Self-Control

We've come to the last aspect of character that Paul lists as being part of the Fruit of the Spirit in our lives: self-control. To be completely honest, this has not always been a strong part of my character. For all of my life I have fought a bad temper that has simmered deep inside wanting to get out. There have been many times it would have felt so good to just let go, but looking back, each of those times, letting go would have destroyed a friendship or relationship, making a bad situation much worse. But self-control is so about much more than just anger, it's about balance in life.
Self-control is seldom embraced as something we really value because it might mean giving up something we really want. Self-control might look like this: Saturday night is friends' night; going out and enjoying good friends, food and a little wine. This is a good thing and important. The self-control comes into play when you balance the good times with your friends with the call to join with your church family the next morning to celebrate with them the things God is doing in your life and community on Sunday morning.
Now maybe you're not religious, self-control might be about how you balance the good times of Saturday night with being there for your kids when they get up, fully being their parent on the one day of the week where you all have some extra time.
Self-control might look like holding your tongue when you want to say something sarcastic because you've find something ridiculous and wrong, but sarcasm often ends up hurting someone else or making you look negative.
Self-control might look like holding off on buying the newest iPhone or toy and putting the money towards bills, or using some of it to bless a charity or someone you know who could use a little extra help to simply get by.
Self-control might look like leaving work at the end of the day and leaving your work there instead of taking it home again and instead taking the time to really be with your spouse, your kids, your friends, or simply to wind down and get a decent night's rest.
How would self-control work in your life? The examples I've listed are examples from my life, but we are all different and are out of balance in our lives in different ways. But in the end, it comes down to your priorities and values in your life which reveals your character.
A healthy person has balance in their life, balancing responsibility with entertaining yourself, balancing relationships with others and taking care of yourself, balancing caring for yourself and caring for others, balancing time and work and family and volunteering and more. Self-control is about shaping your life with an ethical and honorable foundation recognizing that you are not the center of the universe.
For followers of Jesus, self-control is about being a master of yourself and living your life in the way that Jesus desires and has called you to live. If you are looking for a summary of what that looks like, it's found in Jesus' call to love God with everything you have and to love your neighbour as yourself; a noble and healthy life.

Gentleness

This past week I saw a beautiful thing, a man holding another man who was weeping because of the brokenness in his life. The man who was weeping had made so many wrong choices in life and now they had come back to bite him hard. The man who was holding him gently sat him down and over the next while simply listened and offered his compassion. He answered with love and gentleness, acknowledging the brokenness and even the other man's role in creating the brokenness, but he simply showed love and understanding.
For me, this is what gentleness is all about: compassion, love and support in difficult times. It doesn't mean that you ignore the other person's role in creating the difficult time, it means focusing first on the person and their need for hope, healing and understanding. It means not jumping right away to assigning responsibility or blame, but to simply being there; person to person, heart to heart, realizing that we might well be in the other person's shoes if things had turned out only slightly different from choices or decisions we've made in our own past. Gentleness is often grace in action.
Gentleness is strength and courage acting in love and grace because it's about moving towards hut and brokenness instead of away, about seeking understanding and desiring healing for someone else and being willing to be the one who brings it.
If you are looking for one area of your character to grow in the next year, I would suggest gentleness and you will be a life changer.

Faithfulness

As I look back at the past couple of weeks, I'm reminded of how important our character is, no matter who we are. I started reflecting on the Fruit of the Spirit, 9 aspects of the character a follower of Jesus should work on, because I believe that too many people who follow Jesus focus only on believing the right things instead of becoming the right person. With all the anger and hatred in the world, and our country, provinces and cities here in Canada are not immune, let's make sure we don't get complacent about the importance of character or thinking it could never happen here. We need to return to the focus on becoming people of character who are focused on blessing others instead of ourselves.
The character aspect today is faithfulness and faithfulness is always outward looking, being faithful to others or a set of beliefs. For a follower of Jesus it's about being faithful or true to him first, meaning we take seriously who Jesus has called us to be. For Jesus, character is founded on loving God and others and faithfulness is also founded on love and commitment to others. This love is not about feelings, but about how we treat others, about respecting others because they are people created in the image of God.
We learn faithfulness from watching others. As followers of Jesus, we learn faithfulness from God who never gives us on us and keeps coming after us. If we want to see more respect and love in our society, we need to be faithful to what we say we believe; that we are to love God with everything we are and love others. It's easy to justify violence against those filled with hate, but history is filled with how love and peace, how grace filled words and respect of others counted hate and anger and violence: Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, Elisabeth Elliot, Mother Teresa are just a few who come to mind.
So who or what are you faithful to and how are you making your community a better place to be, a place of safety and blessing out of your faithfulness to being who Jesus has called you to be.

Goodness

What does it mean to be good? I just got back from vacation where we did some camping, some fishing and spent a wonderful week with family back in Thunder Bay. It was good, but that's not what goodness is all about. What does it mean to be good as part of who you are as a person, as part of your character? I know for myself that I want people to think that I'm a good person, that goodness is part of who I am, but I want it to mean more than just nice. When I think of being good, it's about doing the right things, even when it's hard. It's about being who I should be as a person, especially in how I treat others. It has to do with my morals and being the same person in private that I am in public and that has to fit with who Jesus tells us who we are supposed to be. How you live and treat others shows who you are inside.
You don't have to be a religious person to work at being good. There are many people I know who accept Jesus' teachings as wise because they recognize the importance of good character and being consistent in yourself. "A good person's good behaviour shows a good heart," is how one person put it and I am working hard to have this said about who I am.

Kindness

Have you done your random act of kindness yet today? For a while there was a big push to encourage people to do a random act of kindness each day to help make our communities and world a better place to live in. There were all kinds of stories going around about how people quietly acted to help someone out, to bring a bit of joy into a difficult life, of people who gave what they had, whether it was stuff, or time, or some kind of help to someone they didn't even know just to make their life a little bit better for at least a short time.
Kindness can change another person's day right around, turning a miserable day into a really good day. Kindness offers hope to people who may have lost hope. It can change you as you see how a simple act of kindness can affect someone else, bringing a bit of joy or grace into their day. From what I can see, kindness is love, compassion, and grace in action. Kindness comes from people who are unselfish and generous. Kindness shows what a person's character really is, it's who you are, not just what you do. One of  the best compliments you can give a person is that she is kind, that he has a kind heart.
God is kind and shows kindness to everyone, sending rain and sun to all people, giving gifts and talents to each person, offering love and acceptance and an invitation to anyone to become one of his people, his children.
This is why we are called to do kindness, to imitate God's character in this way. Imagine a world where people worked on their kindness levels, looking for small and large ways to do acts of kindness for others without any need for thanks or recognition. What kinds of communities would we have?
But kindness starts with you and me as individuals making a decision to be kind and to look past ourselves to act kindly no matter how we are feeling, no matter how our own day or life is going. You are the starting place for a better world. So get out there and do a random act of kindness today, tomorrow and every day and you will make the world a better place.

Patience

If you've been waiting for this post, you've had to practice patience. Patience, something we joke about so often, "Lord I need patience and I need it right now" is a feeling many of us know all too well! If you ask my daughter or wife they are likely to say that patience is not always my strongest asset, that I can be very impatient at times, especially at home. It's funny, funny sad not funny haha, that we are often at our worst at home with the ones we love the most, the ones we should be the most patient with because of the place they hold in our hearts and lives.
Maybe that's why God focuses so much on our character, pushing us in to look more like Jesus. Patience is an attribute of God, something that God is, it's part of the character of God. God shows his patience by not giving up on us, even though we constantly push him away for what we want in the moment. Peter tells us in his second letter that Jesus is patient with us, waiting to come back because he doesn't want anyone to perish.
Patience can be so hard when we focus on what we want, it becomes a lot easier when we focus on the people around us and make their needs and desires more important than our own. Impatience happens because I'm caring about me and not you. So if I'm acting impatient with you, feel free to tell me off and to stop focusing on myself and instead care more about you. Tell me to be more like Jesus and less like me.

Peace

Peace can be something as simple as "no conflict," which is definitely something that is worth working towards in many parts of our world today. Having the privilege of meeting many refugees while a pastor in the Montreal area, something as simple as having no conflict is a blessings many of us simply take for granted. Even if there is still hatred and anger, if there is a strong enough presence to make sure that violence is contained and the average person is safe, this peace would be a huge improvement over what exists in so many places this very day.

But the peace that Paul is  talking about as part of the Fruit of the Spirit is more of an inner peace, a way of being in a stress-filled, easily offended, and rights oriented culture or society. We live in a wonderful society where we are normally free to live out our faith and values and the government normally protects us in doing so, but there are elements of our society that make it difficult for many people to have an inner peace within themselves.

Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” The peace Jesus gives is the Jewish concept of peace or shalom. Shalom is about health and wholeness in relationships with God and others, it's about a sense of prosperity (not necessarily financial) and contentment, it's about integrity where what you believe, say and do all fit together in harmony, it's about well-being emotionally, mentally, spiritually and physically. It's about being able to be calm even when the world around you is going nuts. This peace comes from trust and faith in knowing that God is with you, that Jesus is in control and you can rely on the knowledge that his plans for you will help you be the person you've been created to be.

Peace does not mean that life will always go easy or well for you, peace is about how you handle and approach life during those times with a sense of inner peace, calmness and trust in God. Peace chases away fear and that sinking feeling in your stomach that comes from the knots of stress and anxiety. You can easily recognize those who have this kind of peace because they bring calmness and sureness into chaotic and stress filled situations. 

It does not come naturally for most people, but it is something that can grown, after all it is part of the Fruit of the Spirit and a fruit's characteristic is that it begins from a seed or bud and with the right environment and nutrients, it can, and will grow and ripen. What are you feeding your soul and spirit on to grow peace within? What environment are you living in or creating around you? Is it one that helps you cultivate peace? Who do you trust in, who do you place your faith in? How you answer these questions will lead you to a place where you too can find and have peace. Hint: look to Jesus.

Being a disciple of Jesus and joy

I wish I had a loonie (Canadian dollar) for every time someone asked my "Why do Christians always look so sober and grumpy?" Usually this question comes up after coming to church and seeing everyone sitting properly in rows, looking ahead, quiet and afraid to create any noise. Should a child make noise, all the person visiting sees is the child getting an elbow in the ribs to hush, or if the child is lucky a peppermint to keep them quiet, or really if they're really unlucky and mom or dad is grumpy that morning, they get marched out the back and downstairs where the child often becomes even louder. As one young man I was discipling told me, "Why would I ever want to become like them?" To be honest, I've sometimes thought the same thing after witnessing well meaning followers of Jesus who are passionate about God but so sober about life and seemingly scared of fun. Faith often seems to be all about seriousness and little about joy.

So then comes along Paul, a rather serious guy himself by all accounts, and he tells us that the second part of growing the fruit of the Spirit in us is growing joy! The website Theopedia describes joy this way, "Joy is a state of mind and an orientation of the heart. It is a settled state of contentment, confidence and hope. It is something or someone that provides a source of happiness. It appears 88 times in the Old Testament in 22 books; 57 times in the New Testament in 18 books.... Greek dictionary definition: chara, khar-ah'; cheerfulness, i.e., calm delight:--gladness" When you define joy this way, it makes sense considering who Jesus is and that he took our sin to the cross on our behalf so that our relationship with God the Father is made right again. We should be the most joyful people on earth and this should come out in how we approach life and the people in our life. 

Joy comes from knowing that God is in charge and we are not. It comes from knowing that Jesus loves us more than we can ever know. It comes from knowing that no matter what happens, the Holy Spirit is with us, understands what is going on and will never abandon us. It doesn't mean that God is going to make everything work out all the time the way we think things should work out, or that we won't experience suffering or pain; these things come with life, but we know that we don't face these things alone. Joy comes from having a faith community of people committed to following Jesus who have also committed to journeying through life together, looking out for each other, picking each other up when we fall, challenging us when we need to be challenged and encouraged when we need words of hope and grace. Joy comes from cultivating a spirit of contentment, seeing that everything we have has been given to us by God instead of concentrating on what we don't have. It's about learning to be grateful for all that we have and have been given. This is all about learning to see life through the eyes of God and in relationship with Jesus, meaning joy is something you can grow inside yourself; so grow it. 

Being a disciple and love

The first part of the Spirit's fruit in a follower of Jesus is the growth of love in their life. Now this is not Hollywood emotional love; this is the kind of love that the Apostle Paul talks about in his first letter to the Corinthians, "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects. always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails." This is the kind of love that God shows to us. He is patient with us, especially when we keep doing our thing instead of his. God is kind: he blesses us, he provides for us, he gives us his Spirit so we know we are never alone no matter what is happening in our lives. This is a special kind of kindness. God doesn't envy, he doesn't boast: God tells us who he is straight out and has no need to envy or boast because he is the creator of everything and everything belongs to him. God is not rude: go back to his kindness. God is not self seeking, he sent us his beloved Son for our sake, not his own, he sacrifices his most precious Son to pay the price of our sin. This ties into God protecting us from ourselves and from Satan. This is accomplished through giving us his Spirit to guide us and keep us pointed towards Jesus. God's love means he is not easily angered. It doesn't mean he doesn't get angry, he does: at sin and at death as we see in Jesus' tears at the grave of Lazarus, but he keeps his patience for us and controls his anger and so keeps no record of all the wrongs and sin we do because of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. God definitely does not delight in evil, God definitely rejoices with the truth, he rejoices in his Son Jesus who is the truth. I love that love is about trusting and hoping and persevering because it shows that God desires an active living relationship with us. Jesus has trusted us with his mission of making disciples and growing his church. Jesus places the hope of the world in us as the church and he never gives up on us. God's love never fails as we see in the cross.
So what does this mean for us then? How do we love like this? It sounds impossible. I love my wife and family and dear friends, but I never even come close to loving like this. But this is why the image of fruit is so important. I may not love like this, but I have a goal now for what my love should look like. This is about giving my life to Jesus and allowing his Spirit to shape me, transform me more and more into the image of Jesus. I know I'm not always patient, just ask my wife and kids, but when I look at God's love, it makes me work on becoming more patient, and more kind and less self-centered, etc. By doing so, it will strengthen my relationships with my wife and kids and others, just as it strengthens my relationship with Jesus.
The hardest part is that Jesus not only calls us to love God with everything we are and have, but he also calls us to love each other, our neighbours and even our enemies in this very same way. So before you think you have loving down, stop and take a look at all your relationships. The painful part is that we also show how deep our love for God is through how we love each other and those we don't really like. So take a look at your love level and see where it's at. Don't let the level discourage you, but like it be the starting point of growing your level of love as you seek to grow the Fruit of the Spirit in your heart, soul and life and then watch God change you in wonderful ways.

The Work of the Holy Spirit in us

About a year and a half ago I began to think about how following Jesus is more than just reading about him, trying to be nice and believe all the right things, but that a big part of following Jesus is allowing the Holy Spirit to change us. I decided to use a passage in a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to the churches in an area called Galatia as a guide to think about what it looks like to be changed by the Holy Spirit. The passage goes like this, "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control." At that time I wrote about a number of these, but then I accepted a call to another church and this blog was kind of put to the side while my family and I moved and adjusted to a new church and community.
It was brought to my attention that I had this blog and I was encouraged by a number of people to pick this up again, so I have decided to once again try my hand at blogging. But there is another reason I've decided to begin again, and that is because as a church we have decided to start on a journey of church renewal, using a process and structure developed by the seminary of our church. As we've entered this journey, the thing that has struck me the most about church renewal is that it is about getting back to the basics: gospel telling and discipleship. The goal of gospel telling and discipleship is to make the Bible and our relationship with Jesus the center of everything we do as individuals and as a church, and to have a focused path of helping those in our church to grow into deeper and stronger disciples of Jesus. The Fruit of the Spirit that the Apostle Paul talks about here is one way we can tell that we are growing as followers of Jesus.
Faith is about what we believe, but it's also about who we believe in and how we allow that person to shape us and our lives. Since the one we have faith in is Jesus, I want to explore through the Fruit of the Spirit what it might look like when we allow Jesus through the Holy Spirit to shape our day to day lives. It's important to understand that we are not allowed to pick and choose which of these parts of the Fruit of the Spirit we will change in, it's all one fruit, not fruits, so it is expected that in each of these areas we are going to allow the Spirit to change us. One last thought for today, it is not a passive thing we are engaging in as we allow the Holy Spirit to change us, we are called to throw all our energy into partnering with the Holy Spirit in the changes he is working in us.
Next time I will do some thinking about love as a part of the Fruit of the Spirit and over the weeks and months ahead, I'll tackle each one of the others as well. There are some I am really looking forward to reflecting on, but I will be honest and admit that there are some that the Holy Spirit and I have a lot to work on yet and these I'm not as eager to explore, but that is all part of continuing to grow as a follower of Jesus.