Fruit of the Spirit – Love

The word “love” gets thrown around fairly loosely these days – we love everything from a pretty flower to the color of roof tiles on a house. We love our families. We love our spouses. We’re in love. We make love. With all the different ways we use that word I wonder, do we even know what true love is?

The fruit of the Spirit is described in Galatians as “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” In this letter, Paul is telling us that how we live and interact with others will show evidence of these things if we are in Christ. In this verse, love is translated from the Greek word agape, love of and for God.

Jesus, speaking to one of the scribes, said “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” and “you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:28-31)

In Revelation 2, Jesus wrote to the church of Ephesus about this very thing. He said he knew they were doing good deeds and toiling tirelessly with perseverance for His Name’s sake, but he followed that with “but I have this against you, that you have left your first love.” Their first love was Him. They had forgotten that He was why they were doing everything else to begin with.

When people look at us and how we interact with others, they should see and feel God’s love through us. Oh, but it is hard! We get in the way of ourselves. We become so focused on the task itself we allow stress and anxiety into the picture, and then we are just busy doing deeds and no one can see the love.

If we love God with all our heart, with all our mind and with all our strength, we can’t help but love others this way too! The things we do then become less about the task and more about sharing God’s love with everyone around us.

I’ve been reminded of this a couple times and in different ways the past few days. I let the tasks I need to do become the focus, and now I see that it was showing in my attitude and I didn’t even know it! It is so easy to fall into this pattern. I’m grateful that God showed me what I was doing; I was driving home thinking about the little nudges I’d felt, and found myself in tears asking for forgiveness for letting my “self” get in the way of my love for God.

Heavenly Father, please continue to gently nudge us when we start to take our eyes off You, and turn us back to our first love. Help us to remember the joy we felt the first time we experienced your love, and help us to spread that joy everywhere we go. Fill us with your Spirit, let it overflow! Give us the Living Water and the Bread of Life – hallelujah, give us your love! In Jesus’ Holy Name, Amen.