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GALATIANS 5:22-23 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.” (KJV)
“…love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control…” (ASV)
“…love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control…” (NASB, RSV, NIV, NKJV)
Oh, come on Dave! You follow a very easy Scripture memory verse with a long, hard one. Seriously?
My answer: don’t blame me. It came from the Holy Spirit. I can honestly confess that when I started memorizing Scriptures, I didn’t always memorize the easy ones or shortest ones. But this one was sent to me to USE.
I jokingly call some of these scriptures “Paul’s Laundry Lists.” There are a lot of them through the New Testament…long lists of features, characteristics, behaviors that we are supposed to model as Spirit-filled, Spirit-led believers. So, I encourage you to do what I did. Get in there, work hard and long and memorize this list of “fruits” so you can start meditating on them and learn to model them in your life.
Another problem with laundry lists is that they are easy to write down and list but also very easy to ignore and overlook. That is not the idea. Instead, when I followed the Lord’s leading, I would recall this list, work on making sure I had it memorized correctly and then start analyzing the life I was leading against its standards.
Am I showing love in my life? Is joy present or am I acting like a curmudgeon (look it up!). The way my life is going, I don’t really have much peace…what can I do about that? Meekness and gentleness are NOT qualities of a USAF fighter pilot. Yet, they need to be qualities of my life. I remember praying, “Lord, will you help make me more gentle like my mom?” I’m still working on that one. I think that is the point.
Longsuffering, or patience, is one of those fruits I remember praying that the Lord would hurry up and give me soon. A famous star of film and screen once said, “Goodness has got nothing to do with it.” Being “good” was something I had to learn because it doesn’t always serve my intentions and needs. Faith is huge…without it, we cannot please God. Lord, increase my faith!
Meekness has been a hard one to come by with this Type-A personality. Meekness rarely serves my immediate goals and intentions. Without it, I can get so much done while stepping on so many others. But that isn’t real Christ like, is it? Temperance is a word I needed to look up. The words “self control” help us understand it better. Remember that temper I mentioned evident in this red-head?
As a Boy Scout, I had to memorize the “Scout Law.” That list is even LONGER! Am I screaming? “A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.” I bet you Paul was a Boy Scout!!
So, why all these lists? Is it any wonder I call them laundry lists? I memorized the Scout Law so I memorized the “Fruits of the Spirit.” Then I tried to apply them to my life. My mother tried to help me adopt all of these traits…from both lists…as I grew older. She didn’t use the lists. She just tried to teach me how to be more kind. Dad tried to teach me how to have more self control.
I didn’t actually enjoy memorizing a laundry list. It is hard to memorize long lists perfectly. But, since I had to memorize them, I expected the next, young Boy Scouts who came along to memorize them too. More importantly, I expected them to start modeling them in their lives. The Holy Spirit expects us to do the same with the fruits. Why? Because like fruit, they were the produce or product of a Holy life.
These lists were measuring sticks for “how I’m doing.” I don’t use a 1 to 10 scale, but I can certainly see when I’m really showing the fruit of hatefulness instead of love and joy. It’s real easy to see when I give in to excesses instead of living a life of discipline and self control. It really didn’t take a laundry list with “goodness” on it to tell me I ought to be good…but it sure did come in handy as a reminder when I thought being bad was a better idea.
Bottom line: the Lord wants us to adapt personalities, character and lifestyles that demonstrate a set of fruits in our lives that Paul just happened to list for us. Does memorizing a long list of the fruits of the Spirit make me any kinder? No, but knowing the list and the discipline of remembering them certainly helps remind me that I need to be kinder. Eventually, it can even help adjust my behavior so I can learn to be kinder.
So, get the list, write it down, start going over it and over it again and again. Memorize it for the sake of memorizing it. Then the Lord will bring them to mind when you need them, so you can remember to show the fruit when you’d rather do the opposite. Demonstrating the fruit of the Spirit in our lives is the way to become more Christ like and demonstrate His personality to the world through us. That was His plan.
Questions to ponder: Are some Scriptures harder to memorize than others? Do lists like the fruit of the Spirit seem to be tedious? How can memorizing a list of traits help me adapt those traits into my life? How can a list of words be used by the Holy Spirit to inspire us to make them true in our lives? How can the Holy Spirit give us the power to have these fruits when the world tends to promote behaviors exactly the opposite? Can the discipline of memorizing a long list translate into the discipline of turning our lives into Christ-pleasing, Christ-modeling examples?
Other Scriptures to examine: Galatians 5:22-26. Look at the rest of the chapter. Does learning these fruits bring about the kind of walking in the Spirit spoken of in verse 25? Can exercising these fruits help us crucify the flesh that seems to war against this kind of life style? Romans 12: 1-2. Don’t be conformed to the world but be transformed, by the renewing of your mind. Fruits of the Spirit come from a renewed mind. James 3:7…another long list we will memorize later. “The wisdom that is from above…” John 15:1-5, a look at bearing fruit and what happens to those who don’t bear fruit. 2 Peter 1:5-7, another great list.
 
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