.  What seems true to us in one moment can change drastically in the next” [72].  Logical stable belief does not even seem to be what we should expect from human beings.   I wish it was, but it’s not.

Throw in trials and tribulations and you have a recipe for loss of faith and lack of peace.  Throw in sin and you have a person who is at war with himself, doing things that he may not want to do but doing them anyway. This is a far cry from John 14: 27: “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you, not as the world gives, do I give to you.”  Focus on the phrase, not as the world gives; that peace only comes to man and woman from the Holy Spirit.

Yet we are only human…

Why is sin such a problem?  Why does it cause such unrest in our souls? Christ came to earth to save us from ourselves.  He ended the internal war between sinful man and righteous man.  He ended the war between sinful man and a vengeful God.  Jesus’ blood made peace within man and made peace between man and God.  The debt was cancelled and the books were balanced.  Man was set free from his stressful concern about his sin.  Graham writes “For us, peace with God is not simply an armistice; it is a war ended forever.”  Indeed this peace transcends human knowledge; it is a gift we do not deserve but it is ours for the taking.  It is ours for the living.

It makes sense. I believe; I must have peace.

Even though we have this peace, we certainly can relate to Charles Spurgeon when he says “I looked at Christ, and the dove of peace flew into my heart; I looked at the dove of peace and it flew away.” We have it and they it leaves, maybe making us question our faith in God.

What should we do if we want this illusive peace?  We must carefully examine our relationship with God and we must carefully consider how well God really knows us.   He knows us so well that we can turn to Psalms 139 and see that He has searched us, He knows when we sit and rise, He knows our thoughts from afar, He is familiar with all our ways.  Before we speak, He knows what we are about to say.  His knowledge of us is wonderful and from my perspective it is reassuring.  He knows that we will have moments of peace and that we will have moments of worry, lack of confidence and despair and yes folks, we even have moments when we sin.

I don’t mean to be disingenuous, but God knows that we are human.

He knows that we are going to have moments when we have so much lack of peace that the only thing we can do is throw up our hands and ask Him for help.  There is nothing else for us to do.  We know we don’t have the power to have the peace we need, but we know that in God we might have the answer.  He knows we need Him, and He wants to help us.  When He helps us, we have been given the power of the Holy Spirit who lives in our weak bodies.  When we most need Him, He is there.  He wants to be there because He saved us that we might bear fruit for Him.  This is our purpose; to bear fruit in our lives through the Holy Spirit.  To bring glory to the Kingdom of God.

Some of the most amazing fruit that we can bear is the fruit of peace in the midst of trying times.  There is not a stronger message that we can deliver about our faith.  Graham knows peace when he sees it and he uses a simple example to illustrate.  He recounts the story of a hijacked airplane and after landing, the passengers disembark, showing horror, terror and fear on their faces, only natural.  But in the middle of all that crisis, a woman disembarked with her small baby in her arms, calmly sleeping through it all.  “Peace in the midst of turmoil.”

The child’s peace speaks volumes.  Our peace speaks too.  When all is falling apart around us, there is it, for others to see. 

It says we know who made the rock, we do not doubt, for we know the One who erases all doubt.

It says it loudly…it says it clearly…

The Holy Spirit fruit of peace…

*from Graham’s book  The Holy Spirit

**parts of this blog are based on John Ortberg’s  Faith and Doubt

“Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” [James 1:2-4].

Recently, my wife has had more than her share of health challenges.  I told her that I wanted to write on the Holy Spirit fruit of joy for St. John Studies and I referenced the words above from James.  She has recently felt quite a lot of pain and she has felt fearful, not knowing what her body was doing. She wondered aloud how she was supposed to feel joy in the midst of all these trials.

What about you?

Are you confused by James also?

What is this fruit called joy?   How does it manifest itself in the believer’s life?  It may be one of the most confusing behaviors that a devout Christian should show, especially when he or she is in the midst of trying circumstances.

The Greek word for joy is chara.  It is used repeatedly in the New Testament to mean joy that comes from a spiritual source and we know what that spiritual source is…it is the Holy Spirit.

To begin to understand chara, maybe the best thing to do is quote from The Holy Spirit*.  “Today’s world is joyless, full of shadows, disillusionment and fear.  Freedom is rapidly disappearing from the face of the earth.  Along with the loss of freedom, a great many of the superficial joys and pleasures of life are also disappearing, but this need not alarm us [Christians].  The Scriptures teach that our spiritual joy is not dependent on circumstances.  The world’s system fails to tap the source of joy.  God by His Spirit directs His joy to our bleak, problem-riddled lives, making it possible for us to be filled with joy regardless of our circumstances” [Graham, 252].

There you have it; our joy is not supposed to be dependent on the everyday trials and tribulations that we all face.  Our joy is not to be dependent on the happy events that may come our way.  Our joy is supposed to be grounded in The Lord. 

Happiness is elusive.  We can’t find it by seeking it; we can try to engineer outward circumstances to bring happiness, but often when we do, even our greatest efforts and greatest amounts of money cannot really bring happiness.  Pleasure is momentary.   We may think that is worth pursuing but even that does not begin to touch the joy that we can feel in The Lord.

What are some sources of joy for the Christian?  The joy of deliverance happens when someone is set free from sin. The joy of salvation occurs when we come to realize that God wants to save us and spend eternity with us.  The joy of spiritual maturity develops when the Holy Spirit works within us to bear more and more fruit and we not only become more confident in God’s promises but we rejoice in Him and with other believers. The joy of God’s presence is when the Holy Spirit draws us close to God, in whose presence we surely know true joy.**

Let’s stop for a minute and think about joy in the midst of trials and tribulations.  If a person is experiencing joy at trying times, what does that communicate?  When we look at the Apostle Paul writing his last letter to Timothy, what were his circumstances?  He had suffered untold horrors in prison, his life was constantly threatened and he knew he would be dead soon, yet he wrote that the joy of The Lord filled his heart.  What message does that send to believers and unbelievers? 

Maybe Paul is saying look at the situation I am in, the dim future that I face, yet I find I can have joy in my heart.

Imagine an unbeliever being in that situation and thinking how they would face the stress; now imagine an unbeliever hearing about a man of God in that situation and thinking about how he is reacting. 

Joy is a fruit of the spirit that serves the believer but can’t you see that this fruit can draw people to God when they see people of God exhibiting calm in the eye of the storm. 

Charles Allen writes “Just as all the water in the world cannot quench the fire of the Holy Spirit, neither can all the troubles and tragedies of the world overwhelm the joy which the Spirit brings into the human heart.”

Graham closes his comments on joy with these telling words:  “Joy is the flag that flies above the palace when the King is in residence” [254].

Think about that Christians…no truer words are spoken.

“When the King is in residence.”

*by Pastor Billy Graham

**from the gotquestions.org website 

One way of looking at the fruit of the Sprit is to view it in clusters.  Pastor Graham says the first cluster is love, joy and peace; three characteristics which speak of our “Godward relationship.”  Maybe if we took First Corinthians 3: 13 literally, we would infer that the greatest of these is love.

Even though the first cluster is important, all nine characteristics of our Christian lives

[these three and six more that we will discuss]

should be the result of our abiding in Christ, our allowing the Holy Spirit to do His work in us, through us.

Today we focus on the fruit of love.

Pastor Graham describes Christian love like this: “When we reflect on the meaning of love, we see that it is to the heart what the summer is to the farmer’s year.  It brings to harvest all the loveliest flowers of the soul.  Indeed it is the loveliest flower in the garden of God’s grace” [The Holy Spirit, 247].

Indeed, if a Christian cannot show the fruit of love in his or her life, the relationship that one has with God is worth little.  “If love does not characterize our lives, they are empty” [247].   

But what is love other than some vague concept that can include many disparate actions. Let’s explore Christian love further.

It comes from the Greek word agape, a word that is found all over the Greek New Testament.  When Jesus said love your enemies, He used the word agape, when Jesus said we were to love one another in His statement to John, He used the word agape.  When Jesus said “thou shalt love thy neighbor”, He said agape.  According to the New Bible Dictionary, agape is “the highest and noblest form of love.”

Since we are to love as God does, believers should be able to demonstrate agape love.  There is a catch; this form of love does not come from our own willpower, or some earthly inspirational experience.   It comes from God to us through the Holy Spirit.  Agape love is an active love.   It is not just words.   It is not enough to tell someone that you love them; you have to show them through something you do for them. 

Agape love is not selfish at all.  Graham cites Bishop Stephen Neill who defines agape as “a steady direction of the will toward another’s lasting good.”  Agape love is all about the needs of another, not selfish needs.  Human love is largely selfish in nature.  Agape is a self-giving, sacrificial type of love. 

One way to understand agape better is to use three contrasts between human love and God’s love [agape].   I paraphrase from Pastor Graham.  Human love says that I own something that someone else wants.  Human love thinks I wish to be richer by receiving a gift which someone else could give me.  Human love means I want to have the feeling and desire of love which comes and goes according to my emotions.

Contrasting, agape is about wishing to give to others because we love them, gaining riches is not a goal because we desire to make others rich by giving all that we have.  The act of love is not a feeling; it is more a matter of will because it is a choice to give or not to give, simple as that.  It is a choice that comes from a deep-seated need to try to reflect the love of God.

When Jesus said “love one another” this is not a suggestion; it is a command.  It includes wives, husbands, children, extended family members, neighbors and even people we have never met on the other side of the world.  It includes people who are not easy to love.  It includes people who are not like us, so unlike us that they may be hard to love.  It even includes people who have harmed us and have brought sorrow to us.  It includes people who are lonely, people who are destitute, people who are struggling to live life. 

It is a hard command but look at the life of Jesus.  He was moved by compassion for people in his world from the greatest monarch to the lowliest beggar.  His love knew no boundary.   Jesus embraced all kinds of people, no matter their circumstances. 

What is our best model of love?  All Christians should know.  It is God’s love for us as He sent His Son to live among us, knowing He would die an earthly death for our sins.  God loved us so much that He sent us His only Son.

Again, where do we get the impetus to show this love?  First of all, we must yield our wills to Jesus Christ.   When we make Him our Master, we can begin to experience the love of God and we begin to understand that we need to pass that love on to others.  It is not to be hoarded; it is meant to be shared, passed on.  As we experience Godly love for others, the passing it on is the production of fruit.

Graham describes this phenomenon in these words: “Nothing but the Spirit of God working in our lives can produce such fruit [agape], and it will be evident in our public as well as private lives.”

Think about these words.

Think about them seriously and then ask yourself about the fruit of love in your life.

 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” [John 13: 34].

“There should be no more distinctive mark of the Christian than love.”

                                                                        Billy Graham from The Holy Spirit

This is an unqualified call to show this fruit of love [behavior of love] every day of our lives but I have to ask the hard question: how many of us fall short? 

You can find countless Scriptures imploring us to show love for one another.  Romans 13: 8 says “Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.”  First Peter 4:8 encourages “Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins.” First Corinthians 13:1-3 declares “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”

“Love is an act of the will and that is why our wills must first be yielded to Christ before we will begin to bear the fruit of love” [Graham, 249].  Maybe that is why so many people do not exhibit love today.  They have not really given their lives to Jesus.  They say they have; in fact, they will declare that they have a personal relationship with God, but do they?  It should show. 

I don’t usually use this blog to “preach.”  I would rather pick important parts of a book and comment on them rather than share my own personal thoughts, but one of the first fruits that should be obvious to others when you give your life to Christ is that you love others.  It just seems that today, too many Christians just find themselves in situations where they are incapable of showing it.

American culture today makes it tough.   We live in a country that is obsessed with expression and too often the expression that is expressed is far from what I would call love.  So many people seem to be caught up in what has come to be called “social media”.  I find the term ironic.  I know I am not “hip” when I write this but social means conversation, one to one or one to small group.  Beyond small group it becomes public speaking [one to large group].  My point is social media is not social; interaction occurs directly between people.  Ideas get exchanged, we attend to words and body language and there can be mutual respect for other people.

Social media’s flaw is that it happens on a phone or computer as images are shared and words are added on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc.  There is a barrier between the one with the ideas and the recipient of those ideas [that barrier is a phone or a computer].  There is safety when you express yourself without seeing any effect.  People seem to get bold when they have a firewall between themselves and their audience; they say hateful things, judgmental things, discouraging things.  You might expect that people who don’t believe in God would have no qualms about doing this…

But oftentimes, many of the negative things I see expressed come from Christians.

Lifestyle comments are so common today.  If anyone’s existence gets publicized on social media, or even television or the newspaper, people feel emboldened to weigh in on their circumstances.   I see comments all the time about people who have some unique situation in their life:  a parent who may have accidently left a child unattended, a man who is struggling to help his sick wife, a successful television personality who is struggling with an addiction.  We could go on and on.  Examples abound.   Many people feel they should comment on another person’s life as though they know the person involved.   People are complex and none of us need to comment, much less castigate others.  We don’t know others’ circumstances.  To use the cliché, we have not “walked a mile in their shoes” but we comment anyhow.

Some of those very uncharitable comments come from Christians.

The last area for me to focus on is in the arena of politics today.  Politics has become a blood sport and as we consider what side we want to identify with, it is open season for the use of hateful talk about others who don’t have our views. For example one party in America is supposed to hate the other, and after lining up with one party or the other, it is common to believe that the chosen party’s view on governance is right for our diverse society.   To be honest, when one studies policy from both parties, there are good and bad ideas in both.  To have effective government, it would be best to take the good ideas from competing parties and use all of them.  That is not what we do today.  We would rather go to a public forum, spew hateful comments at those who don’t believe like us and march back to our corner. 

Some of the most hateful comments I read come from Christians.

Let’s talk about irony.  I am a perfect example of irony. It is ironic that I would complain about social media and what do I do with this blog?  I put it on a platform that makes it available to the public [social media].  I put links to it on Facebook [social media].  My own ironic behavior is not lost on me.

But here is another irony that I want to reveal.  Billy Graham states “No matter how else we may bear our testimony for the Lord Jesus Christ, the absence of love nullifies it all”.    He goes further by writing “If love does not characterize our lives, they are empty.”   If Christians love Jesus Christ, we should be very concerned about what we put on social media, know that the device we are using to express ourselves is not an excuse for hateful comments.  I wonder what Jesus would think about us being so negative about other people we don’t even know.  I wonder what He would think of our disdain of others’ lifestyles when we don’t even know them.  Lastly, the world is a tempting thing and too many Christians are caught up in politics and don’t realize that they are supposed to love the people in the “other” party, that the “other” people are humans who are deserving of our love, even if they don’t think like us.  Here is a real shocker:  many of the people who are hated are Christians who just happen to have a different view of life.

I know this post may be one that angers readers but I have struggled with the “first fruit” of the fruits of the spirit: love.  I stand back from time to time and watch how we behave as a society and I am appalled.  I believe Graham when he says “There should be no more distinctive mark of the Christian than love.”

I also believe this because it calls us to examine our fruit as Christian brothers and sisters:  “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” [John 13; 35].

Stand back from time to time and consider your words.

What type of fruit are you showing?

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing” [John 15: 5].

There are several scriptures about how “fruit” grows in the Bible but the beginning understanding of how that can happen occurs in John 15: 5.

I am the vine says Jesus as He is trying to explain His relationship with His Disciples and in essence, He calls them to be faithful loyal followers [if you remain in me and I in you] you will bear fruit.  Fruit is the behavior that a person can exhibit if they believe in Jesus and His Father God [love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodwill etc.*].

Apart from me you can do nothing are key words because Jesus says in those words that the source of your fruit is Him [belief in Him and His Father] and despite all your best efforts, trying to produce fruit on your own power just does not work.

Pastor Billy Graham, like Jesus, likes to use illustrations to drive home a clear understanding.  He writes about a conversation a person could have with a grapevine.  One might ask a branch of a grapevine “How do you grow such luscious fruit?”.  The branch might reply “I don’t know.  I don’t grow any of it; I just bear it.   Cut me off from this vine and I will wither away and become useless.”  In other words, without the vine the branch can do nothing.  Graham writes “So it is with our lives.  As long as I strain and work to produce the fruit of the Spirit from within myself, I will end up fruitless and frustrated.”  We depend on the vine which is Jesus Christ.

We have to abide in Him.

What is this word abide?  It appears in John 15 when Jesus says “Abide in Me and I in you.  As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine so neither can you, unless you abide in Me.  I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit.”

Christians need firm foundations, like that tree planted by the river in Psalm 1.  That tree yields much fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither.  Where do we get that foundation?  We get it from the Christian disciplines of prayer, Bible study, and fellowship with other believers. 

What do we get from these disciplines?  A close relationship with God through prayer, knowledge of God through Bible study and support and love from fellow Christians through fellowship.   We cannot display the fruit of the spirit if we have a weak fellowship with God, if our lives have been disrupted by acts of sin. 

One part of abiding resides in our efforts to know God and be close to God.

The other part of abiding resides in obedience.  If we study God’s word and pray to God and have fellowship with other believers, we begin to know what Jesus Christ expects of us.  As we come to know Christ, we should begin to take on characteristics of Christ and our behaviors should change.  Like the sap that flows from the vine to the branch, the sap nourishes the branch and produces fruit.   That fruit is our Christ-like behavior.

In our instant success world, some may think that this process can happen quickly; just grab a Bible, get a few pointers about how to pray and start hanging around church.  Well it does not work that way.  It takes time to incorporate new disciplines into life and it takes time to learn new ideas and new behaviors.  The fruit on the fruit tree takes time to mature, and that is where pruning comes into play. 

Novice gardeners know that the best way to produce strong plants, bushes and trees is to prune them.  As you cut back weak branches on a tree for instance, you force energy back down into the tree, into the root system and a new stronger tree will grow over time.   There is no such thing as instant maturity; many pruning’s over many years are needed to produce strong plants and good abundant fruit.

Again, using the power of a story, Graham tells of pruning grapevines.  Some years he picked small crops of substandard grapes for personal use, but he did not cut all his grapevines down.  He removed the weak branches; he pruned them carefully.  The next year the vines produced better fruit.  That same idea applies to us as Christians.  As we grow and mature in our beliefs, we hopefully will produce better fruit over time.

Our gardener is God.  When we have sinful behaviors that inhibit our ability to produce fruit, God prunes them away, leaving the Christ-like behaviors.

God our Father, tells us where we have fallen short and gone astray, all the time encouraging us, hoping we will grow stronger, hoping we will abide in Him and produce more fruit.

*We will elaborate on the fruit in later posts.

Gifts of the Holy Spirit are unique.  Just because one person gets a gift [such as teaching], that does not mean that all other believers get that gift.  Billy Graham was known to have the gift of evangelizing, but the Holy Spirit does not give that gift to just anyone [certainly not like He gave it to Billy Graham].  Part of the discussion of the gift of tongues is the envy that some people have because they don’t have a particular spiritual gift. For example if someone can speak in tongues, why can’t I? 

Again, it is because spiritual gifts are unique. 

But let’s write about something that is not unique…the fruit of the Holy Spirit.   When it comes to the Bible’s teaching on the fruit of the Holy Spirit, God wants all believers to have the fruit of the Spirit.   Let’s be clear; all believers should have all of the fruit of the spirit.  That is God’s expectation in our lives.

Graham interprets Matthew 13 as evidence of how the fruit is supposed to work.  When one professes belief in God, the process of “growing fruit” is supposed to begin.  Simply put, it is the development of a “Christlike” character that is supposed to manifest itself in certain outward behaviors as we conduct our lives. 

Matthew 13 explains why we don’t all exhibit the fruit; of course Matthew 13 is the parable of the seed and the sower.  Pastors, evangelists and teachers or any other Christian for that matter can sew the seed.  The problem is that some seed never grows.   The parable says that some seeds fall by the wayside and are eaten by birds.  Maybe that is the message of the Holy Spirit about Christian behavior that never is heard.  Some seed falls on rocky ground and without soil, it withers and dies.  The message is delivered and is heard but it does not take root.   For some, they hear the words but they are really not ready to receive them.  They are like rocks and nothing grows on a rock.  Other seed is sown and it grows for a while but eventually thorns begin to grow around the seed and the thorns choke out seed growth.  Maybe those thorns are sins that begin to take over and the sin will keep the seed from growing, literally choking out the production of “fruit.”  Finally is that group of seed that falls into good soil.  That seed begins to root and it brings forth abundant fruit.  The fourth situation is what God desires for all believers.   He wants the Word of God to take root in our lives in the power of the Spirit.   He wants that word to produce fruit.

We cannot produce fruit on our own.  In essence we cannot produce godliness in our lives apart from the Holy Spirit.  Graham hits the nail on the head when he says that all of us are filled with all kinds of “self-centered and self-seeking” desires which are in direct opposition to God’s will for our lives. 

What would God have us do?  First of all, He wants us to make an honest effort to root as much sin out of our lives as possible.   As that happens, He wants us to allow the Holy Spirit to fill our lives with spiritual fruit.   Colossians 3:5, 12 gives a clue to what The Bible means about “fruit”:  “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature…. as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” 

Graham uses a simple and effective illustration to explain this transfer of behaviors.  He compares our spiritual lives as a home that is surrounded by a fence.  The fence has a gate and we all know what gates are used for. They are used for letting people in or keeping people out.  Inside our gate are all sorts of things that are unpleasing to God [i.e. sins].  We need to let those sins out, but we don’t have the power to open the gate.  Only the Holy Spirit can do that.  When does He open that gate?  He does that when “we yield to Him and look to Him for His fullness” [240].  At that point the Holy Spirit will come in and help us throw out the evil things in our lives.  Not only does He control the gate, He controls the purging of our heart, the development of new attitudes, new motivations.  Graham even says “He strengthens the gate with bars to keep out evil. 

In summary, the works of the flesh [sins] depart and the fruit of the Spirit comes in. 

What triggers this?

Did you note the word “yield?” 

Unless we are ready to yield to God, none of this will happen.  This is the “rub.”  Many people are not willing to yield to God; they cling to their habits, they cling to their need for sin, they may even cling to their feelings of guilt about their sin, and they can’t move forward.  They may have regret for their lifestyle choices, but they can’t totally agree with God over the matter.   Well known Christian author and lecturer Beth Moore says we are not ready to give up a sin if we still cherish it in our heart.   It is only when we develop a Godly sorrow for the sin that it has a chance to go away.   God can change our hearts at that point.  Again God changes us; we don’t change ourselves.  It is all about yielding to Him.

After reading this introduction to the Holy Spirit and sensing the need for some of this fruit [compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience] where are you in Matthew 13?

Are you letting the seed fall by the wayside, and you are not even paying attention to it?

Are you the rock, allowing the seed to land on your non-porous surface but it is not growing?

Are you the ground that receives the seed and it grows for a while but then it is choked out by your sin?

Are you the good ground that receives the seed and the seed grows and produces fruit?

Where are you in the parable?  Maybe you would like to be the good ground, but people cannot be that unless they are ready to give God control over your life.  In the story referenced above, Graham says this “as we yield to Him and look to Him for His fullness—He not only comes in but He helps us thrust out the evil things in our lives.”

He controls the gate.

He purges the heart.

He brings in the new attitudes etc.

God wants to us have His fruit of the Spirit…all we have to do is develop a Godly sorrow in our hearts and say to Him “help me”.  His response…

“Behold I make all things new.”

References to Billy Graham The Holy Spirit and Beth Moore Praying God’s Word.

Full disclosure: many Christians have such reverence for Pastor Billy that they love him no matter what his denomination.  In my mind, that is a very good thing.   He was a spirit-filled Christian who evangelized, calling millions of lost people to a relationship with Jesus Christ.  He did the work of The Lord.

He was an ordained Southern Baptist Minister.

What denominations today primarily speak in tongues?  Grahams writes that there are Presbyterians, Baptists, Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists as well as Pentecostals who speak or have spoken in tongues.

Full disclosure: the denominations that are most associated with this spiritual gift are most often Pentecostal or Charismatic Christian churches.

As I have commented on his book The Holy Spirit, I have taken significant sections and I have broken them down, explaining Graham’s ideas, putting my own twist on his thoughts, adding to his ideas from other sources.   His book has been an extensive discussion of all aspects of the Holy Spirit, but no subject has been discussed as much as the spiritual gift of speaking in tongues.   Being a Southern Baptist, the gift of tongues is not as common in his “mainline” denomination but it has occurred and it certainly deserves attention.  With Pastor Graham, I would say his lengthy discussion is an effort to be in “balance.”  He does not condemn this spiritual gift, but he also does not promote it.

Why do I say that?  I present six reasons from his book to support my assertion.

First, the various interpretations of speaking in tongues in Acts 1, 1 Corinthians 12 and 1 Corinthians 14 do not actually agree on the act of speaking in tongues.  That is ok, but the variation of the act itself may mean that we need to be very careful in accepting any utterance as a legitimate spiritual experience.

Second, tongues is a gift of the Holy Spirit, not a fruit.  Fruits of the Spirit should mark every Christian who is walking in the Spirit.  Graham and I cannot find any Biblical evidence that tongues is a gift given to all believers.  This can lead Christians who don’t have this gift to view themselves as “second rate” believers but feeling that way is not valid.  “It would be equally wrong for someone who has this gift to try to compel others to have it, or to teach that everyone must experience it” [227].

Graham says that the gift of tongues “is clearly one of the “less important” gifts of the spirit” [227].   He says that because it does not seem to provide any spiritual benefit to other believers.   The other gifts of the Spirit are exercised to build up and strengthen the body of Christ, but unless an interpreter is present, tongues in a public worship service does little for the mutual strengthening of believers present.

In a fourth point, Graham says that tongues are not a sign of baptism of the believer by the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ.  “Nowhere in the Bible do I find it said that the gift of tongues is a necessary evidence of being baptized with the Holy Spirit in Christ’s body” [228].  Graham further states that some of the most Spirit-filled Christians he has ever known have never experienced the gift of tongues.

To further explain his position, Graham writes at length about the abuse of the gift of tongues.  He cites pride that can occur when a believer is given the gift, with the recipient feeling more spiritual than other believers.  I have already discussed at length the divisive nature of tongues [see January 23^rd post].   He cites imbalance that can occur when a believer focuses all of their attention on that gift and neglects other gifts.  Some feel that tongues can be thought of as a short-cut to spiritual maturity when in reality, millions of mature Christians have never spoken in tongues and many who have spoken in tongues are not spiritually mature.  The occurrence of tongues may be “counterfeit”; Graham cites historical examples of people who professed to speak in tongues, but they were found to be frauds.*   Today, Christians have admitted that they faked speaking in tongues just to be accepted in their worship groups.

The last point is the speaking in tongues in a private, devotional sense.  Graham admits that over the years some of his friends have prayed such fervent prayers that they found themselves speaking in an unknown language.  Maybe this is real, as most of the recordings of this have never been publically acknowledged.  His friends have stated emphatically that their experience is real.   Maybe this has happened to you and if it was a private experience, who can declare it “counterfeit?” 

Graham’s last words on this spiritual gift are these; if you have this gift, that is good; if you don’t that is good too.  “We worship the same Lord, and for this we are grateful” [233].

Is this a gift that God has seen fit to give you?  Don’t be prideful about it.  Don’t be preoccupied with it.  Is this a gift that God has not given you?  Don’t be preoccupied that He has not given it to you.   Don’t let it divide you from your fellow believers.  “Whenever gifts of this nature are given, they must be used strictly in accordance with the principles God has set forth in the Bible.  This should also contribute to the unity of the Spirit.  And if God chooses to give these gifts to some today, we should always pray that they will be used ‘for the common good’ and the furtherance of the Kingdom of God” [235].

There are brothers and sisters who have a different emphasis than you, and different gift or gifts.  

Always remember that they are still your brothers and sisters in Christ. “love others, including believers who may not agree with your emphasis” [235].

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”

We would all live our best lives if we focus on what unites us. 

We have to look no further than Christ’s second commandment.

*the ancient Greek oracle of Delphi, the Pharaoh’s magicians [recoded in the Bible]

**John 13: 34